Fintech Hustle: The Flashback Episode

Well, hello out there. This is Sam Kilmer, your host of Fintech Hustle.

This is a special episode. This is our Fintech Hustle Flashback episode, and I’m joined by a rock-star insider cast here that I’d like to tell you a little bit about and get going.

I think there are going to be some familiar faces you see here.

For starters, Mary Wisniewski, one of our Fintech Hustle co-hosts, former editor at American Banker and rock-star editor here at Cornerstone Advisors.

Also our chief research officer at Cornerstone Advisors, this marketer-in-chief, Ron Shevlin. Thanks for joining us, Ron, and for co-hosting.

Actually, we’ll talk about this a little bit, really helping to start this thing off a few years ago.

Then Al Dominick, partner and often co-host on the road with me at some of these industry events. Thanks for joining us, Al.

And a name and a face you may be less familiar with, but you should be, and that is Bailey Wishard, who is our digital media specialist at Cornerstone Advisors.

She actually keeps, whenever we’re doing any of these recordings, the train on the rails, if you will, behind the scenes.

I felt like it was really important, in particular for this episode, for Bailey not to be behind the scenes.

Something you may not know, even if you do know Bailey or know Cornerstone, is that Bailey, in addition to being our production expert here, actually has a podcast of her own.

You can check that out there on LinkedIn. She’s got that in her profile, and she’s out there on Instagram as well and all the hip places.

I also love those Barbie headphones you’re rocking right there, Bailey. Well done on that.

Got to cap off 2023 with the Barbie pink.

I know. You’ve got to do it.

I’ll just start right off the bat by saying, when we first started talking about all the great moments that we’ve thought about on Fintech Hustle and just sort of things that resonated, I recall you and I and Mary, as I recall, were having a chat.

I think I was on a call where I had to pull over on the side of the road. I was driving back from a client engagement, and you threw out an idea for what we’re doing here today.

Would you tell us a little bit about the idea?

Because it was all yours, as I recall, and you and Mary kind of threw it down. That was great.

Yeah. I mean, I think the big thing was we were trying to dream up a way to cap off the year and do something fun with Fintech Hustle.

There’s this series of videos that Vanity Fair does every year with Billie Eilish, where Billie Eilish will actually do the same interview every year, answer the same questions every year, but she’ll actually get to look back and see what her answers were two years ago, three years ago, five years ago.

I think they’re on year seven, and I believe year eight is supposed to come out sometime this month.

Pretty crazy because, even for Billie Eilish being as young as she is, she probably got to see herself grow up through these videos.

But we figured that it might be a fun way to just kind of watch Fintech Hustle grow up, look back at maybe some of the moments that happened on the show in the past and get some real and raw reactions to past Fintech Hustle in the present.

So I shot that idea out, and it sounds like you liked it because we’re doing it.

Yeah.

Well, so far we like it. We’ll see how it goes, right?

Is this one, is Sam Billie? Is her brother Finneas like, is Mary Billie Eilish?

Help orient Ron and myself because, as the elder statesmen, we need to understand the roles that we get to play.

I believe in this scenario, Sam is our Billie Eilish.

Though we may or may not ask him to sing on this.

I think what she was really saying was, “Hey, Sam, don’t quit your day job.”

So that’s pretty good. I’ll try to live up to that.

Anyway, we really appreciate you coming up with that.

To your point, I think in this case some of this will be from the last year, but we’ve got a few things that may be a little bit older than that.

It seemed like it made a lot of sense.

I thought maybe one way we could start off is to really start at the beginning.

Ron and I, this is the way I recall it, Ron. Maybe you remember it a little bit differently.

We were just having a chat one day and we said, wouldn’t it be great, sort of reminded me of Steve Williams when he told us about when they first started doing GonzoBanker, wouldn’t it be great if we just wrote some things that we thought were cool?

You and I were like, wouldn’t it be great if we just got a few people together from the industry and had a conversation about what’s going on out there in fintech land?

For our first episode, which we didn’t even call Fintech Hustle, we had Kera Parkey from MX and AFT, as well as Scott Mills, who I happened to know from AFT, but you and I, Ron, had known from William Mills.

I don’t know if that’s the way you remember it, but I just remember Kera being right there from the beginning.

Somewhere in the middle of that episode, she said, we don’t have the clip, unfortunately. We’re still a work in progress here, and I don’t think we could locate the video.

But she said, this was during the pandemic, mind you, so we started this whole thing while everybody was at home, she said, “The hustle’s just different now.”

She was talking about the way that people reach others, using content and meeting people and those things.

We were so inspired by it afterwards that you and I and Steve Williams and a couple others got together and we said, we should just go ask Kera, “Hey, do you mind if we steal that and actually name the podcast after it?”

Is that the way you remember it, Ron, or do I have it all wrong?

Sam, I don’t remember what I did yesterday. You’re asking me about three and a half years ago.

But yeah, I remember Kera saying, “The hustle is different.”

I think that’s when the light bulb went off for both of us. That’s it. That’s what this is about.

It’s about the fintech hustle.

We just loved the connotation that not only was it relevant to today, but the whole ’70s flashback aspect of it.

So yeah, I think you’re spot on there.

I know Mary and Al have also seen Kera out there on the road in many of your travels.

Anyway, I’ll just throw out mad respect to Kera, not just for helping us name and ultimately give some more identity to what we were trying to do, but just for being someone who cares in the industry and leans into things.

I always say she’s one of the best examples, and we’ll talk about others today, of people who are just smart, they’re fun and they get stuff done, which has been my criteria for who might be a guest.

I’d say throw the shout-out also to Scott and William Mills.

That agency has done a heck of a job representing a number of tech companies as they try to tell their story a little bit differently and how it relates.

Kera is an incredible advocate for the industry.

I think Scott and his brother and the team at William Mills also deserve a shout-out from us because we’ve got so many great folks that are doing some really cool things.

But if you don’t know what they are or who they are, then it’s just the tree falling in the woods.

No doubt.

Another flashback, as we were thinking through things, and Mary, I think this is one that you had identified, was Doug Brown over at NCR, now Voyix.

I don’t know, Bailey, can you cue up the clip?

Absolutely.

“Apple can sneeze and make $10 billion, right? So I’m not that impressed that their deposit draw was that great, especially on the rate they were using to do it.

“One other thing, I don’t know if everyone on this panel has used it yet, but when you put the money in, it’s like the roach motel. You can check it in, but you can’t check it out.

“I have been waiting 75 days for $1,000 to come back to me because I was just experimenting with it.

“So Apple’s the master of UX and brand, and like you’re saying on the deposit draw, however, you’ve got to follow through.”

Good stuff.

Mary, any thoughts on that?

My main thought is I always appreciate Doug Brown’s candor.

I appreciate that and how he’s just standing up, like no big deal, but he can’t get his money.

That was such a big story, I think, of this year, of people not being able to move their money out of Apple for a bit of time, to the point where they were giving apology money to certain customers.

And, Sam, I want Doug Brown’s job because when I experiment, it’s with $10, not $1,000.

So Doug and I need to have a conversation about some things here.

Yeah.

What I loved about it too, in the spirit of the smart, fun, get-stuff-done, is you’ll notice how Doug didn’t really hesitate.

I love the unscripted aspect of the fact that he just went right for it.

We can say he went for the negative, but he had an experience and he shared it. It was very specific.

Mary, to your point, it was just a great nugget.

I did love the fact Apple has obviously been a very consistent topic that we’ve had as a company because they’ve obviously been a disruptor in the space, in some ways a competitor as well.

That was a good one.

And Ron, speaking of people that have been disrupting the space, I’m sort of taken back to the Bank Director Acquire or Be Acquired conference from earlier this year, which seems like it was a long time ago.

I guess they say that would be seven years in fintech dog years.

Earlier this year at the AOBA conference, Kim Snyder from KlariVis spent some time with us.

Bailey, can you pull up the video on that?

Yes, sir.

“Your competitor is not the bank down the street.

“Competitors for small business are PayPal, Square, right?

“You need to understand that.

“I think oftentimes community banks like to focus on who’s next door to them in their industry, and that’s really not where they should be.”

What cool background music.

Yeah, thanks for that, Bailey.

Of course, Ron, you were there when she said that, and you and I and Jamie Punishill were there.

Any thoughts on some of Kim’s comments there?

Well, Kim is spot on, but I’ve got to tell you, Sam, this actually reminds me of a story that I have used many times, and I stole it from you.

You were doing a strategic planning session, you told me a while back, and you asked the management team, “Hey, do you guys see Rocket Mortgage in your space, in your footprint?”

“No, we don’t see them.”

Of course you don’t see them, but they’ve got incredible market share.

It does, Kim’s point kind of echoes a lot of that about how there tends to be a bit of tunnel vision in banking around who you’re competing with.

Credit unions think they’re competing with other credit unions.

Community banks think they’re competing with other community banks.

These days, I like to use that Cameron and McKenzie picture of mine to show how consumers’ financial lives span so many different providers, and they’re all competitors in one way or another.

Even if they’re not competing for the exact same product or service, they’re competing for engagement. They’re competing for mind share.

As you’re saying this, because you’re referencing Acquire or Be Acquired in parallel to your conversation, I think there was a greater appreciation from the banking space that legacy mindsets, legacy teams, legacy cultures are going to really hold you back.

When you talk about not really being aware of what’s happening outside of your immediate shop, I think that’s a real risk that has been addressed by a lot of different people in a lot of different ways throughout 2023.

Yeah.

I’ll just go ahead and point out too, shout-out to the Bank Director team, because I remember having a great conversation with Kim and Jamie.

Ron, you and I had such a natural conversation, partly because there was so much first to talk about from the event.

I’ll give the Bank Director team another shout-out because I’m really looking forward to, we’re only about, what, Al, about two months out maybe?

We’re so close.

I’m picking my pocket squares.

That earns a cackle.

Hold on. Who’s counting with me?

How many do we, it’s like Sam’s hats.

Hold on, we’re still going.

Ron, I think you’re on 12 or 13.

Hold on, who’s counting at home?

Because this could continue for quite some time.

It’s like a magician’s trick pulling the handkerchiefs out.

Or, Ron, I could just do this and go on the same calmer side of things and just say, “Oh, it’s time for a Fintech Hustle.”

That pocket square thing is pathological, Al.

You’ve got that up to a really high level of obsession.

But mad respect for that.

Actually, tip of my hat on that.

You’ve got a hat, I’ve got the pocket squares, Ron’s got the snark, and then Mary’s got the roller skates.

I feel like we all have our thing.

The halls are going to be so bustling at the AOBA conference coming up that we decided we’re preparing for our first Fintech Hustle Carpool Edition.

Carpool karaoke.

Now Bailey’s working on the production logistics as we speak with Sue Sledzik from COCC, Erin Simpson from Encore Bank and Nathaniel Harley from Mantl.

They’re going to join Al and I and Bailey.

We’re going to try to fit what is going to be like a mad mashup of us in a Mini Cooper, driving around the main streets of Scottsdale, trying to figure out how to have some fun conversations without running any stoplights.

Yep.

Anyway, we’re looking forward to that.

Another thing, it’s not all fun and games in fintech.

I think we’ve seen over the last year or so, this has been a tough road out there.

I have to say, one of the industry luminaries we had on the podcast, Tom Shen, sort of foretold this before it really hit.

Bailey, if you could tee up the next video clip for me, please.

Absolutely.

“The good companies, the ones that are growing 80%, 150%, 300%, they’re still getting incredibly frothy valuations in the mid-20x type of valuation.

“But on the other end, the company that’s sort of doing well but middle of the road, or not as well, they’re seeing lower valuation or at times being shut out of fundraising.

“So bifurcation of the fundraising space.

“That’s a good thing and that’s a challenge as well.”

Here, I went off mute there because my dog back there was being a little bit more vocal than I would’ve preferred for that.

Didn’t want to interrupt that.

That’s a really good point.

I think, as one investor put it last week, there’s still interest in the space.

It’s just the cost of capital is going up and people are scrutinizing, the underwriting is just getting a little bit more particular.

Really interesting point.

Follow the money, huh?

Yeah.

As I said, flight to quality, rotation.

We’re seeing some rotation actually, interestingly, from sort of the more sexy to the less sexy, to more meat and potatoes, if you will.

Good stuff.

I love the meat-and-potatoes observation from Tom.

I also like that fast-talker thing that was going on with me.

I know.

What I like about Tom is, he says follow the money and he actually walks the talk.

If you know Tom, you know he could have very happily retired in Palm Springs and just kicked it on the golf course.

Instead, you see his LinkedIn stuff where he’s looking for the next great fintech company, and it’s global in scale.

He’s not letting geographic boundaries limit his creativity and his curiosity.

I just think it’s such a cool example of somebody who’s built companies, built relationships and networks, and continues to invest in people.

So chasing great ideas seems to be Tom’s M.O. at the moment.

Yeah.

Quick comment on that too.

To Tom’s meat-and-potatoes comment, it’s not just meat and potatoes.

It’s infrastructure and it’s banking.

I won’t name the source on this one, but it’s somebody we all know, likes to say that the future of banking is fintech.

I like to say that the future of fintech is banking.

That’s the direction we’re really moving in here.

Well, Ron, to your point, I don’t know if everyone saw the news yesterday that HMBradley is sunsetting its consumer line, but is now selling to banks.

Yep.

It’s a common thread.

It’s the three-point plan.

One is, we’re going to blow up the banking business.

The second one is, we’re not going to fight them, we’re going to join them.

Then the third one is typically, it’s not going well. We might not be doing anything.

It seems like there’s been that pattern of people exiting after the can’t-beat-them-join-them thread.

But I agree with you, Al, too, about Tom.

He’s in the middle of everything.

He’s on a half-dozen boards, and I’m following his travels vicariously because he, like others in the business, you run into them at a conference and you see that they have genuine care and joy for what they’re doing, trying to help people.

Yep.

Great connectors.

It’s not just some money chase.

One hundred percent agree.

Great connectors, both of them.

So funding and investments, given the VC winter that’s gone on in the space, that’s been one challenging area.

I think another challenging area that is not new at all has been integration.

Bailey, I know we have a clip from when I was at the Finovate conference in New York with John Waupsh and Emily Steele.

Emily made some comments.

Yep. Here it is.

“It’s one thing to roll out all of this new technology, but it’s being coupled with a conversation around how do you actually integrate it and make it work at a bank?

“Not just, how do I buy it, put it on a shelf and hope and pray, but instead, how do we actually integrate it with our entire ecosystem such that it really can be used for the long term?”

Any thoughts on that from my co-hosts?

That seems to be one of the words of the year.

Just being super practical.

I think the idea that you’ve got unlimited runway for creativity has been really poked apart over the last 18 months.

When you think about how practical and pragmatic a bank CFO really is, you can understand internally there are business challenges that need to be immediately addressed.

If you can’t come in from the tech side and show how your solution gets to that outcome, the integration, the implementation, those are components of it, but what is the outcome that the bank is driving toward that the tech company can help with?

To be able to show that you get in there, roll up your sleeves and get it done, that to me seems to be one of the big underlying themes of this year.

Good stuff.

So if industry funding or investors has been one challenge over the last year, and integration has been a challenge over the last year but has been a challenge since I was a banker back when I had more hair and fewer hats, I think another sort of third area that comes to mind has been regulatory-related.

I believe, Bailey, from back when we had Peggy Mangot and Neil Underwood on Fintech Hustle, we’ve got a clip from Neil.

If you wouldn’t mind pulling that one up.

“Running a bank for 10 years, going to the regulator meetings and examining the findings, it’s just the discipline around understanding all that is regulatory compliance.

“I think many of the fintechs that don’t have that experience, quite frankly, underestimate that element and what it means.”

Any comments on that, guys?

I have comments and I have thoughts.

But you can take what Neil says and you can apply it to what’s going on in the BaaS space right now, where you see it just takes one accidental misstep, or worse, and things get sideways really fast.

That understanding of regulatory expectation, compliance burdens, that’s fundamental to being in a traditional financial institution.

When you think about the different investments that tech companies are making from their hiring, it’s not surprising to see all these different open positions for really smart, sophisticated folks who understand what’s going on in the regulatory world that we’re a part of.

Yeah.

I think I was also reminded of someone that we haven’t had on the program yet, but I’d like to at some point, Lulin Du, who was talking about the space.

Whether it’s BaaS or whatever, basically embedded, where you have all these different players splitting up the interchange at the same time that each one of those parties has a compliance head.

So you’ve got three companies splitting up the revenue, or two companies or whatever the economics are of the deal, and then you’ve got three compliance officers on any given conference call, all with their own interpretation, all arguing about what’s okay.

I’m not trying to put words in her mouth, but I remember her saying something along the lines of, if I was paraphrasing the Dude from The Big Lebowski, “This aggression cannot stand.”

I think he was channeling President George Bush.

Anyway, the point is that it’s not tenable.

It can’t hold.

You can’t have three people with three different interpretations and splitting up all the money and that be okay.

What I liked about what Neil said was very practical.

I also like the fact that Neil is, I’ve referred to him oftentimes as a trifecta, someone who’s a banker, a fintecher and an investor.

So they can kind of see all those things from all sides.

Anyway, I loved having Neil on.

I know he doesn’t do a lot of programs like that now, so I was really flattered that he joined us.

That was a really salient point.

I think also, Mary, when you and I were, I’m trying to remember, maybe at FinTech Meetup or something, where we had a good session with Derik Sutton from Autobooks and John Findlay.

Yeah.

I know, Bailey, you’ve got a clip here of Derik.

That’s the next Fintech.

I think this one also might have some background music to it, so just be prepared.

Get ready to dance, gentlemen.

“The banking industry will not let go of the past.

“There are all of these features and capabilities that are probably used by the minority of the customer base, but there’s somebody in the back office that says, ‘We can’t let go of these features because we’ve got X, Y and Z on it.’

“What that does is it holds everything back.

“It makes AI harder.

“It makes change management harder.

“It makes implementation of the new technology harder.

“So everything we hold onto that’s not readily used needs to go away.

“The banks are like the Cheesecake Factory.

“You go to the Cheesecake Factory and they’ve got this menu and it’s selection after selection after selection, and it’s overload.

“Fintech’s like In-N-Out Burger.

“I’m going to get a burger, I’m going to get fries and a shake, and I know it’s going to be good.

“I know exactly what it is.

“It’s simple and easy, and you can pivot and innovate off that model.

“I think it’s really hard to scale a Cheesecake Factory of features and capabilities from a marketing standpoint, from an innovation standpoint.

“At some point in time, I think banks are going to have to say, ‘Hey, these things can go away, and that’s okay.’

“And if there are customers that are impacted, maybe we don’t want those types of customers.”

Mary, you’re right.

That was Fintech Meetup, and that was kind of fun talking over the music.

It looked like Derik Sutton had a little bit of a backbeat thing going on there where he had the microphone, two turntables and a microphone.

Yeah.

So, Mary, any thoughts?

I just remember that analogy was very cool.

Anything that jumped out at you on that?

Yeah.

The analogy is really cool.

It’s just a really true point.

I used to have to hop around bank websites to look for their disclosures to find things out.

It’s just like such a vomit-on-the-page sort of look for many of them, and so many products.

But I will say, when you sunset a product, even though it’s a small amount of people, those people get really mad.

Something that happened during the pandemic was a few of the challenger banks and neobanks started letting people deposit cash at retailers.

It’s just a hard tension.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I feel it.

Darlings, it’s hard.

Yeah.

Mary, as you’re talking though, I’m thinking about something Ron put on social that just blew up, and it was all around Chime winning the deposit war.

Basically, he’s like, “Guys, the war has been won by Chime.”

I know I’m paraphrasing my friend who’s on with us right now, but what’s still surprising is how few bankers have actually gone onto Chime’s site, have taken out their phone and tried to open an account with Chime to see the massive difference that exists between what the bank provides and what a company like Chime provides.

I’m not trying to put Chime up on a pedestal, but, Ron, you have clearly rattled some cages as your LinkedIn stuff just blew up when that first came out.

Yeah.

What I’d point to here, though, is it’s less about the account-opening process as it is about the product.

That’s what Derik was really talking about in comparing Cheesecake Factory and In-N-Out Burger, which we don’t have any of around here, so I’m assuming it’s really good.

But it’s a product, and it’s a limited product.

That’s what they do, and they do it very well.

The banks think, well, we have to offer everything, and don’t have as good a product offering.

You go to Chime, they have a target market.

They know who they’re serving, or who they’re looking for, and the product is geared toward those people.

So, Al, even if bank CEOs went to Chime’s site and did this, sure, they’d find a great account-opening process, but they wouldn’t necessarily notice that it’s the product features that are actually attracting people by the hordes.

Yeah.

I just remember back maybe five, six years ago, something that Brian Moynihan, the CEO of BofA, said about why he gets up from his desk as often as he does.

If you’re not putting yourself into these uncomfortable positions and you’re seeing what others are doing that you have decided, well, we can’t do this, you’ve artificially set some obstacles, then you can’t lead effectively.

So what you’re saying, I agree with, Ron.

But I think it’s the responsibility of the industry’s leaders to say, hey, are we putting some unintentional rocks in front of our teams?

If so, how do we talk about that so that people aren’t prevented from actually taking some chances?

Because there’s nothing that says what Chime does can’t be brought into a regional bank or a credit union that’s ambitious and opportunistic.

Yeah.

I think, listen, if banks and fintechs selling to consumers and small businesses or commercial, let’s just call that B2C, was a big topic this year, another big topic has been B2B.

How do enabling fintechs, or challengers even, sell and partner with banks?

Al, when you and I were recently at the JAM FINTOP Summit, we had a chance to sit down at the fire pit with Dan O’Malley from Numerated as well as Sarah Howell from Infinant.

I know Sarah had some comments here.

Bailey, if you wouldn’t mind running the video of that.

“BaaS is much more nuanced and much more sophisticated than it was pre-VC winter, when a lot of fintechs were trying to compete with a bank.

“Now they’re realizing you can abstract the core, but you can’t abstract the charter.

“So you’ve got to play nicely.

“Now they’re shifting their business model to sell into banks.

“But what I’m realizing is that it’s very hard to sell into banks.

“You have to know their problems at a granular level.”

Any thoughts on that, guys?

Well, other than the fact that we didn’t fall into the fire pit and kill ourselves by accident, because that was not seen in the video, but we were literally next to this raging fire.

It was maybe 35 degrees outside.

It looks sunny and warm, but it was actually pretty gnarly.

We had legitimate worry that our microphone, because we actually have a hard cable that goes to the microphone, we had legitimate worry that we might have some melt right there.

But there’s a baseline on Fintech Hustle.

We did make it out.

I thought that Sarah really captured the essence of the challenge.

Sometimes I find that either bankers or even consultants, I wouldn’t say we’re dismissive of salespeople in the industry.

I’ve worked around salespeople almost my whole career that I’ve not been a banker, or I was called on by them when I was a banker.

It’s such a tall order to get someone’s attention and to command it.

It’s getting harder.

People’s time, they’re more distracted, there are a hundred different things coming at them.

I did think that she really nailed it.

It’s tougher now, and you just have to be more focused about it.

You have to be really detailed about it.

That captured my thoughts.

I don’t know if you guys have any thoughts on that.

I keep seeing and hearing from bankers that they could fill their entire week’s calendar if they accepted half of the invitations that were credible and relevant to their business.

So that just leaves aside all the ones that have no value to them.

When you think about just running and performing, you’ve got to earn the right to change your business.

You’ve got to perform every day.

That’s what a bank executive is dealing with.

To be able to introduce some new ideas that could really move their business in a different direction, you’re asking for some opportunity to be put to the side.

I think a lot of tech companies have realized you just can’t say, “We work with banks. We partner with banks,” or, “We’re friendly with banks.”

I thought Sarah’s point was really spot-on because to get really detailed and granular and still have something very specific, I think that’s the hook that gets you a starting conversation.

Then, Sam, you and I have talked, you’ve really got to bring your A-game.

You cannot waste people’s time.

You can’t just talk about, “Oh, we’ve got a great team and great technology,” because that’s total BS.

Everyone has a great team.

Everyone has great tech.

What’s in it for me?

Short and sweet and to the point is always appreciated.

Yeah.

Quick comment on that too, if I can.

I think Sarah makes a great point about understanding the banker’s problems.

I don’t know about you, but I think you guys see it as much as I do, vendor decks and presentations, and they all seem to be so generic.

They all seem to start with everybody’s digital and everybody’s moving this direction.

But it doesn’t get at the challenges and the problems that the banks are facing in dealing with that.

It just seems to want to be, “Hey, we’re moving this direction and you have to become digital too.”

It’s like, well, yeah, we kind of know that already.

I’m just so underwhelmed by a lot of these presentations.

Sam is too.

Mary is too.

Right?

I’m very overwhelmed by them.

I’m like, this is such a dud experience.

But looking back, there was an entrepreneur, and I think he ended up selling to Wells Fargo.

It might have been iVerify, but regardless, it was an entrepreneur and a big bank, and it was early in fintech.

I just remember a panel ended and he ran up to the Wells Fargo exec.

That is what brought together the introduction.

He ended up selling his product to the bank.

I don’t know if you could pull that off now because a lot of my contacts in the industry are like, “Please, please stay away from me. I do not want to be sold to.”

But I do love that story because I do love pluck.

I don’t know if it could repeat itself right now.

Well, so Sam and I saw something that I think tech executives should really think about before they present at a conference.

He mentioned we were in Nashville for this JAM FINTOP event.

They decided to give a long runway of speakers two minutes to talk about their company.

The most effective one was a woman, and her name’s escaping me, but maybe Sam remembers, who said, “You’re giving me two minutes to describe my company. I only need one.”

In one minute she nailed it and left 60 seconds for the next person, who of course took three minutes to talk about how great his team was and how great their technology could be.

So he was not memorable.

Whereas this woman, again, even if I’m forgetting her name at the moment, really did an amazing job to get the vibe going.

Yeah.

So memorable that neither you nor I can remember the name.

We’re going to come back to that.

We’re going to edit our...

Bailey, flag this one as an edit for Sam and Al to make us sound smarter.

Too funny.

Speaking of being memorable, we were at the JAM FINTOP Summit, while we were there at the fire pit about ready to melt the microphone cable, Cinzia Morelli from ConnectOne Bank came up.

She just made a brief mention of her venture effort that she’s working on right now with tech, with Nymbus as well, their investments that they made in BoeFly, an acquisition that they’ve made.

Like Neil Underwood, I see her as one of those great trifecta-type people that’s a banker at ConnectOne Bank, fintech with BoeFly, and then also in the investor world, showing up at events like JAM FINTOP.

Mary and I actually, earlier in the year after the AOBA conference, had a great session with Daniel Haisley from Apiture and Cinzia.

I think we have a clip from that, don’t we, Bailey?

Yes, we do.

Awesome.

“The panel, he got up on stage to tell people, well, men, to go to the women’s reception events.

“I just thought, wow, this is such a sincere moment.

“I love it.

“I just want to call that out.

“I’m really proud of him in that moment.”

As you know, there was a women’s luncheon at the conference, Women in Banking, which was awesome.

It was a room full of women.

But he made a really important point.

That conversation needs to happen on the main stage.

I’m really happy Michelle sort of made that happen.

It was impromptu.

It wasn’t planned.

Yeah.

Mary, any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I have thoughts on that, Sam.

First of all, to the other point, this was an amazing moment because it was a really sincere moment.

Frank did get up on stage and had just a candid thought up there, and you just don’t really see that happen too often at conferences.

But yeah, I mean, I just underscore the point.

Everyone needs to be in the room to make things happen.

Well, let me do a little cross-promotion of the Plugged In podcast that Sam alluded to earlier.

Plugged In is a sister to Fintech Hustle from Cornerstone.

Steve Williams and I just had a conversation with Maria Tedesco, who’s the president and COO at Atlantic Union Bank in Richmond, so about a $24 billion institution.

We talked about this very thing.

How do you help women rise up in the leadership ranks?

Not to paraphrase Maria too long, but she said it’s everyone’s responsibility.

It’s not just hers.

She’s got to model the behavior, but you need to build a team.

She’s got a great CEO in John Asbury who has locked arms with her and says, we’ve got an opportunity to really set an example.

Whether it’s at a conference like Cinzia is describing, whether it’s in an office like Atlantic Union would have, I think if we just continue to talk about this and say, hey, it can feel awkward, but it’s really uncomfortable that we don’t have the number of female executives in positions at tech companies, at banks, at credit unions that we should, when you just look at the country that we’re a part of.

Instead of hesitating and pulling back, I think it’s everyone’s opportunity and responsibility to say, we all know smart folks.

Some of them are women, and they should have opportunities to do some really amazing things.

If we can help advance them, then we should be doing that.

I really appreciate what Cinzia does.

But I appreciate Frank Sorrentino, her CEO at ConnectOne, who has been very outspoken about the need for diversity and inclusion.

It’s not just a check-the-box type activity.

It’s something he thinks makes the business stronger.

I have to say, I totally agree with him.

One last thing here on that as we go to the next one.

One of the things I love about Cinzia as well, she’s fun.

This is both work and it’s fun.

And so were you, Mary.

I also wanted to say, Mary, I saw in that segment there you were wearing, I believe you had some disco earrings there.

Are you wearing...

This is why I was frazzled this morning.

I was trying to hide from all the light coming into my apartment.

I’m not wearing them now.

I failed today, but I didn’t fail then.

Next year.

Next year when we do part two of this.

In the spirit of keeping it fun, as you might imagine, since it’s unscripted and many times recorded in the hall, things don’t always go well.

Sometimes we have a few bloopers out there.

So in the spirit of fun too, I think we had a twice-over redux episode.

We had to film it twice with Tara Schultz from CSI, Mike Triano of Velocity Solutions, and Ron and me.

I think we have a clip from one of those segments.

Do we not, Bailey?

We do.

“Ron, there’s no one-and-done.

“I mean, as fast as, you can use that term loosely, but the cores are rolling out updates, as are the other fintechs, on a pretty regular basis.

“If you’re going to provide that kind of integration, it’s ongoing.

“It’s ongoing development and maintenance and support.”

What you may not have been able to hear in the background was there was some, I think we even filtered out some of the...

Did we recreate it?

He was pounding the desk out of a lot of enthusiasm.

It was so funny because it was the retake too.

We had done it in person at an AFT event, I think, and there were some issues with, I’m sure it was on my setup of my microphone or something.

So we refilmed it and there’s somebody pounding on the wall.

I don’t know if we, Ron, did we ever determine whether it was his kids pounding on the wall or was construction?

He was having work done to his house.

He couldn’t avoid the fact that that’s when they were there and when we had scheduled this.

So yeah, there was construction going on at his house.

It was loud.

It was disconcerting.

Did you send him a bucket hat as a sign of appreciation, Sam?

I did.

You sent him a hard hat right now.

Here we go.

A hard hat.

I tip my hat to Mike and his construction woes mid-session.

I can relate because my dog Mabel back there always, I had to put a lock back there in the door because she always seems to know when we’re doing one of these things.

But listen, guys, I want to take a second.

Mary and Al and Ron, I want to thank you guys for being gracious co-hosts with your time and having, not just today, but in all these episodes.

It’s very much been a team effort.

I certainly want to thank all of our guests that we’ve had thus far.

I mentioned we’ve got some great programs coming up with Sam Paxson from Co-op Solutions and Nathan Baumeister from ZSuite.

We’ve got, I mentioned, Nathaniel Harley, Erin Simpson and Sue Sledzik coming up.

So we’ve got some great episodes coming up.

But I also want to take just one more moment and say thank you to Bailey for everything you’ve done to make the production of this a joy.

It’s just a lot of fun for our guests to see you on camera right before and after we’re doing our work.

I wanted to make sure that you were visible to everyone, to just know who’s actually making this work.

So thank you for that, Bailey.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sam.

It’s a blast to be here.

I’m having a ton of fun.

And thanks for joining us on this episode of Fintech Hustle, Flashback Edition.

Hope you all have a great set of holidays, and we’ll see you out there on the road.