In this episode Simon Taylor, GTM @ Tempo sits down with Increase CEO, Darragh Buckley to discuss DeFi earn products, consumer redemption risk, vault liquidity management and more!

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:19 The motivation for Increase: addressing payment disbursement failures
• 03:04 Technical and business challenges in international financial expansion
• 05:00 Viewing compliance as an engineering problem to be solved
• 07:31 Admiration for legacy financial systems built with constraints
• 09:10 The simplicity curve: abstraction, complexity, and underlying simplicity
• 12:45 The philosophy of building "lovingly boring" financial infrastructure
• 14:30 The necessity of early partnerships and gatekept features in fintech
• 16:50 Stablecoins as parallel infrastructure versus replacement for traditional systems
• 19:58 The existing strengths of US deposit rails and last-mile delivery

After speaking to the CEOs of Ramp, Brex, and Mercury, my first instinct is to find other nerds with whom to share my thoughts.

Immediately, I thought of Alex, and then I needed to bring some class to proceedings. I called my old friend Cokie (an OG and still my favorite Fintech content writer).

This is the most fun, relaxed, and engaging conversation I’ve had about Fintech in a long time.

I’m not even going to try and sell it to you.

Just take a listen.

Who knows if or when I’ll do season 2, but this has been a fun side project.

Get in touch if you want to know more about me, my day job at Sardine, or you have any feedback on season 1.

Now back to your regular scheduled newslettering.

ST.

This was perhaps the most intense conversation I can remember having. Incredibly efficient, scarily so. Focussed, intentional, direct.

Why should you listen to this episode?

This company arguably created a category. By focussing on offering high yield and higher deposit insurance at a time when banks were not, when interest rates began to rise, they capitalized on a generational market opportunity.

Today Meow is known for its access to high-yield treasury, and while there are a few in this category none quite have the explosive growth that Meow has. This is a company that has lazer focussed on execution, channel partnerships, and go-to-market.

I describe conversations I’ve had with Brandon like talking to a scalpel. He’ll get to the point so quickly and surgically it's often hard to keep up.

Meow started offering high-yield access to Stablecoins but may have pulled off the mother of all pivots. Today Meow offers up to $125m in FDIC insurance through its deposit sweeps network, which is expanding internationally and the CEO even graced the pages of Forbes.

What makes Brandon tick? What makes Meow work? And how are they building an enduring business