Brainfood

On Ep. 2 of Brainfood, Simon Taylor, Founder @ Brainfood & Head of Market Development @ Tempo is joined by Eric Glyman, Co-CEO @ Ramp to discuss if fintech is dead, why Ramp considers itself a productivity company, how AI token costs are turning software into financial products and more!
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
02:16 Is fintech dead? And why Ramp considers itself a productivity company
03:41 Why AI token costs are turning software into financial products
06:27 How Ramp's Inspect lets non engineers ship code using AI
10:51 Why AI is becoming the third major category of business spend
17:43 What justifies Ramp's valuation and its accelerating revenue growth
26:07 How AI is transforming employee productivity and customer support workflows
38:54 Why Ramp applied for an OCC national trust bank charter
42:15 How stablecoins enable faster cross border payments and protection against currency volatility
46:23 Will autonomous AI agents replace Ramp or choose its financial infrastructure?
50:01 The future of agentic companies and Ramp's mission to eliminate waste

On Ep. 1 of Brainfood, Simon Taylor, Head of Market Development @ Tempo is joined by David Vélez, Founder & Global CEO @ Nubank to discuss Nubank's US launch, strategy, Hispanic customers, AI banking agents and more!
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
0:11 Nubank’s scale, efficiency, US launch, tokenization and AI
2:14 Chuck Feeney’s philanthropy and influence on David Vélez
4:13 Smart efficiency culture and Nubank’s branchless cost advantage
7:10 Hidden US banking costs and the underbanked opportunity
9:44 Nubank’s US strategy, Hispanic customers and incumbent competition
12:13 Customer obsession, NPS and long term loyalty economics
16:48 Nubank Global, stablecoin savings and international money movement
22:00 NuFormer foundation models for credit decisioning and financial AI
27:20 AI banking agents, financial guidance and cautious customer rollout
30:34 AI driven workflow reinvention and Nubank’s flatter organization

In this episode Simon Taylor, GTM @ Tempo sits down with Increase CEO, Darragh Buckley to explore long-term infrastructure thinking, compliance as code, stablecoins vs. traditional rails, and what’s actually broken in payments.

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction

01:19 The motivation for Increase: addressing payment disbursement failures

03:04 Technical and business challenges in international financial expansion

05:00 Viewing compliance as an engineering problem to be solved

07:31 Admiration for legacy financial systems built with constraints

09:10 The simplicity curve: abstraction, complexity, and underlying simplicity

12:45 The philosophy of building "lovingly boring" financial infrastructure

14:30 The necessity of early partnerships and gatekept features in fintech

16:50 Stablecoins as parallel infrastructure versus replacement for traditional systems

19:58 The existing strengths of US deposit rails and last-mile delivery

After speaking to the CEOs of Ramp, Brex, and Mercury, my first instinct is to find other nerds with whom to share my thoughts.
Immediately, I thought of Alex, and then I needed to bring some class to proceedings. I called my old friend Cokie (an OG and still my favorite Fintech content writer).
This is the most fun, relaxed, and engaging conversation I’ve had about Fintech in a long time.
I’m not even going to try and sell it to you.
Just take a listen.
Who knows if or when I’ll do season 2, but this has been a fun side project.
Get in touch if you want to know more about me, my day job at Sardine, or you have any feedback on season 1.
Now back to your regular scheduled newslettering.
ST.

This was perhaps the most intense conversation I can remember having. Incredibly efficient, scarily so. Focussed, intentional, direct. 
Why should you listen to this episode?
This company arguably created a category. By focussing on offering high yield and higher deposit insurance at a time when banks were not, when interest rates began to rise, they capitalized on a generational market opportunity.
Today Meow is known for its access to high-yield treasury, and while there are a few in this category none quite have the explosive growth that Meow has. This is a company that has lazer focussed on execution, channel partnerships, and go-to-market.
I describe conversations I’ve had with Brandon like talking to a scalpel. He’ll get to the point so quickly and surgically it's often hard to keep up. 
Meow started offering high-yield access to Stablecoins but may have pulled off the mother of all pivots. Today Meow offers up to $125m in FDIC insurance through its deposit sweeps network, which is expanding internationally and the CEO even graced the pages of Forbes.
What makes Brandon tick? What makes Meow work? And how are they building an enduring business