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I sat down with Andrew Endicott, fintech entrepreneur and my co-founder at Gilgamesh Ventures. Andrew is also the author of the recent book "Is Finance Technology?", a practical guide for founders, operators, and investors in financial services. The book covers everything. From the common mistakes that kill fintech companies, to how to think about risk, fraud, and regulation across verticals.

I highly recommend picking up a copy. Few people have operated across as many roles and verticals as Andrew has. Having been a financial services lawyer, investment banker, entrepreneur, board member, and now investor, this book reflects that breadth.

Timestamped Overview:
00:00 Finance origins and early technology
05:56 Necessity driving creativity
07:42 Solving everyday consumer challenges
13:49 Impact of emerging technologies
16:44 Fintech innovation and successful founders
19:30 Challenges of choosing customers and partners
21:39 Dealing with fraud challenges
26:00 First movers in payment industry
31:11 Writing the book and changing views
32:46 Fintech companies becoming banks
37:01 Venture capital trends and shifts
39:32 Writing process and challenges
42:27 Hoping to inspire future entrepreneurs

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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder and 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.

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I sat down with Ali Mazanderani, Chairman of Lesaka, a nasdaq traded, leading fintech in Southern Africa with over $400 million in revenue and 2 million active customers. Ali is a fintech veteran investor and builder, who’s been closely involved with several multi-billion dollar fintechs in emerging markets, including Stone, Pine Labs, Kushki, Thunes and is also a co-founder of Teya.
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We discussed why Southern Africa is one of the most exciting fintech opportunities in the world, how Lesaka is turning 120,000 merchants from cash-only to digital, the strategy behind acquiring Bank Zero, and why being a publicly traded company is a feature, not a bug.

Timestamped Overview:
00:00 Intro & Ali’s Background
05:00 Creating positive impact through fintech
09:23 Founding Taya Joy in Building
10:32 Customer first approach to success
14:49 Benefits of Public Market Discipline
18:12 Fintech's Limited Impact in Africa
20:36 South Africa's business opportunities
25:45 Bank Zero Digital Advantage
27:46 Customer-First Mindset & Innovation
32:27 Key Focus Growth and ARPU Trends
33:41 Value Over Price Wins Customers
38:35 Driving Merchant Payment Efficiency
42:52 Digitizing Africa's Future
43:58 Ambition for global excellence
47:14 Authenticity and empathy drive success

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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder and 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.

Miguel on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3nKha4Z
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Miguel Armaza interviews George Robson, Partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the most legendary venture firms in the world. Founded in 1972 by Don Valentine, Sequoia has backed some of the most successful tech and fintech companies in history including Nvidia, Apple, Google, Nubank, and Stripe. Sequoia-backed companies make up over 25% of the Nasdaq's market cap, and add up to $13+ trillion in market cap.

George is one of 19 investing partners at Sequoia and was previously a product manager at Revolut. We discuss how Revolut built a multi-product machine by treating every team like a startup, how Sequoia uses storytelling to calibrate its investors on what generational founders look like, and why the next wave of fintech winners will be full stack companies that internalize the technology instead of selling it to incumbents.

Timestamped Overview
00:00 Intro & George’s Background
04:14 Finding My People at Revolut
07:37 Building Self Sufficient Cross Functional Teams
10:57 Focus on Growth and Profitability
14:45 Crucial Decision and Growth
17:49 High-Conviction Investment Strategy
19:07 Parth's Inspiring Entrepreneurial Path
23:38 Entrepreneur Growth and Resilience
28:19 Storytelling Key to Early Success
31:05 Effective Board Dynamics
34:14 Entrepreneurs Investors and Problem Discovery
36:42 Outsiders Tackling Big Markets
40:21 Rewriting Business Laws of Gravity
44:04 Humbling Reads and Insights
46:17 Doug Leone Fierce and Kind

Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders today on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app for weekly conversations with today’s global leaders that will dominate the 21st century in fintech, business, and beyond.

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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder and 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.

Miguel on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3nKha4Z

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Miguel Armaza sits down with Michael Calvey, one of the most successful and legendary emerging markets investors of our time. Mike moved to Moscow at age 27 in the early 90s and built Baring Vostok into a powerhouse with $10+ billion invested in Russia. They backed now-decacorns like Yandex, Revolut, Tinkoff, and Kaspi at their earliest stages. Yandex alone was a 450x return for the fund.

Along the way, he survived a 98% market crash, was detained by Russia's secret service, and made billions of dollars for his investors.

He's also incredibly thoughtful about the ingredients of great founders, what separates the ones who win from those just chasing money, how the best companies constantly stack new S curves, and why being a hands-on owner but never a hands-on manager is the key to a great investor-founder partnership.

Timestamped Overview
00:00 From Oklahoma to Russia - Intro & Michael’s Background
10:32 Building an Elite Emerging Markets Team
14:36 Geopolitics, Economics, and Market Resilience
20:25 Fewer Investments, Better Focus
24:08 Successful Entrepreneurs Value Purpose
28:47 Management KPIs and Key Insights
33:45 3 Cs of Ownership Focus
42:53 Marketplace vs. Fintech Growth Dynamics
44:02 Marketplace Dominance and Financial Complexity
52:25 Emerging Markets: Talent vs. Geopolitics
54:51 Emerging Markets and Fintech Ventures
01:00:20 Medici Family: Banking and Intrigue
01:05:59 Starting Over as Entrepreneur

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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder and 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.

Miguel on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3nKha4Z
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Miguel Armaza welcomes Edward Woodford, founder and CEO of ZeroHash, to Fintech Leaders for a candid, insightful conversation on the future of blockchain infrastructure and the lessons learned from nearly a decade of building in crypto.

Edward offers a unique perspective as a London-born, MIT-educated entrepreneur who’s seen ZeroHash grow into one of the most critical and least visible companies powering the global blockchain ecosystem. He shares his journey— from getting rejected by Oxford and taking the leap to the US, to building his first fintech business and discovering Bitcoin at the MIT bookstore.

Join Miguel and Edward for a conversation packed with actionable insights for fintech founders, builders, and investors aiming to navigate the fast-evolving landscape at the intersection of crypto, infrastructure, and financial innovation.

Timestamped Overview
00:00 Intro & Edward’s Background
05:49 Balancing Business and Personal Life
08:58 MIT Bitcoin and Career Exploration
13:14 Tech-Driven Market Shift Insights
16:07 Tokenization and Global Interoperability
20:08 Impact of the founding team
21:54 Founding team dynamics explored
26:32 Power versus influence in investing
29:25 Effective Infrastructure Pricing Strategy
33:44 Weighted performance-based churn metric
35:00 Founder Mode Intensity Defined

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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder and 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.

Miguel on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3nKha4Z
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Miguel Armaza sits down with Nikolay Seleznev, Co-Founder of Uzum, Uzbekistan’s first tech unicorn rewriting the playbook for e-commerce and fintech in Central Asia. From Moscow to Tashkent, Nikolay Seleznev brings global banking experience and entrepreneurial grit to a country leapfrogging straight into the digital economy.

In this episode, Nikolay Seleznev shares the origin story of Uzum and how a simple, subpar online shopping experience sparked the vision for a super app serving millions. He dives into the challenges of building next-day delivery and financial services from scratch—without warehouses, 3PL infrastructure, or widespread digital adoption. Discover how Uzum managed to issue 4 million debit cards in a single year, reach 20 million monthly active users, and outperform their first-year GMV forecast by 4x, all while driving massive change in a historically cash-based society.

Timestamped Overview
00:00 Intro & Nikolay’s Background
05:45 Building a Super App Ecosystem
08:05 Time as the ultimate resource
10:51 Uzbekistan’s rapid transformation
15:13 Commerce and Fintech Ecosystem Overview
20:12 Building trust through products
23:15 Uzbekistan’s first unicorn funding
26:57 Scaling success and adaptation
28:22 Super app strategy adjustments
32:02 Super Apps and Local Adaptation
35:41 Self-focused entrepreneurial perspective

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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder and 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.

Miguel on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3nKha4Z
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Miguel Armaza interviews returning guest Dan Westgarth, COO of Deel, the company that's redefining how businesses hire and pay talent anywhere in the world.

Deel has grown into one of the most valuable private tech companies on the planet. In 2025, they crossed one billion dollars in revenue, achieved a $17 billion valuation, and paid out $22 billion in payroll globally. Dan oversees an organization of 3,300 people across more than 100 countries. Before Deel, he was an early operator at Revolut.

Timestamped Overview
00:00 Intro & Dan’s Background
05:51 Expanding products and global reach
06:30 Optimized systems scaling go-to-market
12:55 Begging for Ghostbusters Expertise
13:41 RevOps solved with Ghostbuster
18:05 Building a Streamlined Goal System
20:26 Payroll and Adjacent HR Services
26:09 Keep It Simple Prioritize People
28:15 Morning Routine and Work Prioritization
31:46 Clarifying Communication for Alignment
35:27 Building payroll processing engines

Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders today on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app for weekly conversations with today’s global leaders that will dominate the 21st century in fintech, business, and beyond.

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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder and 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.

Miguel on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3nKha4Z
Miguel on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2Jb5oBc
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Miguel Armaza recorded this episode at FinTech Nerdcon in Miami with Steve McLaughlin, Founder and CEO of FT Partners, the largest fintech-focused investment bank. Since 2001, Steve has built a 250-person firm that's advised on landmark deals including Coinbase's $4.3 billion Deribit acquisition and Revolut's multi-billion dollar raises. FT Partners works with everyone from early-stage startups to industry giants.

In this conversation, Steve shares his unfiltered views on Fintech's dramatic recovery, the tokenization revolution, and why AI will completely reshape financial services.

Timestamped Overview
00:00 Intro & Steve’s Background
02:18 Fintech thrives with smarter strategies
07:45 Crypto M&A Major Deals Emerging
09:38 Future of Asset Tokenization
12:41 AI transforming digital business
17:45 AI enhances analyst efficiency
21:08 Efficient AI investment insights
25:57 Closed-Loop Ecosystem Dominance
27:42 Building a passionate resilient team
30:07 Subscribe for more interviews

Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders today on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app for weekly conversations with today’s global leaders that will dominate the 21st century in fintech, business, and beyond.

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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder and 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.

Miguel on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3nKha4Z
Miguel on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2Jb5oBc
Fintech Leaders Newsletter: https://bit.ly/3jWIpqp