They backtested a 430% cumulative return.

Then the first thing Nicolò Carpaneda did was correct the number before I could question it.

Pantarai founders Nicolò Carpaneda and Bastien Seignolles built Cartesio, an AI that reads market conditions daily and reshuffles a portfolio to match, choosing a rule-based explainable system over a black box in a year when the rest of the industry is racing the other way.

Part 2 is the machine itself: the backtest, the month it protected capital and still couldn't keep the client calm, the trade-off of staying fully liquid with no leverage, and why they're building from Singapore while the company's centre of gravity stays in Europe.

This is Issue 04 of Straits Signal, hosted by Kim Yeoh, media founder and strategic analyst, former investor relations at a private equity fund and co-founder of a commercial fleet electrification company.

What you'll take away from this episode:

• Why a system that reads markets daily still can't tell you if gold is cheap, and what a black box would have missed
• The correction that mattered more than the pitch, what the €1.5 million figure is and isn't
• The month the fund lost three percent while the market lost twenty, and why that still wasn't an easy conversation
• No leverage, no derivatives, only liquid ETFs, the alpha left on the table for the sake of trust
• Building from Singapore while Europe stays the operational hub
• Whether Pantarai is a product company or the wedge into something bigger

Missed Part 1, the partnership, the 2009 crash, and the eighteen months Nicolò spent teaching himself to code: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5GWDNWPmGpIdFAMgf0FS7m?si=RzTXhmD0T5-jj3daMscG5g

Watch Cartesio's daily market read: pantar.ai

The backtest and performance figures discussed in this series are the founders' own, gross of fees, presented as a historical proxy and not a forecast. This conversation is for information only and is not investment advice or a solicitation to invest. Pantarai ADAPT is regulated in the UK and Europe and is not licensed by MAS in Singapore.

Straits Signal — Intelligence from Southeast Asia. Energy. Mobility. Capital.

Is the 60/40 portfolio still the right way to invest, or a comfortable idea that stopped working?

Pantarai founders Nicolò Carpaneda and Bastien Seignolles left institutional finance to build Cartesio, an AI that adapts a portfolio to live market conditions instead of holding a fixed allocation. Part 1 is the origin story: how two operators met at the bottom of the 2009 financial crisis, and why one of them spent eighteen months teaching himself to code to build it.

This is Issue 04 of Straits Signal, hosted by Kim Yeoh, media founder and strategic analyst, former investor relations at a private equity fund and co-founder of a commercial fleet electrification company.

What you'll take away from this episode:

Why "don't time the market" and the 60/40 portfolio are being questioned by two people who spent fifteen years inside the system that built that advice

• How an MBA friendship formed in the depths of the 2009 crash became a fifteen-year foundation strong enough to start a company on
• Why the founders deliberately waited that long before building anything together, and what patient capital actually looks like in practice
• The conversation about risking a stable career for a startup that most founders have with their spouse but never talk about publicly
• Why Nicolò chose to spend eighteen months teaching himself to code rather than hire a CTO, and why that decision became the company's real advantage rather than a detour
• The moment in spring 2022 when the 60/40 portfolio actually broke, in real numbers, not theory

Part 2, Cartesio itself, the markets thesis, the backtest, and why they're building from Singapore, is out now.

Watch Cartesio's daily market read: pantar.ai

The backtest and performance figures discussed in this series are the founders' own, gross of fees, presented as a historical proxy and not a forecast. This conversation is for information only and is not investment advice or a solicitation to invest. Pantarai ADAPT is regulated in the UK and Europe and is not licensed by MAS in Singapore.

Straits Signal — Intelligence from Southeast Asia. Energy. Mobility. Capital.

Runtime: ~46 min

650 digital banks exist in the world. Only 92 are profitable. Rachel Freeman runs one of them.

In this episode of Straits Signal, Kim Yeoh sits down with Rachel Freeman of Tyme Group, the digital bank serving 22 million customers across the Philippines and South Africa, profitable from close to day one. Rachel has spent her career building financial infrastructure across four continents, and she shares the framework behind it: why single-country digital banks die, how to read the "soul of a country" before entering a market, why a kiosk in a grocery store beat digital-first acquisition, and the Pakistan license rejection that broke her heart.

A conversation about patient capital, market timing, and what incumbent banks refuse to see.

ABOUT THE GUEST Rachel Freeman is the Chief of Growth at Tyme Group, one of the world's few consistently profitable digital banks. Before Tyme, she spent seven years at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in Hong Kong in development finance and earlier built financial infrastructure across Russia and Central Asia, from launching retail operations to creating a women-led leasing company. Her career traces one idea: building financial access in markets the moment they're ready to move. Today Tyme serves 22 million customers across the Philippines (GoTyme Bank) and South Africa (TymeBank), with expansion underway across Southeast Asia.

ABOUT THE SHOW Straits Signal is a media and intelligence platform tracking the operators behind Asia's infrastructure transition: mobility, capital, energy, and the people making it real. Hosted by Kim Yeoh, former investor relations at a USD 1.6Bn private equity fund and a founder building across Southeast Asia. Intelligence from Southeast Asia. Mobility. Energy. Capital.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Why 92 of 650 digital banks survive and the structural thing they share
• The "soul of the country" framework: reading market readiness beyond TAM
• How Tyme serves customers profitably at roughly a dollar a day
• Why a kiosk in a grocery store beat digital-first acquisition for 22M customers
• The Pakistan license rejection and the women it left unbanked
• Why cohort data shows people use bank accounts the same way everywhere
• The patience thesis: why timing, not speed, decides who survives

Chapters
00:00 — The Three-Year Wait
03:00 — 22 Million Customers, One Rule: Timing
07:00 — Soul of the Country
13:00 — From Sidelines to Operator
18:00 — Serving Customers at a Dollar a Day
26:00 — The 92: Why Most Digital Banks Fail
32:00 — Pakistan: What Breaks Your Heart
37:00 — Culture, Trust, and Sisyphus
42:00 — Kazakhstan and the Frontier Thesis
44:00 — Rapid Fire & Close

NOTABLE QUOTES

• "I wasn't patient. The pacing was good."
• "It broke my heart. Only 10% of women in Pakistan have a bank account, and I really felt we could make a massive difference."
• "The bigger insight wasn't what's different. It was what's the same."

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Tyme Group · TymeBank (South Africa) · GoTyme Bank (Philippines) · Nubank · Revolut · WeLab · Wise · Chime · Kaspi (Kazakhstan) · Pick n Pay & Boxer · SASSA grants · IFC · MAS · JG Summit

Hashtags: #StraitsSignal #DigitalBanking #Fintech #FinancialInclusion #SoutheastAsia #TymeGroup #EmergingMarkets #Podcast