Elaine Deehan is back on MoneyNeverSleeps for her third appearance, and this one has been a long time coming. As Ireland Country Manager of Monzo Bank Europe, Elaine is doing what she's always done: building something that makes banking feel genuinely human, and genuinely Irish.

Download the Monzo app and open your account at: https://monzo.com/ie

Monzo went fully live in Ireland on April 14th with 100,000 people on the waitlist. But getting there wasn't a lift-and-shift from the UK. It meant walking the streets, talking to customers, and solving for the things that frustrate Irish people most about their banks. Elaine also talks about what the Irish playbook means for every market Monzo enters next.

Connect with Elaine:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elainedeehan/Monzo Ireland: https://monzo.com/ie

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@moneyneversleeps1814Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/moneyneversleeps/id1455819294

Connect with Pete:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petetownsendnv/X: https://x.com/PeteTownsendNVInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/petetownsend353/MoneyNeverSleeps: https://moneyneversleeps.ieEmail: info@norioventures.com

You Can't Code Your Way Out | Amor Sexton, Blockdaemon

In the last few weeks, Drift and Kelp lost $577 million between them. Neither one was a code exploit. Both were operational and governance failures.

Amor Sexton, Chief Operating Officer at Blockdaemon, was last on MoneyNeverSleeps in October 2022 (EP 193) talking about how institutional client expectations of resilient processes would drive blockchain adoption. Three and a half years later, the industry just got an extremely expensive lesson in exactly that thesis.

In this episode, Pete and Amor get into:

- Why "this isn't a hack, it's a governance failure" is the conversation the industry isn't having

- How compliance is a subset of risk — and why DeFi keeps confusing the two

- The Web2/human layer compromise that exploits a legitimate Web3 feature

- Pluto on Castle Island: "Everything that TradFi has built in terms of circuit breakers, we're just speed running relearning those things in crypto"

- The Kelp configuration was a known vulnerability — and 47% of operators chose it anyway

- The two or three governance questions every DeFi protocol and LP should be asking right now

- Why it always comes back to people, not code

Chapters:

00:00 Cold open

00:24 Welcome back to MoneyNeverSleeps

00:55 $577M, 18 days, no code exploit

02:00 Compliance is a subset of risk

03:15 Guardrails and governance

04:30 The Web2 layer compromise

05:45 Speedrunning what TradFi already built

07:30 Why 47% chose the risky configuration

09:00 Three governance questions every protocol should answer

12:30 It always comes back to people

13:30 Sign off

Connect with Amor:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amor-sexton/

Blockdaemon: https://www.blockdaemon.com/

About MoneyNeverSleeps:

MoneyNeverSleeps is hosted by Pete Townsend, GP at Norio Ventures. Sharp riffs, big ideas, and real insights from smart people in crypto, fintech, AI, and onchain finance.

Connect with Pete:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petetownsendnv/

X: @petetownsendnv

Norio Ventures: https://www.norioventures.com

Subscribe to MoneyNeverSleeps wherever you get your podcasts:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@moneyneversleeps1814

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4F8uOLxiscYVWVGEfNxTnd

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/moneyneversleeps/id1455819294

#MoneyNeverSleeps #Blockdaemon #DeFi #Crypto #AmorSexton #Governance #RiskManagement

Sheila Lynch has been in the room for three of the biggest financial shocks of the last five years — COVID at CQS, the Russian invasion of Ukraine at BlackRock with live Eastern European assets in the funds, and the SVB collapse. When systems go under stress, what's actually there gets revealed. Culture, training, processes — either they hold or they don't.

This episode is about what founders consistently get wrong before those moments arrive. Treasury after a raise, legal as a checkbox, wind-down plans that sit on a shelf and are never tested, equity structures that aren't optimised until it's too late. Sheila shares the story of a GC who called a law firm partner the day after closing a $50 million round to ask where to put the money. The room went silent. It's that kind of episode.

Sheila Lynch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheila-lynch-27264726/
Partners for Growth: https://www.pfgrowth.com/

Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4F8uOLxiscYVWVGEfNxTnd

Chapters

00:00 Cold open

00:21 Intro

01:02 Three systemic shocks, one pattern

04:13 The $50 million question

07:26 Legal as a checkbox, and what it actually costs

09:45 Building the right governance from day one

12:51 What every founder should know before signing a term sheet

13:37 Where to find Sheila

MoneyNeverSleeps. Sharp riffs, big ideas, and real insights from smart people. Hosted by early-stage investor Pete Townsend.

moneyneversleeps.ie

Pete on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petetownsendnv/
Pete on X: https://x.com/PeteTownsendNV
Pete on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/petetownsend353/
Email: info@norioventures.com