Flywheels Episodes

This one was special. Episode 300 of MoneyNeverSleeps was recorded live at the Podcast Studios at HeadStuff HQ in Dublin - the legendary former Westland Studios where artists like U2, Dropkick Murphys, and Hozier have recorded in the past - marking the end of an era for the show’s long-form interview format, and the beginning of a new chapter. Seven years. Three hundred episodes. Hundreds of conversations with founders, operators, investors, regulators, technologists, and dreamers building what ...

This week, I’m sharing an episode of the ‘Venture with Hesus’ podcast that I recorded in late 2023 with the unstoppable Hesus Inoma, as he interviews me on lessons learned from being part of the startup ecosystem the last 8 years.

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 thoughts on chasing his curiosity, growth and flywheels in content creation, shamelessness as a superpower, and how all of these experiences inform his journey as an investor.

This week, Pete gives some insight into the new Techstars Web3 accelerator and goes on a quick rant on FTX before he and Eoin riff on Block’s flywheel and their ambitions with Cash App, then they go through a hall-of-fame list of fintech and crypto apps from Rex Salisbury, and finally dive into NFTs and VR through an Apple lens with a dash of Reddit.

Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend are back with their last Money Talks segment of the year with their review of their top stories for 2021.  From GameStop and Wallstreetbets, to Roblox and Coinbase going public, to Chamath and SPACs, to Charlie Munger on Bitcoin, to BNPL with Klarna, Square and Afterpay, to our spinning of the fintech flywheel, to CryptoPunks, stablecoins, the metaverse, Techstars in Ireland and Web3 and finally, Eoin’s new hope for Monzo, we’ve got it covered one last time for 2021.

Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend dive deep into the annual results from UK neobanks Starling and Monzo and what’s next for both, before getting into Square’s deal for BNPL (buy now, pay later) player Afterpay and how the integration will lead to a ‘fintech flywheel’. They then dive even deeper into their developing fintech flywheel thesis with a look into how Amazon and Shopify built their flywheels around a B2C to B2B bridge and ‘doing one thing well’, before tying it all back together with a look at Revolut’s travel plans.

Eoin and Pete mine a motherlode of fintech hotspots this week starting with insights into Revolut’s latest $33bn valuation, Square’s quest for crossover between creators, crypto and small businesses, then we dive deep into the upcoming Robinhood IPO and our developing thesis on fintech flywheels.

In this Money Talks segment, Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend start with their insights on what Stripe’s latest product could mean for their long-term plan, then they think through flywheels with Netflix finally getting into merch, before heading south to Miami for the outtakes from Bitcoin 2021.