Founder Episodes

Igor Khmel is the co-founder and CEO of SaveChain, the borderless banking app. SaveChain features a self-custody 'stablecoin-only' wallet with a banking interface for the global underbanked, with the option to open an FDIC-insured bank account for non-US residents. In short, SaveChain is Metamask m…

Jesse Phillips is the co-founder and CEO of TrustWare, one of the 12 founding teams forming the Techstars Web3 accelerator.  Jesse and Pete Townsend dig into how Jesse got into crypto, the TrustWare vision he formed with co-founder Jonathan Frazier, adjusting to some of the crypto curveballs the wo…

Liang Wu is the Co-founding Managing Partner at Eleven26 Capital, an early-stage VC fund investing in diverse founders on the evolving Internet across Web2 and Web3. In this episode, Liang riffs with Pete Townsend on his one-year reflections on writing his weekly Life in Color blog, including thou…

In this special segment, we’re featuring web3 investors, founders and mentors such as Joey Krug from Pantera Capital, Matthew Graham from Sino Global Capital, Teana Baker-Taylor from Circle, Sam Williams from Arweave, John Wu from Ava Labs, Clarisse Hagege from Dfns, Sean Lee from Odsy, Tim Bos fro…

Dee Coakley is the co-founder and CEO of Boundless, the operating system for your international team, which she co-founded with Emily Castles in Ireland in 2019. Boundless is ‘global employment made simple, with benefits, share options and payroll in one neat platform’.

Sam Williams is co-founder and CEO of Arweave, a blockchain protocol allowing us to remember and preserve valuable information, apps, and history indefinitely. In this episode, Sam shares the inspirational story of how Arweave got started, their life-changing experience with Techstars Berlin in 201…

Ollie Walsh is the co-founder and CEO of Pipit, who are bringing to market the new Konect network that is powering international cash transactions with DeFi and enabling migrants to support their families back home cheaper, safer, and now faster.

Nigel Verdon is the CEO and co-founder of Railsr (formerly Railsbank) and is a 3x fintech founder and ‘Finance 4 Good’ evangelist focused on building great ideas - first with Evolution (exited to BAE Systems), followed by Currency Cloud (exited to Visa), and now with Railsr.

Founder and CEO of PlanDail, Owen O’Driscoll, riffs with Pete Townsend on PlanDail’s mission to build Europe’s premier cross-border, seamless, regulated crowdfunding platform, powered by carbon-neutral Algorand technology. PlanDail’s aim is to connect high-impact focused entrepreneurs with ESG/impa…

What a week! Techstars kicked off the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator this week in Dublin and they’re already moving at a breakneck pace. With that, we’re taking the opportunity to introduce our MoneyNeverSleeps community to the ten amazing founding teams that make up Techstars’ first chain-a…

Nik Milanović is the founder of This Week in Fintech, a global digest of fintech news, and General Partner at The Fintech Fund, an early-stage venture capital fund. In this episode, Pete Townsend and Eoin Fitzgerald talk to Nik about what influenced his modus operandi, the big opportunity with fint…

Adam Bialy is the founder and CEO of Fiat Republic, the compliance-first, API-driven and highly secure and scalable bridge between banks and crypto. In this episode, Adam and Pete Townsend talk through the Fiat Republic vision, the current state of play between banks and crypto platforms that make …

Matthew Larby is the founder and CEO of Realm, a blockchain metaverse ecosystem where you can create and explore your own play to earn microverse. In this episode, Matthew and I talk through how the Realm experience works,  how to make the metaverse more accessible, transitioning from a web2 founde…

Joining the show this week is Tim Bos, founder and CEO of ShareRing, a blockchain-based company that's focused on changing the landscape of the fragmented sharing economy. In this chat, Tim and Pete Townsend talk through Tim’s crystal ball-like experiences in deep tech in the ’90s, how being a thir…

Isaac Kato, who leads the Filecoin Techstars Accelerator program in Seattle joins Pete Townsend on this episode originally recorded as part of the Techstars Web3 Convo Series of fireside chats powered by the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator program in Ireland. In this chat, Isaac and Pete riff…

Joey Krug is the Co-Chief Investment Officer of Pantera Capital, the first institutional investment firm focused exclusively on bitcoin, other digital currencies, and companies in the blockchain tech ecosystem. Joey joins Pete Townsend on this episode originally recorded as part of the Techstars We…

Matthew Graham is the CEO of Ryze Labs (formerly Sino Global Capital), which provides strategic investment to best-in-class companies that are moving the blockchain and digital assets ecosystems forward, and then help them to thrive in the Asia market. Matthew joins Pete Townsend on this episode, o…

John Wu is president of Ava Labs, an a16z-backed technology company building the next-generation blockchain platform, Avalanche. In this episode, John shares insights on bringing passion to projects, building teams and communities in Web3, the sheer joy of bringing hundreds of companies onto Avalan…

Teana Baker-Taylor is the Chief Policy Officer of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, the longest established trade body representing blockchain and digital assets. In this episode, Teana shares her story with Pete Townsend on her journey into blockchain and digital assets, her view on the critical fo…

Suzanna Hayek from Irish Tech News interviews Pete Townsend on Pete Townsend on financial trends, digital finance and investing in startups. This interview was originally aired on Irish Tech News in early September, and they kindly gave us permission to share the content. We also brought Rory Galv…

Michelle Tsing joins Pete Townsend in a special segment from the Techstars Web3 Convo Series of fireside chats driven by the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator program kicking off in Dublin in March 2022. Michelle is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in addition to wearing many hats as a …

Referring to Colm Lyon as an Irish fintech ‘O.G.’ is just the tip of the iceberg, as at the core, he’s an entrepreneur who’s built indigenous Irish businesses into international players. Currently the CEO and Founder of Fire.com, we walk through Colm’s journey from the early days of banking IT to b…

Our guest this week is Gershie Vann, Founder and CEO of Magma Capital Funds, a Chicago-based quantitative hedge fund firm. We talk through the long iterative climb involved in launching a business, finding alternative skillsets outside of finance when building his team during the first pandemic loc…

Shane Monks O’Byrne, founder and CEO of Aikido Finance, joins the show this week to talk about the Aikido Finance mission of democratizing quant investing, how he went from a grad with a Computer Science degree to a fully empowered startup founder in less than two years, the similarities between a …