Stellar Development Foundation with Denelle Dixon | E198

11/09/21 • 34 min

Jason talks to Denelle Dixon, CEO and executive director of the Stellar Development Foundation. Stellar is one of those coins that has been around for a while and has some very interesting use cases.

Episode Highlights:

1.08: Dixon says that the stellar development Foundation is a nonprofit, non stock entity whose sole mission and soul focuses on developing the ecosystem around the stellar network and also shepherding the codebase for the stellar network.
4.33: There are lots of stable coins that are issued on stellar, and these coins are like USDC, and you can actually send the stable coin so that you don’t actually have to worry about any volatility in the cryptocurrency market itself, says Dixon.
8.25: The notion of having stable coins actually creates an opportunity for the stability so that you don’t actually have to worry that when you send a transaction, affirms Dixon.
9.03: Dixon says that we think about the financial system from where we sit, wherever that might be but it’s really hard to think about in certain countries.
11.34: Leaf global company has created the digital wallet that folks can use when they are crossing borders.
14.31: Blockchain is the fastest way to transfer money between countries with the least amount of fees and your vendors on the other side don’t necessarily need to understand that blockchain is how you got it to them because it just goes into their bank account.
23.19: If you have the global network with the partners that create the on and off-ramps and then from there everyone can just build on it, and it can just grow.
28.37: China is developing its centralized cryptocurrency for absolute control of their economy. They do have the great firewall that gives them the more potential than anyone else to actually shut something down.

3 Key Points:

The global remittance system is enormous. The amount of money crossing borders, whether it be people sending money to support people back home, or even for transactional purposes, is substantial.
Back in the old days of the Internet, you had a lot of Silicon Valley building for the world, and that’s actually not the way they should be. It always should be solving local problems with local solutions.
The beauty of blockchain is that it allows the local developers to look at the problems they see around them and fix them in ways that make sense for their communities and do so in a global network, says Dixon.

Tweetable Quotes:

“We have come a long way, and we are now using the likes of a cryptocurrency that can transact the pennies.”- Jason
“Blockchain creates the opportunity to truly have a global financial system that doesn’t exist today.” – Dixon
“Not everybody does understand all the inner workings of how HTTPS works, and yet we still use the Internet every single day.” - Dixon

Resources Mentioned:

Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
Woodgate.com – Sponsor
Denelle Dixon: LinkedIn | Website

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Denelle Dixon, CEO and executive director of the Stellar Development Foundation. Stellar is one of those coins that has been around for a while and has some very interesting use cases.

Episode Highlights:

1.08: Dixon says that the stellar development Foundation is a nonprofit, non stock entity whose sole mission and soul focuses on developing the ecosystem around the stellar network and also shepherding the codebase for the stellar network.
4.33: There are lots of stable coins that are issued on stellar, and these coins are like USDC, and you can actually send the stable coin so that you don’t actually have to worry about any volatility in the cryptocurrency market itself, says Dixon.
8.25: The notion of having stable coins actually creates an opportunity for the stability so that you don’t actually have to worry that when you send a transaction, affirms Dixon.
9.03: Dixon says that we think about the financial system from where we sit, wherever that might be but it’s really hard to think about in certain countries.
11.34: Leaf global company has created the digital wallet that folks can use when they are crossing borders.
14.31: Blockchain is the fastest way to transfer money between countries with the least amount of fees and your vendors on the other side don’t necessarily need to understand that blockchain is how you got it to them because it just goes into their bank account.
23.19: If you have the global network with the partners that create the on and off-ramps and then from there everyone can just build on it, and it can just grow.
28.37: China is developing its centralized cryptocurrency for absolute control of their economy. They do have the great firewall that gives them the more potential than anyone else to actually shut something down.

3 Key Points:

The global remittance system is enormous. The amount of money crossing borders, whether it be people sending money to support people back home, or even for transactional purposes, is substantial.
Back in the old days of the Internet, you had a lot of Silicon Valley building for the world, and that’s actually not the way they should be. It always should be solving local problems with local solutions.
The beauty of blockchain is that it allows the local developers to look at the problems they see around them and fix them in ways that make sense for their communities and do so in a global network, says Dixon.

Tweetable Quotes:

“We have come a long way, and we are now using the likes of a cryptocurrency that can transact the pennies.”- Jason
“Blockchain creates the opportunity to truly have a global financial system that doesn’t exist today.” – Dixon
“Not everybody does understand all the inner workings of how HTTPS works, and yet we still use the Internet every single day.” - Dixon

Resources Mentioned:

Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
Woodgate.com – Sponsor
Denelle Dixon: LinkedIn | Website

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

AdvisorFlow with Brandon Chapman | E197

In today's episode, Jason will talk to Brandon Chapman, founder of Advisor Flow. It is a tool that helps advisors learn more about their clients in onboarding and acquire vital information to them faster and better.

Episode Highlights:

01.10: Brandon explains Advisor flow was incorporated last year. He was working on a project three years ago because he was so frustrated with using PDF and word documents to gather facts about his clients in his practice. Then, during the pandemic, it appeared every other advisor realized that pen and paper wasn't sufficient and efficient.
03.40: Jason suggests if you want to see who is ready to work with it, put an obstacle in front of them.
07.18: Brandon says, if a robot is emailing you to do something, it's very easy to ignore it, but if it's a human that you know is going to call you next or see you at the dinner party, there's a much higher chance you're going to do that thing.
09.24: Jason asks, how much of the financial industry has been around relying on frictions as a means of keeping people in place?
10.46: Brandon said when there was no information online, a few companies could get away with this, but the fact of the matter is that the world has shifted, and the most profitable businesses are the ones that recognize when you put the customer first and you end up doing better.
18.53: Jason asks Brandon, tell us about how your first integration is gone and the feedback you've gotten from users as far.
20.18: Brandon shares his wish that we need more people that challenge the status quo out there, and who will own the experience they offer.
20.28: Jason asks, what have been the biggest challenges you encountered in getting the company to where it is today?
20.47: Brandon suggests, in the tech business, if you are not making money early enough, you make a deal with the devil, which might impact the decisions that you make afterward.

3 Key Points:

The paper chase is the most challenging part of the financial advisory planning process, and if you can make that process seamless, it will encourage the odds that a prospect becomes a client, says Brandon.
Brandon explains that any data collected in their system will feed into the advisor's CRM choice and potentially into the onboarding technology of choice, which could lead to account opening on the investment side.
The most important thing in a fintech is you could know especially early in life is what you are and what you're not, says Jason.

Tweetable Quotes:

"There is a certain type of human being who's ok with turning over their entire lives to a machine." – Jason
"Friction is not a way to win business. This is a way to get off your client base." – Jason
"This industry requires a lot of relationship building, a lot of building trust and a lot of following through on promises." – Brandon

Resources Mentioned:

Facebook – Jason Pereira's Facebook
LinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedIn
Woodgate.com – Sponsor
Brandon – LinkedIn | Website

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

Nvidia with Kevin Levitt | E199

Jason talks to Kevin Levitt; he is the Director of Industry and Business Development for Financial Services for Nvidia. The company is one of the driving forces behind the technology powering artificial intelligence today.

Episode Highlights:

00.38: Nvidia is a company that was started about 30 years ago almost, and they have really pioneered the use of graphics processing units.

08.12: What Jason has seen in academic studies is more accurate FICO scores in terms of calculating the probability of default.

09.58 Jason asks, “What is the natural type of function for artificial intelligence disturbing the market today like what is the commonality around the things is replacing?

10.20: Kevin says in the example of Siri virtual assistant or chatbot. In the context of financial services that are helping us to transfer a balance or to understand what our balance is, or pay a bill, it goes from there to assist the call center agent where we have a more complex problem. With the call center and the agent, the AI is actually complimenting human assistants with information.

18.30: Large banks are trying to figure out how to build an enterprise AI capability, AI infrastructure to support the migration from a handful of AI-enabled applications up to 100s.

22.10: Jason inquires, “What is the kind of cool use cases you see being drummed up and coming forward going in the future?”

26.30: Kevin talks about the four primary players in terms of big retail, big tech, fintech and big banks, are going to be the primary competitors and if one of them is using AI to deliver a virtual assistant or chatbot and the other one is still using some form of rules-based kind of chat experience, AI one is going to win.

28.40 Jason: The technology companies choosing to come out and this is going to make everybody sharper, and everybody really focused on their value proposition and really try to eliminate friction.

35.32: NVIDIA is all about innovation and stretching, kind of the boundaries of where people thought. Computing power could go and certainly where artificial intelligence could be of benefit.

3 Key Points:

For the past 15 plus years, Kevin has been at the intersection of data technology and financial services.
The technology can enable a better customer experience across many dimensions when artificial intelligence and deep learning models that leverage natural language processing are utilized.
There are lots of opportunities to continually improve how AI is leveraged within any industry, including within the context of financial services.

Tweetable Quotes:

“You can think of artificial intelligence, or AI is kind of the Super umbrella if you will, and underneath that falls a category of artificial intelligence which is machine learning.” – Kevin
“It is not about job loss it is about job improvement, which is freeing us to do the higher-order capabilities.” – Kevin
“There are some of the smartest people in the world that are working on financial services, and they see the power and the opportunity associated with AI.” - Kevin

Resources Mentioned: