🎧The Fintech OG Series: Jillian Williams and Dimitri Dadiomov

We trace fintech’s arc from marketplace lending to a rebundled, infrastructure-led future shaped by AI, compliance, and programmable money. Jillian Williams and Dimitri Dadiomov share how trust, ledgers, and switching costs define what sticks, and where the next real opportunities lie.

• founding stories of Field Ventures and Modern Treasury
• why infrastructure, ledgers and money movement now lead value
• AI’s role in finance teams and why trust beats novelty
• audit automation, SOX evidence and identity orchestration
• convergence of crypto and banks via stablecoins
• surprises: big tech’s limited wins and mobile dominance
• alternative underwriting’s limits versus FICO
• lessons from SVB and resilience in operations
• practical career advice for interdisciplinary builders
• near-term opportunities in risk, compliance and treasury

Definitely tune in, like and subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Intros

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 0:00

Hey everyone, it's Julie here. Welcome back to another week of our fintech OG series here at This Week in FinTech. Today I am joined by two incredible voices who have helped shape the future of financial technology, both from the founder perspective and the investor perspective. First up, we have Jillian Williams, who you guys very likely know. We hosted an AI series together here at TWIF. If not, you should go back and listen to it. And she is now the co-founder of Field Ventures, a new Seed Stage Fund, where she's focusing on vertical software in FinTech. And I also interviewed Dmitri Dadiumov, who is the co-founder of Modern Treasury. He served as CEO for the first seven years and very recently shifted to a president role so he could focus more on product innovation while continuing to drive one of the most important financial infrastructure companies in fintech today. Together we cover how FinTech has evolved from the early days of Lending Club and marketplace lending to today's rebundling wave and AI-driven changes. We talk about the future of money movement, risk and compliance, embedded finance, and where they see the biggest opportunities ahead. You guys don't want to miss it. Definitely tune in, like and subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. Let's dive in. I obviously know who you guys are, but I would anyone that's listening that maybe isn't as familiar with you and your companies, especially since both of you have had some changes in your careers lately. I would love for you to give a brief background on yourselves. And we'll do ladies first, Jillian, you go first.

Jillian Williams 1:44

All righty. I was gonna say Demetrius is probably a lot more interesting. So maybe it's better for me not to go after him.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 1:49

I think everyone I interview on here is interesting. So there we go. Well, thank you.

Jillian Williams 1:54

Well, yeah, so I currently co-founded a new venture fund. It's called Field Ventures. We are a Seed Sage fund based in New York, investing across the US predominantly and focused on vertical software and fintech. And so it's two of us, me and my partner Richard Kirby, who have both been really focused on these areas for most of our venture career. And so prior to launching Field, I was at Cowboy Ventures, a SeedSage fund in the Bay Area, and really led those two areas there as well. And then started my venture career at Anthemus, a FinTech fund based between the US and UK. And then really started my career at Barclays in the SIG group, so financial institutions. And so that's how I stumbled into FinTech. Like you just get placed into a group based on the team. And it was at the time where Barclays, I mean, no shade to Barclays, but banks are always a little bit behind. And they were trying to figure out what FinTech was. And so being a junior person there, I had that opportunity to explore.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 2:57

And what year was that that you were joining Barclays? 2015. Um yeah, pre-like Robinhood was founded, I believe, but wasn't really a big thing. Stripe was founded, but not a big thing. Square was bigger at the time, but not a public company. So there's a lot that's changed since then.

Dmitri Dadimov 3:12

I think that's just gone public.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 3:14

Yes. Or just gone public, okay.

Jillian’s Path And Field Ventures

Jillian Williams 3:16

Exactly. I had to create our like market map, and I think we created the fintech one that I had to update every week. I think we really just had Blending Club in it. I don't even know why we didn't include PayPal in it. It was a very sad market.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 3:29

Or like Visa and stuff too. They've been public forever.

Jillian Williams 3:32

Yeah, they weren't fintech at the time.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 3:34

It reminds me a lot of when I started covering fintech at Bloomberg in 2016. It was like, well, do we have you cover banks since they're doing some stuff? Do we have you cover payments companies? Do we have you cover these like it like even today it doesn't have as much of a definition because it just keeps getting broader and broader? But back then it was like so tiny that like you said, just having lending club instead of marketplace lending was like the saying.

Dmitri Dadimov 3:57

Like lending club was like the biggest, the third biggest IPO out of Silicon Valley or something. I remember that.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 4:03

I think the only two things that they really considered for sure fintech was marketplace lending and crypto. And then there was also the question of is crypto fintech or is it its whole other thing?

Jillian Williams 4:13

I had to do a lot of research reports on what blockchain was.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 4:18

Do we still even really know what blockchain is and what the use case is? We're starting to get there a little bit. A decade later. Dimitri, I would love that for you to give us your background for our listeners as well.

Dmitri Dadimov 4:30

Yeah, I'm one of the co-founders of Modern Treasury. We started in 2018. I worked for a number of startups before and ended up joining a company that was in the fintech space. That's called Kiavi. It used to be called Lending Home back then.

Jillian Williams 4:42

That was a Caboy Portfolio Company.

Dimitri’s Journey To Modern Treasury

Dmitri Dadimov 4:45

Capital Portfolio Company, that's right. I think of one of the early, like one of the first investments, probably in the capital portfolio company. But uh that was I was a product manager, kind of focused on investor facing fat in this marketplace for for mortgages. And got really interested in some of the things that post-08, the world of mortgages was very obviously broken with where Lending Home came out of was the founders were really looking at that world and how to improve that. And got interested in some of the other things that are broken across the kind of financial technology or financial services world, which was the money movement piece. Because to do to deliver mortgages, whether like the funding wires, the ACH kind of debit servicing, the distributions to investors, all that sort of thing, was super painful. And so that kind of led us down the road of I wonder how this should work. And ended up founding Modern Treasury in 2018. So it's been a little over seven years. I just I was a CEO for the first seven years, just Mike moved over to present role. My co-founder Matt took over the CEO role, and I get to focus more on new products and new things. So yeah, but it's been it's been quite the ride through the fintech world.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 5:48

Awesome. Um, and remind Modern Treasury is the first company that you founded, right? You were at prior startup for a co-founder role. Where so you said you stumbled, like one of them was fintech. What industries were the other startups in?

Dmitri Dadimov 6:03

They were in like the clean tech energy world. So I used to work for a startup right out of school that was in the electric car world. So we're building infrastructure for electric car charging. And so very different.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 6:13

Awesome.

Dmitri Dadimov 6:14

A lot more hardware.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 6:15

Yeah, very true. Sticking on this topic, what made you guys stay in fintech? Like you, Dimitri, you could have co-founded a company elsewhere. Jillian, you could have gone on to be an investor in a different space. What kept you so interested that you're like, I want to keep diving deeper into this?

Dmitri Dadimov 6:31

Well, for me, like I think one of the things that's super fun about what do we do with modern treasury, just in general, fintech, I think it applies for a lot of companies, is you get to, at least the fintech that is more infrastructure and kind of payments, is you end up diving into almost every single industry. So you get to continue learning as customers use your products in different ways. So I feel that it's a bit of a cheat code to just keep learning about new industries where yes, there's a we we help them with something very mechanical, which is how do they move money, how do they ledger things, how do they keep track of how their business actually performs. And so that is it's it's a building block that you have to get right in order to build a company, but it's it's almost the definition all it's almost the definition of what a company is, is to be able to move money well. And so I think that it's uh it's a it's a really fun place to be because you see all the trends that kind of you're in the news news headlines, and you see them in in in in companies that are coming in and building new things, and you get to help them.

Why Stay In Fintech

Jillian Williams 7:26

Yeah, I know look, I think fintech has had a lot of ups and downs over the years. But I think to Dimitri's point, there it really is this area that kind of allows you to play in a lot of different areas. Like even with our thesis being vertical software and fintech, like there's a lot of companies that face of it, you wouldn't think are fintech. But when you get into conversations with founders, they might today be thinking just around, okay, here's a software play, but then they think, oh yeah, the way I'm really going to monetize, or another area of product I can add on is some sort of payments, lending, insurance. And like that's what really excites me is getting down that rabbit hole around look how much you can expand this business and like how meaningful it is to your customers. Because financial products, which really do move so much of the world and control so much of the world, money is that important. And so it's it makes products and makes the software a lot stickier versus just, yeah, I'll try this out versus, oh no, you're actually controlling my payroll, or you're actually like you have all my accounting systems in your like within this platform.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 8:33

And it's it's so funny to think back to when we were all just getting started in fintech and it was all about like the unbundling, like just focusing on one certain area, and now it's so much about adding on different parts and the rebundling of it. How do you guys think through, especially with AI? And obviously, Jillian, you and I both dove a lot into AI and potentially another season coming soon, but thinking through that, AI in particular, you you just mentioned how things can become sticky with finance. And I find that AI makes it so you could change your vendor so easily and things are updating so easily. Like, how do you even think about vendor management and stuff like that in a world where things are just constantly changing? And how do you think of that from the investor perspective as well as from a founder perspective, making sure that you're not getting the companies you're investing in or your company are not getting just pushed out because things change so rapidly and internally thinking through, hey, like we need it's so easy to move to this new vendor that's doing things better, even though we've only been with the one for six months. Let's just switch. For like personally, I think of things like like recording memos for meetings and stuff like that. It's so easy just to, oh, this platform is better. I'm gonna move to that one instead. It and then I think of anything that has finances tied to it, it becomes a lot harder. I use Monarch for managing all my I don't want to go in and add all my accounts again and then have to keep feeding it information. Yes, this is a recurring transaction, and this is what it's not qualified as this, it's actually goes into this qualification or whatever, too. So that is like the tipping point, is the finance part of it. So well, we'll stick with you, Jillian, because you teed that one up.

AI, Switching Costs, And Vendor Choice

Jillian Williams 10:17

Yeah, I think that in AI generally, there's this like shiny new object problem where if something can be even, I think in venture it's always, oh, something has to be 10x better. But then I think with AI right now, it's oh, it could be a little bit better, and sure, I'll try it out. And why not? Just because the switching costs are so low. But I do think that with a lot of financial products and platforms, the switching costs are a lot higher. I will not say that with everything, because for some, especially for consumers, or if you take loans, for example, like oftentimes people will probably just look for what the lowest rate is. However, difference is that there are often times where if you're thinking about like a square capital or something that like really is embedded into your system, you might get a lower rate because it knows everything about you and sees all of your transactions and is that deeply integrated with your systems versus a platform if you're just going on it and feeding it some slight information. Is that necessarily true? Not always, but that is the theory around the embedded fintech broadly. But yeah, I think if you look at even a lot of the sales processes, they all then they always take longer, but that's because you are there's just so much data and there's so much movement of information and so much more integration when you're dealing with, especially on the business side, a lot of these systems and data from an organization that those switching costs are a lot higher, even with a consumer to your point, Julie. Like there's a pain of getting it to relearn your information. Obviously, if it's just a simple bank account and things like that, people will switch. But I think there's different types of products that will have higher integrations.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 12:00

And so that will be and I'm in fintech, so I have a bazillion different accounts because I want to test them all out. So connecting all of them is the biggest pain in the butt.

Jillian Williams 12:09

Exactly. I'm curious, Dimitri, from like the building standpoint, how you thought about that and how it's changed in in your lifetime of building modern treasury.

Dmitri Dadimov 12:18

Yeah, I think the I think it's super early in AI. Like when you actually look at the way the technologies get applied and how people are trying to figure out how to how to even use them from a user experience perspective, it's just very early. And so I don't think that people really know how it should work. There's a lot of experimentation, which is super exciting, but it just means that it's that's noisy. But I think from a fintech perspective, when I think about businesses, at least, like when I think about the the way that businesses are run, there is this issue with the finance department typically is not the early adopter for technology. And obviously the stakes are pretty high for making like a one-off mistake or something like that. So I think there's places inside the company, maybe something like FBA, where you're like coming up with what is the scenarios, how do you actually run potential planning exercises and things like that, where being 100% correct isn't like as important. You're running these scenarios, and it's fine if there's issues here and there. At the same time, if you're doing compliance or payments or things like that, like it's a big deal if you added an extra zero, right? It's a big deal if you just dropped a single, a single individual who might should trigger like a sanctioned screening and hasn't or something. Like that there's real consequences to it. So I think that for reasons both good because stakes are high, and also because just the departments themselves, the people that are in a lot of these teams are aren't like naturally early adopters and not like running towards trying out new things. I think there's a little bit of like a laggard effect on AI adoption in the finance team versus engineering or marketing or sales or something like that. So I think that's something that when we think about fintech, there is there is a little bit of a higher scrutiny thing. But I also think that the opposite is true, which is like the mode in is the mode out. So once somebody figures out how to how to get it adopted by these teams, you're you're there for a long time. We've seen these companies like you know, QuickBooks or Net Suite have these 30, 40 year franchises, which is a lot harder to do in a lot of other industries, but it's sort of like once you're the default, you're the default. So I feel like the same, something similar is going to play out in AI where there will be AI products, agentic flows and things that people feel like, hey, this actually works and I can rely on it. And then once it's default, it's like very hard to slodge, not because it's technically necessarily impossible to replicate, more because it's like a trust thing and people just know that it's a VM or whatever the term is.

Finance Teams, Trust, And AI Adoption

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 14:42

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Jillian Williams 16:55

I've been interested in so I'll I'll take maybe the more pure play fintech space initially. I mean there's been a lot going on in like the broader risk compliance space for fintech, but I've been really interested in more of the like the audit space. So whether it's selling to the consultants or to the audit teams internally, whether you think of like SOCS, not SOC2, but SOCS compliance and whatnot, like those things that are just like really painful, whether it's tasks that have to be done quarterly or annually, that just take up times of team that are clearly something that can be done or done exponentially faster by AI. And those are some of the areas that I've been looking at quite a bit where it's not, I think to Dimitri's point, not necessarily like the highest stakes, but areas like exactly, but areas where it's just like the team should be spending time elsewhere, but there can be huge opportunities to automate this, and it's still a huge opportunity within these within businesses from small businesses to Fortune 500.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 18:06

You're gonna assume that's another space that AI probably changed quite or is changing quite rapidly too.

Sponsor: Identity, Fraud, And Compliance

Jillian Williams 18:12

Yeah, exactly. I've been seeing like a few companies in there, but it's definitely still early and to add anything to the point earlier, still figuring out like how to decipher when there's three at the same time and what they look like.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 18:25

Yeah. And Dimitri, you're obviously excited about money movement, but I'm sure you obviously know a lot about the entire ecosystem and see other areas of it too. So, what what pieces do you find exciting over the next couple years?

Risk, Compliance, And Audit Opportunities

Dmitri Dadimov 18:38

Well, I don't know if underhyped is the right way to describe this, but I do think there's something really interesting happening with the convergence of crypto and banking. We basically saw a period of for a few years where you couldn't, like banks were not allowed to touch anything around crypto. And it was obviously that has changed really quickly with this administration. And so I think it's interesting to see like what actually comes out of it. Stable coins are a piece of this, and I think probably get gets talked about the most. And I think there's some interesting things that if you think about the fundamental promise of having programmable money, which is how we think about modern treasure and the database operating in the fiat world, that if you can bring some of the stablecoin and crypto innovations into something that companies can start using inside of their bank natively, that can be really powerful. So I do think that this sort of taking, taking like the best of crypto and making it pegging to the US dollar and then allowing the US bank to start offering it is really interesting. And it's really interesting in like an international kind of cross-border perspective. What does it mean for companies that are multinational and have to manage a lot of different geographies? There is like a right computer science answer, I think, to saying, you know what, instead of having 30 accounts all over the world that are overfunded and you're some optimizing on yield and things, and you're trying to make sure that you don't, you don't, you don't miss like your payroll in Japan or whatever. So you just overfund that account to saying, actually, having the right home account called the cloud account that sort of has the best yield and is like the thing that you keep all your money in, and you you don't you don't miss out any any of the yield, and then basically like instantly put money in any of the accounts around the world that you need in order to make local like vendor payments, local payroll, local things like that. That's a really powerful thing that I think would will challenge how the banking system works, but also it's a huge opportunity for for the bigger banks probably or just more innovative banks, but I think bigger banks seem to have more capital to spend on RD and so on. So they kind of have to get into that faster. So yeah, I think that there's we haven't quite seen like the banks really start adopting it. It's it's they're no longer averse to it, but you haven't seen like actual bank products yet that are like running on it. And I think that's really that'll be really interesting.

Crypto Meets Banking And Stablecoins

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 20:53

Yeah, especially I remember like banks forever were like, oh, blockchain's important, Bitcoin and stuff isn't important, right? And now it's shifted so much to be at the very least, like a balance between between the two, if not even leaning more towards crypto at this point.

Dmitri Dadimov 21:09

Well, there's some like crypto landing and partnerships with Coinbase and others to be able to offer like the the purchase of of crypto assets. You're you're basically combining that into the the core bank offerings, which it's hard to imagine from two, three years ago.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 21:25

Totally. Maybe even not two or three, even like a year ago, I feel like be quite shocking. One one of my favorite questions that I love to ask is thinking back to when you first got into fintech, I want a glass half full and a glass half empty thing. So something that it surprises you that we have it already, and something that it surprises you we do not have it already. And this can be from like a business perspective or from a consumer perspective. So, like one example is like a really good PFM. Like a lot of people are surprised we don't have that yet. Another one that someone mentioned. Was the adoption of Apple Pay was nuts, which obviously there were a lot of factors that played into that actually scaling because it was around for a while and basically no one was using it, and now a lot of people end up using it, and you you can't really go anywhere that doesn't accept it anymore. But take a moment to think if you need to. But one thing that's surprised the upside and the downside.

Surprises: Big Tech’s Role And Mobile Money

Dmitri Dadimov 22:23

I'll I'll I'll go. I think one thing that has been, I think Apple like talking about Apple Pay is a good kick kind of place to start from. Like I think that there's been surprisingly little innovation from the big tech companies. I think that's the one big example of somebody really of a big Magnificent Seven or whatever, like one of the big tech companies really stepping into like fintech, if you will. And I'm not entirely sure why. Obviously, there's big businesses that have been built in fintech, and you haven't seen outside of even, I guess like Google Pays big outside the US. And there's there's some places where there's some exceptions. But I remember there people talked about WhatsApp being the powerhouse for a lot of transfers, and I don't think that quite happened. I guess like Medic went down with LibreFath and and and hasn't really rebuilt its like payment kind of commerce functionality, I don't think. You haven't seen so so that's to me, that's been surprising. Like the big tech companies have been more absent from this than than I would have guessed. But yeah. On the flip side, like you're you're obviously this is maybe like an obvious thing, but like everything mobile is like a thing that works, right? So I remember 10 years ago, like when we when when I first started working on fintech things, it was there's people would seriously ask, could you buy stocks on your phone? sort of thing. Would you ever do that? Don't you need like the Bloomberg terminal and don't you need like all the research and all that? And it's just a funny thing to think about right now. But but yeah, Apple Pay, like paying with your phone, et cetera. Like that's that's obviously all all the functions or all the all the features are like there that can be optimized for whatever user interface that people prefer, which I think is also like a lesson for AI. There will be people will figure out how to do all those things on via via chatbot or whatever the right like interface is.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 24:10

Totally. Yeah, I think Apple Pay is the only example of a tech company succeeding in finance right now, which it it makes sense for a certain area.

Jillian Williams 24:18

I would challenge that only because I think with Marcus, like Goldman Sachs Marcus, I think if it wasn't part of a bank, that would have been a huge success by any measure. It just didn't work for an investment bank in terms of economics. But if that was a standalone company, I think that would have been a massive success.

Dmitri Dadimov 24:38

Yeah, but again, that's a bank. I think like JB Morgan payments is a huge business. Yeah, that's good. Not a tax. I was talking more like Microsoft, Apple, Google, like Meta. Yeah.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 24:48

Which I just said, like regulatory-wise, one of the reasons that Libra didn't work is just because everyone in DC absolutely despised big tech at that moment. If you were to try to do Libra today, I think it'd be very different than what it was back then. So I think had any big tech expanding at all wasn't a good idea and wasn't gonna happen. So like expanding into one of the most regulated industries possible and opening yourself up to that, also not great. That could that's different today, I would argue. So maybe if we were to come back and do this in five years, the the answer I would think would be different than than what it is today. Julian, your turn.

Alternative Underwriting’s Stagnation

Jillian Williams 25:29

I think I have two. I think one is on the apple c apple pay part. I'm actually I probably take a different angle where I I was surprised by how long it took. And mainly because I think having spent a lot of time, especially in the UK, when everybody there was using tap to pay with their cards, and the US did not have that. Like basically that was a normal function over there. And so it was one of those dynamics where you could see how one country was paying and the other country was not. And so there was a portion of time where like the only way I didn't look like an idiot and needing to get a receipt and sign it every time was by using Apple Pay and then coming back to the US and seeing that like that did not function anywhere, and yet it was so much more convenient, was always surprising to me. But I feel like once it then hit that inflection, everybody was using it. But the one I will say that has surprised me, the fact that it hasn't taken off is or that we haven't found a right solution for it, is alternative underwriting like versus the FICO score. I feel like throughout my venture career, I've seen so many different versions of this, especially on cash flow underwriting. And we have not really like it, we feel like we continuously, especially on the consumer side, come back to the fact that the FICO score works. And it's surprising that that seems to be the truest form of knowing whether or not someone is able and willing to pay versus all these other dynamics. And so it's just surprising that we haven't been able to find any other data source in the US specifically.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 27:03

No, that's that's a very good one. I don't think that one's been mentioned either. Obviously, you've been in the news a lot more lately, so it is more top of mind, but I think you're the first person to mention it on here. Sticking was a high and low scenario, but now on a personal level versus thinking about fintech, you guys have have each been very successful in your careers, but that doesn't come without lows along the way. So I'd love each of you to think through a time where you know you encountered a career low and how you got through that, what helped you. And then also a high moment, something that, you know, one of the most exciting points in your career as well.

Highs, Lows, And SVB Shockwaves

Jillian Williams 27:35

Yeah, I think for me, like in general, I don't know if this is low, but what was it 2022, maybe whenever fintech was like really at its lowest. I think the amount of people who were like, Why are you still in fintech? You're not gonna make any money being a fintech investor. Like it you should pivot out of fintech and trying to stay somewhat true to where I thought was a great opportunity, well, obviously also trying to be as great of an investor as possible is definitely not easy. And feeling like you're constantly defending yourself when like you've had this huge influx of people who came in, invested, and then immediately left. And so I think that was just a challenging time, also because a lot of companies were that we thought were doing really well, then were in that was just yeah, not an easy time as a fintech investor. I think high point is always when some of your companies do really well, and especially like when we end up doing well off of it, but also when your founders end up doing well, and then you can continue working with them. And so I think you've had a few of those, and so that's always been that's always the highest point. Or I think honestly, second highest is like when that I really like as an investor is like when you're able when a founder has an ask and you're able to like really provide provide a great whatever they want, make a great introduction that like comes through, works, they're able to sign that deal, and you like really are able to be the person that came through for them, that's like very exciting.

Dmitri Dadimov 29:11

Yeah, I think for me when you ask the question, I thought about the uh like the the week or weekend or whatever when SVB crashed. And I think there's like so many highs and lows, and like for for uh for me, I feel like in that I don't know, two-week period or something, just seeing obviously SVB was such a key member of the community, like helping a lot of companies. They're a big partner for us in terms of we had over 100 companies, I think, that were using Mono Treasury who were like banking at SVB. And so just the kind of chaos of dealing with that in that weekend, and then basically, and then seeing obviously they they went through a couple of different iterations, but eventually stabilized as as a bank. But a lot of those customers end up opening other bank accounts, connecting to other banks, using Monet Treasury for other things. I feel like there was like a lot of both like highs and lows that were baked into be way before that, but like living through that was just really interesting. And I think that I don't know, maybe like the lessons like there's a lot of times when there's there's periods where it feels quiet, and all of a sudden all kinds of stuff happens. You obviously see you're seeing that right now in the past couple of months with all the world of stable coins, and all of a sudden there's like actual congress, like directional like legislation coming out, and and obviously the people have been working on that for for years. So I think that any any of those types of moments when you all of a sudden see, I don't know, like the release of all this energy that has been pent up from different different startups, different investors, like big company, et cetera, and there's a demand for something, and then all of a sudden you get to to see that become like a new a new point of demand, I think is really cool. So yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of eyes and lows that come with these things because like whenever whenever you have like big stresses on any kind of organization, you all of a sudden have to go. Everybody has to kind of like start working hard. But there is those are those are really impactful, I think, to the way that that that like careers and companies get made.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 31:02

Yeah, and sticking with careers too, what advice do you have for someone that might be just starting out in fintech, whether it be undergrad or MBA or switching careers? What are some things that you think were key to you being successful in your career path that can translate across the board?

Dmitri Dadimov 31:18

I think one of the things in fin tech, like it's in the name, like it's very interdisciplinary. So you can't be like just a tech person and ignore the fin part of it, or vice versa. You can't be just a fin person and be afraid of reading an API doc or something like that. So I think that's a really important piece. So if you're coming from an engineering background, go read books about how banks work and how the Federal Reserve was put together and like why why we have the world we lived with and what how did this where did the PICO score come from? Like those types of things I think are really useful, and vice versa. If you come from like a banking background and you can build a huge Excel sheet, but you don't you know you don't actually like understand what is sitting behind how like payments work or how what it means for like I don't know, a bank run or something to happen or what have you. Those types of things are really important. So embrace the interdisciplinary part.

Career Advice For Fintech Entrants

Jillian Williams 32:09

Yeah, I was gonna say also just definitely understand both sides, but like really understanding how some of the financial products and the regulations were. Like I've both on the investor side, but also even on some of the potential founder side, I've been surprised sometimes when I hear a pitch and I'm like, that's not legal. They're like coming maybe a little bit from a little bit too much from the tech side, but then on the flip side, you hear someone and I'm like, okay, there's not really that much innovation to this either. You're like too much on the financial side.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 32:40

There is there a certain industry in particular that you find the regulation often gets overlooked and you're like, yeah, that this isn't gonna happen.

Jillian Williams 32:48

Usually, honestly, like usually people figure it out fast enough. Or SEC, like when you try to do something wrong, usually steps in decently quickly. It's always reactive, not proactive. But we've seen it in terms of different companies trying to let it launch new products and then SEC coming in pretty quickly, or especially in lending, we've seen it in various different forms. But I think it's most notable, I think, when I because I'm such an early stage investor, when you're hearing the first idea and you're like, that doesn't that that doesn't trust up how that could possibly work here.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 33:24

Right. So you're saying lending in particular is probably one where you have the most examples, but I would think anything money movement is holding on to money.

Jillian Williams 33:31

Like I think there's also a lot of gray areas in terms of wealth advisors as well, and like when you have to be registered and when not.

Dmitri Dadimov 33:37

I was gonna say, I think maybe less about like legal or not, but just like best practice or or not, like having a ledger is like such a basic thing for a lot of these companies. And you've seen companies run into trouble where they're not they're just not tracking like what they're doing, which is just if you if you took a step back, you'd obviously say this this is something that's really important for any kind of financial services offering. And we have a whole product that should make that easy for you. And so just it's always interesting when you when you see like people many like they move fast, they want to get to a place where they're trying to like move fast and break things and get customers to to prove demand, to prove demand to investors or themselves or what have you. But you still gotta you are building something with a certain gravity to it, which is it is a financial service, somebody's relying on it for it's a loan for however many years, like it it has to still be out there in a few years collecting collecting those payments, right? Or if it's uh if it's maybe an alternative underwriting, do you actually have data or do you just what happens if you don't have this piece of data? What how do you actually make that decision? So anyway, I think that those types of things are really important. So some of it obviously is a legal matter, but even if it's not a legal matter, it's still there's still sort of like what's the responsible way of building this kind of product.

Regulation, Ledgers, And Responsible Builds

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 34:55

Totally. And I mean it Julian mentions it happens a lot at the early stage. You can also see later stage companies have it happen. So like one of the last stories I wrote at Bloomberg was when Robinhood had initially launched their checking account, and SIPC was like, no, this actually isn't insured. You're like, you could lose all your money type thing, and they had to obviously backtrack. And now they're very successful in having people hold on to their money and it being insured, etc. But they they didn't necessarily do it right the first time around. So we all make mistakes. We're all human. Absolutely. Well, I want to end on a positive note. So anything exciting personally that you guys are looking forward to in the rest of the year. Doing the New York City Marathon for the first time. So I'm very excited. There you go. Very cool. Dimitri, what about you?

Dmitri Dadimov 35:41

Yeah, I'm just doing a little bit more traveling and things. Like you said, uh, but I think ShinTech Intellius to be super exciting. There's a lot of new things that are happening. I think uh there's new innovation, like banks are doing new things. So I in some ways getting getting more time to actually dig into what is new and exciting is part of what I've part of what I'm thrilled to be doing.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 35:59

Yeah, like a true fintech OG.

Jillian Williams 36:02

Yeah, I mean, I think as Major said, like obviously the financial services industry is like a little bit slower to adopt, but I do think there is really this desire to figure out how and where they want to implement AI. And so it feels like there's a lot of excitement going on in the industry right now, both from like large institutions but to new startups as well. So I think it's an exciting time.

Personal Wins And What’s Next

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 36:27

Well, and there's so much changing right now, too. Like now, open banking is all a hot mess with that potentially having massive changes over the next few months. So even if I had you guys on again and Jillian, if we do another AI series starting early next year, there's gonna be so much that changes between now and then and be different from the last one. Yep. It was crazy. It's crazy. But thank you so much for joining me, you guys. It was so much fun to to dive deeper into both of your backgrounds. Gillian, I've already obviously spent quite a bit of time with you, but Dimitri, I think we've only like maybe been on a Zoom before or something like that, too. I don't think we've had a chance to chat that much. So it was really interesting to learn more about your background, especially at this this turning point in your career as well.

Dmitri Dadimov 37:08

Thanks. Thanks for having us.