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My guest today is fintech legend Mike Cagney, Founder of Figure, one of the fastest growing fintech companies in the US, where they are on a mission to transform financial services through blockchain, bringing speed, efficiency and savings to both consumers and institutions.
Founded in 2018, Figure has raised almost $500M in equity from top investors, including DST Global, Ribbit, Fin Capital, RPM Ventures, Thomvest, JP Morgan, Apollo, and many more.
Prior to Figure, Mike also co-founded SoFi and built the company into a multi-billion-dollar business under his leadership as CEO.
In this episode, we discuss:
Reflections from building and launching SoFi, why their original idea failed, and how they quickly iterated and found a winning formula
“We basically created a product, which was Student Loan Re-fi. And, it didn't exist before we started. Our premise was, you re-fi your house, you re-fi everything else, why can't you re-fi your student loan?”
How Figure is already using blockchain to disintermediate the financial market to displace trust with truth and go after a $100 billion opportunity
“If you think about all financial services, it's just intermediated marketplaces… Well, with blockchain, you can basically transact bilaterally between two counterparties in decentralized exchanges. You don't need a centralized agent, you don’t need clearing brokers, you don't even need the exchange, and so, you're talking about massive transformation.”
Importance of company culture and why the founding team at Figure spent a couple of months establishing a genuine culture that could scale before doing anything else
“One of the biggest things we tried to emphasize, is the No Asshole Rule... And the thing is, it can be very hard to institute, especially when you have a significant performer, but they're a jerk. And you know, they're orthogonal the rest of the organization. My experience at this point is that there is no level of individual performance that can compensate for not being congruent into the organization.”
Their strategy to quickly launch an impressive number of products in an empathetic way to the consumer… and a whole lot more!
"If you're truly disrupting and building innovation, or building innovative products, people don't know how to ask for them because they don't know what they are. So, what you've got to do is put it in front of people and then see - do they embrace it or do they run from it?"
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Video Highlights You Will Definitely Like:
Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & Managing General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.
Mike Cagney, Founder of Figure & SoFi – Building Massive Transformational Companies, Key Founder Lessons, & How Blockchain is Revolutionizing Financial Services