What’d I miss? News and Insights that got noticed - Week 42

Key themes this week (October 11 - 17)

• Stripe and Ramp NYC meetup great success
• Discover CFO: Cautious Consumers Cause Slide in Card Volume
• The most interesting unicorns to come out of Japan
• An AI Startup Acquired By Google Just Won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Stripe and Ramp NYC meetup

What a great panel conversation with Nourish CTO Stephanie Liu, Ramp VP of Product Geoff Charles and Stripe Head of Product for Payment APIs and Money Movement Sophie Sakellariadis.?

So many amazing nuggets of information from the different stages of the startup journey and the individual careers.?

The room was packed and the audience was closely listening to the valuable conversation.?

Thanks Stripe and Ramp for hosting the event and for the panel sharing their experiences.

Key takeaways:

• Great talent is the lifeblood of every startup and a lot of time is and should be spent attracting, selecting and managing talented employees
• An important part of managing the company and the people working for it is clearly defining your company culture and truly living your corporate values
• Especially for startups, the outside perspective and experiences that new hires bring provide a great opportunity to ask them for feedback on how things are done and if they see opportunities for improvement or pivots

LinkedIn Post

Discover CFO: Cautious Consumers Cause Slide in Card Volume

"...Payments volumes were down 4%, reflecting a slowdown in Discover card sales, at $55.2 billion overall, according to an earnings presentation. PULSE volumes were up 14%, to $82.6 billion, driven by an increase in debit transaction volumes.

Chief Financial Officer John Greene said during the call that card receivables were up 3% year over year due to a lower payment rate. That metric was offset by the decrease in sales volume. Payment rates were down 1% from last year but remained 0.7% above pre-pandemic levels.

The slide in card sales was tied to “cautious consumer behavior” and Discover’s own credit-tightening actions, Greene said on the call..."

Key takeaways:

• Discover reported a 4% decrease in Q3 payment volumes, mainly due to a slowdown in card sales totaling $55.2 billion, reflecting cautious consumer behavior.
• Despite lower card sales, card receivables grew 3% year-over-year, while personal loans increased 9%, indicating strong demand for debt consolidation.
• CFO John Greene described consumers as "stable yet cautious," with households adjusting budgets due to inflation and living expenses, leading Discover to revise expectations for net charge-offs and loan growth.

LinkedIn Post

The most interesting unicorns to come out of Japan

"...Japanese startups usually decide to go public sooner in their development than startups in other countries. For example, they may go public after just a couple of funding rounds, thanks to the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s lenient IPO rules. So it’s likely we might see the unicorns listed below doing an IPO sooner than later.

Here are a few unicorns from Japan that are worth keeping an eye on..."

Key takeaways:

• Japan aims to boost its startup ecosystem, targeting 100,000 startups and 100 unicorns by 2027 through various government initiatives.
• Despite fewer unicorns than some countries, Japan's startup scene is attracting significant international investment, particularly from U.S. investors.
• The article highlights six notable Japanese unicorns in diverse sectors, including biomaterials, AI, fintech, and HR technology.

LinkedIn Post

POLL: How do you prefer to engage with your LLM and on what device?

[Weekly POLL ??]

When I read this "Apple Intelligence adds a Type to Siri feature — here's how to launch this feature" it made me think about how people like to interact with their LLMs.

So I asked the LinkedIn audience to help me answer this week's POLL question: "How do you prefer to engage with your LLM and on what device?"

Key takeaways:

• 31% of respondents selected “phone and voice”, a split first place
• 31% of respondents selected “computer and typing”, a split first place
• 25% chose “phone and typing”,?
• Only 13% selected “computer and voice”
• These were the results at time of this newsletter if you want to see the most up-to-date results check out the link below

LinkedIn Post

An AI Startup Acquired By Google Just Won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

“…The 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry recognized Demis Hassabis, John Jumper, and David Barker for using machine learning to tackle one of biology’s biggest challenges: predicting the 3D shape of proteins and designing them from scratch.

This year’s award stood out because it honored research that originated at a tech company: DeepMind, an AI research startup that was acquired by Google in 2014. Most previous Nobel Prizes in chemistry have been awarded to researchers in academia…”

Key takeaways:

• DeepMind's Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, along with David Baker, won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their AI-driven protein structure prediction work.
• Their research solved the protein folding problem, with AlphaFold2 accurately predicting structures and Baker's team designing new proteins.
• This breakthrough has major implications for drug discovery and personalized medicine, highlighting AI's growing role in scientific research.

LinkedIn Post

Citi Token Services for Cash goes live

"...Citi Token Services for Cash processes multimillion dollar transactions and provides clients with 24/7, always-on cross-border liquidity and payments between participating branches.

It uses a private and permissioned blockchain that is solely owned and managed by Citi, ensuring, says the bank, safety and soundness for clients and ease of use. Clients are not required to hold or manage any tokens to access the services.

Following pilots last year, the service is now live for commercial transactions, with Mars onboard as the first client..."

Key takeaways:

• Citi has launched Token Services for Cash, a blockchain-based system enabling 24/7 global money transfers for institutional clients.
• Mars is the first client to use this service, which processes multimillion-dollar transactions on Citi's private blockchain.
• A related service, Token Services for Trade, is being piloted to facilitate 24/7 settlements using smart contracts and tokenized cash.

?LinkedIn Post

Creators and Founders Fintech ?? Power Walk in NYC

This weekend we completed the Fintech Walk / Part of Creators and Founders Power Walk ?? where we walked the Brooklyn Bridge. We had another amazing ? ? day so it was a great day for a walk.

We started in FiDi in front of Delmonico's and after walking across the Brooklyn Bridge ended the walk on a rooftop in DUMBO.

As always a great way to walk and talk with new and existing members of the staaake community.

For other Creators and Founders Power Walks and events check out the schedule here and sign-up: https://lu.ma/staaake).

Key takeaways:

• Walking and talking is a great way to network and get to know each other
• You are getting your 6,000 steps in
• By joining the walk you become part of the wonderful Staaake community with members in New York and around the world

LinkedIn Post

Monzo to hit ￡4.5bn valuation in employee share sale

“…Monzo is offering employees the opportunity to sell part of their stakes in the digital bank through a secondary sale that sees its valuation hit ￡4.5 billion…”

Key takeaways:

• Monzo plans employee share sale, valuing the company at ￡4.5 billion.
• Existing investors to buy shares, allowing staff to cash in millions.
• Digital bank has 10 million customers and expects profitability this year.

LinkedIn Post

How to prepare for the Great Wealth Transfer

“…Forecasts indicate that $84 trillion in assets will transition from the silent generation and baby boomers to the younger generation…”

Key takeaways:

• $68 trillion will transfer from Baby Boomers to younger generations over 25 years.
• Prepare through estate planning: wills, trusts, and beneficiary designations.
• Have open family discussions about inheritance plans and expectations.

LinkedIn Post

Check this out:

This is not a typo, we did this LIVE on the spot so it is called a SPOTCAST!

And in this episode of the spotcast "Banking on Information" our guest is Timothy Li, CEO of LendAPI (Techstars '24). In the episode, Rutger and Timothy dive deep into her WHY, WHAT, and HOW of everything embedded finance and API related.

Join us as we explore the insights and experience Timothy brings to the table, helping financial institutions getting up and running with embedded finance leveraging APIs.

Watch it here:

And you can now subscribe to the Informationbanker YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@Informationbanker/featured

As I am always interested in what you think about these posts, send me a message, or just leave a comment on the post on LinkedIn. If you like reading this please engage with the posts since that is the currency of LinkedIn.