Steve Kirsch CEO Token Steve is an established entrepreneur and Silicon Valley heavyweight. He has a legacy as an inventor of ground-breaking technologies, including the optical mouse and the pioneering internet search engine, Infoseek. In 2000, he received the Visionary Award from the Software Development Forum of Silicon Valley given to pioneers leading the way in high technology. As the founder of 7 high tech companies, two with billion-dollar market caps, Steve is now dedicating his talents, energy and expertise to state-of-the-art payment infrastructure. In 2015, he launched Token; an open banking platform that allows a global ecosystem of banks and their customers to move money and information securely, without friction and instantly worldwide. Steve has a BS/MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where the main auditorium in the EECS building is named in his honour. He is a regular speaker at leading industry events around the world.
Alex Todorov Product Lead Risk & Support Teams Chime Alex’s career spans consulting for the largest US commercial and investment banks, building products and product teams at startups from seed through growth stage, and helping traditional financial services companies leverage technology to achieve scalable growth. In his current role at Chime he helps the risk team control fraud losses and eliminate compliance risks; and enables member services to support millions of bank accounts effectively and empathetically. He has B.S. in Finance from the University of Maryland, College Park and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.
Jeremy Kaufmann Principal Scale Venture Partners Jeremy focuses on companies adding machine intelligence to business and vertical software, especially industries untouched by the first decade of SaaS . As well, he is excited about frontier technologies including drones, robotics, and novel applications of AI across the IOT stack and his efforts have contributed to investments in KeepTruckin, Solvvy, Cognata, and TechSee. Prior to joining ScaleVP, Jeremy worked on the Sales Strategy and Business Operations team at Salesforce, where he served as a strategy lead for the SMB business. Additionally, he has worked as a data scientist at Analysis Group, focused on health economics and drug pricing and as a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, with a concentration on consumer credit and loan accumulation.
Ram Palaniappan CEO/Founder Earnin Ram is a financial tech entrepreneur whose mission is to create products that make money work better for everyone. At his first company, Ram began helping his employees by writing them personal checks when they needed money before payday. This hack to bring flexibility to rigid paychecks laid the foundation for Ram’s next venture, Earnin, which aims to reinvent the way people get paid and liberate the over $1 trillion held up every two weeks in the payroll system. Using the app, people are able to access a portion of the wages they’ve earned anytime they want, without waiting for payday. Earnin currently helps people from more than 25,000 companies access wages that would have otherwise been held up in the pay cycle. Ram holds an MMS from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science and an MBA from Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management
Addi Regev, Product Lead Growth, Risk, Support& UX Teams Varo Money Addi has been building meaningful mobile products and successful product teams for most of her career, spanning all companies’ sizes, from small startups to fortune-500 companies. In her current role at Varo Money she supports the user research, design, risk, growth and customer operations teams in their efforts to grow Varo’s customer base efficiently and responsibly, understand the customers’ needs and support them in their journey to achieving financial health. She has a Bachelors degree in Occupational Therapy from Tel Aviv University in Israel, and an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
MODERATOR: Mark Crager Founder/Managing Partner Next Stage Partners with a focus on bringing meaningful innovation from early-stage fintech companies to leading financial institutions and merchants. He has extensive payments industry experience with a proven track record of moving products from concept to commercialization in consumer and B2B environments. Prior to Next Stage Partners Mark held executive management roles at Visa working with merchants and financial institutions. He successfully launched a variety of P2P, prepaid, mobile and e-commerce products and platforms. Prior to Visa, Mark held a National Sales Manager position at Sony and launched new divisions for both Nestle and Johnson & Johnson in the consumer packaged goods space. He received his Bachelor of Science in Marketing from California State University, Chico. Mark is a Member Board Advisor with StartX, the Stanford University incubator for fintech startups, a Mentor at Plug & Play, the innovation accelerator and an Advisor to several payments technology companies.
