NCFA Canada | Oct 19, 2018

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Transcription of Interview

Manseeb Khan: Today I have an absolutely incredible guest. I got Saroop Bharwani from Senso.ai. Saroop Thank you so much for sitting in today.

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me onboard.

Manseeb Khan: No absolutely. So, for the audience for a minute could you just tell us a little bit about yourself and the inside track of Senso.ai.

Saroop Bharwani: Sounds good. We're dated intelligence platform for the retail banking industry. Essentially what we've done is we've aggregated market wide data such as credit data, real estate data location and geospatial data. And we basically predict When every Canadian consumer is about to switch a credit product such as a mortgage or a credit card from one financial institution to another this really helps sales and marketing teams at retail banks get in front of their customers sooner to be to be able to provide better offers better experiences helping them save money while keeping their wallet share increasing over time and outside their book as well. And we've been successful today to networking with a number of financial institutions in the Canadian market and not only helping them identify sales. Internal sales opportunities within their portfolios but also help consumers save money while increasing their bottom line at the same time. It's been super exciting for us the Toronto startup ecosystem has been tremendously helpful in launching and getting to the stage that we're at. And now we are planning a U.S. expansion

Manseeb Khan: That's also incredible can't wait for the U.S. expansion. So, your story is a little bit more unique than any of the other startup founders out there. You actually turned your former employer to your customer. Could you share a little bit more of that story because I think that story is super fascinating on what you did there.

Saroop Bharwani: You know it feels like a long time ago. My first customer. One of the big prime banks in Canada. I actually used to contract for about three years ago and I've been around the block. And usually when I get into a situation where I work for a financial institution whether it be a full time, or a contract position I have built relationships all throughout the organization. But I also I've always stayed in touch with the Toronto startup ecosystem. I've witnessed the Toronto startup system grow to where it is right now since the early 2000s back in the day when it was just a few people in a room demoing our products to all of these crazy hype events today and all the great hype around tech. I've always managed to stay close to the great people and startup community. One thing I realized when I was at the tail end of my contract at this particular financial institution was I wanted to get back into the startup game and I had a particular idea of what space I wanted to play in, but I just needed to hone in a bit. And so, on my lunches and after work was the last six months that I was on that particular project. I met with anyone and everyone I could on that knew something about the space that I wanted to launch a startup in. And you know 10 meetings turned to 50 and that turned to 100. And by that time, I had sort of honed down on a very particular insight that I'm not about a lot of other people have been thinking about at the time and that's when I knew I was ready to jump ship. I had met my co-founder through those 100 meetings and I called many of my team members that I've worked with over the years in the retail banking space and that's literally how Senso I was born I jumped ship and we got started to building and that because I maintained great relationships at all the financial institutions I worked with I essentially went back to the one that I previously left and pitched them the idea and they loved it. And essentially the rest is history. They took us on board and instead of being a contractor/ full time employee I ended up being a vendor.

Manseeb Khan: That's also incredible. The whole within 50 meetings or so you find your co-founder at 75. I might be messing up the numbers, but I wasn't 75. You actually meet your mentor which was when you broke it down that way. I was like wow that makes a lot of sense. That makes total sense of like 75 meetings and you feel good. You know exactly what you want to do, you know exactly what you what your vision is, and you can definitely find a mentor to help guide that.

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah. And the other side of it is just managing risk. You know people just want to kind of jump into the startup world really not knowing that. It is not as glamorous as you see in the media. Right. You got to go through you know a couple of years of, you know painful sort of figuring out what you're doing and that's just the beginning. So that uncertainty only realized after jumping ship and I was very thoughtful of the fact that in order to mitigate that risk I needed to build a certain amount of runway to survive for a set period of time in my case was 18 months and get my family on board. You know my wife ticklers has been a great supporter along the way.  It's important to have that co-founder of life as some I call it, I might be the only one in that sense. So, to jump right into this AI is an absolute behemoth of a topic right. When you think of AI conjure up images between IBM the big blue player and the I guess its kind of like the world's biggest chess game right. You have like players like IBM of Amazon Facebook have all these big guys coming into it right. So, I guess for the purpose of the show what it means to you. What are the key problems the AI will solve in FinTech over the next few years. And what does this mean for incumbents, businesses, And  just a general.

So look put it this way. Mean having come from a banking background. Where me and my team and built these types of predictive models for a number of years. these types of models the machine money models in particular have been around for a long period of time. In the past five years, we've really hit a tipping point and this convergence of bigger data sets more sophisticated algorithms and more computational power which have enabled this new wave of technology that's really created this hype and a lot of it is hype. But the concepts of these algorithms have been around for like 40, 50 years. We just haven't been able to make use of them until very recently due to the convergence that I just spoke about. Now when I think about AI in general is I do think that the most difficult part for me and many people that I see especially wanting to get into AI is just seen through the noise of who's actually simply doing what was always done in the past versus cutting edge actual AI. I would say right. when it comes to any of this to break it down what all of this is just lines through a bunch of dots and simply put it is just using statistics and a lot of great data and computation power to come up with these results that get better over time. You know we've hit that tipping point where a lot of this stuff is useful for enabling computer vision and these other sensory tasks that we see all this magic happening. For me it's exciting to see that we've hit that tipping point. But it's no different from the path that people who have worked with machine learning for many years. It's that same path we're going down and is getting more exciting because new doors are opening up through the convergence of many of these many of these things that I've spoken about. But to me I always question who's actually doing this stuff versus all the hype out there. And from a marketing perspective and it's hard to differentiate that. And while I would say it's super exciting and breakthrough it's also hard to understand you know what is going on the market from who is actually doing cutting edge stuff it was not.

Manseeb Khan: It is all hype right. This whole fintech space this whole boom is all hype. So, it should be interesting to see who panders out and who actually sticks through it and who the real players are in the next 10,15,25 years. Running an AI focused company. What does it mean to you? From all the mentors and all the meetings, you've had. How did that change from day one of starting an AI focused company to know that you've actually been through the next 36, ran through TechStars and just had so much more acceleration.

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah. So, I mean whether it was using machine learning and AI to solve the problem or not. One thing we knew from the very beginning is. We knew intimately what the problem was that we wanted to solve. And that's what we really focused on. It just so happened that we got access to it very early on a dataset that enabled us to prove this worked in a very controlled environment. I think that the support of the AI community in Toronto was perfectly timed for us in that the doors that were open for us in terms of resources in terms of getting data sets in terms of accessibility to customers who were open to testing this out. So, all happened at a perfect time for us. But when it comes to being an AI company I would say it all comes down to the data set you're working with. And if that data set is pure enough to produce the outcomes that you're looking for or that provide business value to solve that problem or it achieve that task you're in a good spot. But I would say that my recommendation to anyone wanting to start an AI company is if you want to start in an AI first company understand what data you have access to because if you don't have access to data you're not going to be able to do much at the get go. And that's where I would really think about approach and what type of business you want to become. Because you don't want to get into an AI business because of the hype of AI and putting that in a flashy deck. You want to get into it to solve real problems and achieve real tasks that drive business value. And then if AI happens to be a mechanism to enable that that's great and that's what we realized very early on and we were just supported by the right advisers and people to be able to bring it to fruition and get to where we are today.

Manseeb Khan: I mean you want to make sure that your models make sense and you have enough data to back it up right because the main reason big business are going into AI it's because I have so much data to pull from and that's why Facebook and Amazon are going. And even IBM are going into the because years and years of data pools they can just are pulling from and to start testing and learning and building models.

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah, I mean that both those companies have been data driven from the ground up. So, they have an inherent advantage in taking advantage of the most cutting-edge technology. I would say the many of the enterprise firms out there haven't invested the dollars into really streamlining their data to be able to enable a lot of these things and a lot of the things we do on a daily basis is ensuring that data purify to be able to enable the outcomes that we want to achieve. And look some of the customers that we have and partners that we have invested very early on into their data and they're in a position similar to you know the big four you know Amazon, Google, Facebook, Amazon to be able to really deliver value outside of this. And I see this on a day to day basis kind of companies that are doing this well and companies that are not. And that is very interesting to see my insight is the reason why this taken so long for many of these enterprises to do this is for the very reason that the data is really all over the place and it needs to be brought together and streamlined into sort of an automated process to enable the models to learn vs decay.

Manseeb Khan: So, I guess what are the immediate and future opportunities when it comes to AI and as a community what does the foundation of AI look like?

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah. So, the immediate opportunities I think are. The cutting-edge opportunities I think are happening in things like computer vision, language processing. Even the some of the things we do with more sophisticated and algorithms in financial services are proving to deliver better results than some of the models that we built from within financial institutions. I think what I'm excited about is once you purified the data and aggregated the data in a way where you can produce better results using these new algorithms. it's far more  accurate than if you just kind of threw a bunch of sparse data into an old school decision tree and that's been going on for a while. So, I think we hit that tipping point to me the  enablement about actually doing that is the most difficult thing. And again, like a model may work really well. you know the first couple of times but if you don't have that automation and that sort of pipeline. I think that your models are ultimately going to decay and they're not going to be able to keep up with many of the changes that occur in the market whether they be economic or behavioral or whatever the case may be. We see that on a day to day basis when we test some of the more sophisticated models and pipelines we are with some of the other ones that we B test against which are currently being used by many of these companies out there to enable their predictive analytics engines. So, I think that's immediate future. I think that if it comes down to the mediums we're going to be interacting with today we interact with our mobile phones. But I think tomorrow they could be completely different devices Thalmic labs is launching their new smart glasses and I think that you know once the development community starts building on top of those platforms. It's going to start opening up opportunities for entrepreneurs to build new experiences using AI, using computer vision and all these great things. And I think that's scary because a lot of the stuff you see going on here in terms of research the exciting research that's happening is also the scariest in the sense that you know being able to mimic someone doing something that isn't actually them. I think that opens up a lot of privacy questions that we're going to have to face in this in this century. And I think that privacy the way it is today ultimately isn't the way it's going to be in the next century. And I think it's going to open up some really interesting debate. some sort of solution is going to be necessary in order to resolve the privacy concerns. And that's a whole different discussion that I'm happy to get into in more detail if you'd like.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah no absolutely so I guess it's a we've talked in a couple past episodes of the whole digital identity thing right and how companies are pushing people are pushing for this whole digital identity that you deserve to own your identity and use like your digital identity right. You decide to share and not share whatever information businesses might need. And now that now let's head out guys can kind of mimic that. That puts that whole sovereign identity thing into question because that gets a little scary.

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah. Absolutely and I think that that's when people hear you know Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking talk about A.I. taken over the world. Everybody pictures like Terminator robots and things like that. But I think that in the immediate future. It is really these breaches of privacy that you have no control over that are ultimately going to really bring up big questions and make people forget about. Everything else that existed before because nothing else will matter. When certain countries are mimicking other political leaders just say something about another country that isn't actually them right. And I think that it is scary when I think about children and bullying in schools and on social media. You don't get the ability to mimic someone doing something that they're not actually doing. That being so accessible to us today that is something that's going to bring up a lot of questions and I'm on the camp that data. Your data should be in your hands. And that is a concept that is very great today and I think that that's going to be one of the biggest things we're going to have to solve for in the 21st century.

Manseeb Khan: It's going to be a slippery slope of  how we take the human experience and put it digitally. And what do we decide to like to input it and not input when it comes to building these AI's right because ideally, we want them to be as agnostic as possible,  but we still want them to have human traits of them because there are amazing things about humans with are also very devastating things about human. So that's going to be a weird balance that we're going to be that that's happening the next coming years when it comes to building out these

Saroop Bharwani: It's going to be disruptive  without necessarily our control because you know it's in the hands of developers and entrepreneurs who are really enabling these experiences for good or for not good. Right. Like you know there's both sides of the equation. We've seen this in cybersecurity for years. There’re people who are protecting and there are people who are attacking right. And that that is not going to be a different concept when it comes to the use of AI in these sorts of public settings.

Manseeb Khan: No I absolutely agree with you so I mean you've already touched a little bit of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking so I'm going to jump into this question a couple of weeks ago you saw Elon Musk go on Joe Rogan and one of the questions that Joe asked you on was his fear of a AI and Elon's been saying for years he's been warning the public it's warning people about the dangers of AI and how we're moving a little too fast when it comes to AI. we've got to be pretty much pulling the reins like slowly analyze everything making sure we're doing this for the right reasons and not jumping because like you've mentioned a couple of times not because of the hype right. Even Stephen Hawking. I'm going to quote the development of a full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. It could even take off on its own and redesign itself as an ever-increasing rate. Humans are limited by slow biological evolution cannot even compete and will be superseded. So that's in and of itself we are seeing all these entrepreneurs all these amazing visionaries saying that like if we don't. Take a very close look at what we're doing with AI and not believing the hype. They could very much if eviscerate  the human race and just completely take over because they are revolving within microseconds. So, my question is. What are you what are you at Senso.ai doing priority wise to make sure none of these fears come to reality and. Hoping that other startups like yourself are doing to make sure these fears don't come into reality?

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah. So. You know in answer to an end to your question it's really, we run our models and  our pipeline in a very controlled setting. And we're constantly monitoring the biases which exist in the you know historical data is only good as the humans that put it at it or the process that input it. Right. But there are ways to rebalance these models to be able to reduce bias. And I think that is a responsibility that every AI company needs to take like we heard about you know Amazon recently brought lunch to recruit recruitment tool which was like bias  I think that was a bit premature for Amazon to launch that because they had to think about their historical data and how to rebalance that data to ensure that. And I'm not talking about statistical bias I'm talking about just general human like bias rate like the bias you would have towards a gender or race. Right. And those are things we see every day when. We use our data. And that's where the rebalancing of the data is very important and there are techniques to do that. And I think it's the responsibility of every AI company or company that's using any sort of predictive analytics to make decisions which impact humans. That's a responsibility they take on. You don't from a more broader perspective in terms of what Musk and Hawking are talking about. I question whether it's even we're even in a position to control. Right. And you know while it is scary  I think all of us have some sort of an addiction towards social media. You know in putting information in the internet searching on google where those are tools that we have we rely on these days to get information to see what's going on with your friends to just have that instant gratification. Right. And you know as generations passed and the younger generation Z and even younger than that they don't even question sharing their data. It's inherent in the way that they were raised, and they grew up because they grew up with this technology. can that input of information stock because if it doesn't. Ultimately the training of these models and these algorithms is not going to stop. And they are going to get more sophisticated over time. And I think that that exponential increase in inputs that we're feeding in to these systems is essentially what Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking are talking about and I feel that as humans were bad predictors in how soon or how soon things are going to happen and you know whether it's sooner than later or later than sooner. I think it's an inevitability that it's going to happen. I think all we can do is be responsible prepare and reduce these biases that exists in our models so that we assure that it's more of an oddment in symbiotic relationship versus ones where you know the AI's goals are different from our own.

Manseeb Khan: No, I absolutely agree with you on that. I guess if we're not if we're not careful of social media everything else it's going have a way bigger pull towards us for not even our generation but for the future generations if we are not careful.

Saroop Bharwani: Every like, every post, every tap. Everything is training right. It's training their models. When you look up the Easter bunny on google and it presents you with a bunch of pictures of Easter bunnies you clicking on that image of the right Easter bunny. You know is training their models even more. Right. Think about that that's happening with every single interaction and where the direction that Amazon. And Google and all these companies are going you know eventually and maybe it's the case right now we know but maybe there are algorithms and their models are much more sophisticated than we think. They may just be controlling it in a way where they are taking a responsible approach but that is questionable. Then you get into the whole conversation of regulators actually treating them like the oil companies. Back in the early 19s hundreds. Are they too big? Do they have too much data? Do they have too much oil to stand on their own or do we need to break them apart.

Manseeb Khan: So, speaking of regulation we're seeing a huge push. Of regulation when it comes to the crypto and blockchain space but we're not really seeing that much. Regulatory push when it comes to machine learning. I guess my question to you would be what some of the regulations are you'd like to see put in place. And I guess what the role of government is. Because you're seeing a role in government. Starting to form when it comes to block chain and crypto we want the exact same thing when it comes to AI?

Saroop Bharwani: I think that the Government's got to really think about how to put the right rules in place to be able to ensure that models being released are not biased towards one human outcome or the other and are making the right ethical decisions. But at the same time without hindering innovation and I think those are the two tradeoffs. That is tricky right because I'm a big proponent of faster innovation and I love this whole concept of entrepreneurs. You know being able to actually create the next Facebook or Uber or whatever the case may be out of their bedrooms. But at the same time based on  Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking's and their concerns and  my feelings towards that too and what's to come.  I do think it is a dangerous path that we go down without some sort of rules being in place. And I think that that moment is going to be more evident. And it's going to get the attention of regulators at a certain point in the future. And I don't think we're too far away from that. So, I know you didn't specifically answer your question but for me it's more of a tradeoff. Innovation versus making sure that these models are built in a responsible way.

Manseeb Khan: Right. So, it's finding that happy medium of still having regulators be the government or be it some other body making sure that everything's OK everything's on the up and up So new players can actually have some kind of structure to work with. But at the same time not hindering innovation because. That's the whole reason why you're seeing such a huge hype behind AI, blockchain and any crypto because it's very agnostic it's very decentral right?

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah. And I wouldn't even say that it has to be regulators to put these rules in. You want Musk as a guy that what matters into his own hands right. I don't know. It's going to be regulators like is government going to be able to move fast enough and implement regulations based on the real facts. Right. And ultimately that's the biggest question for me right. And that well we'll see. I think in the very near future what the outcomes going to be of that.

Manseeb Khan: How we started the whole episode is that you got very lucky when Canada was just getting on the AI boom right. So, Canada's emerged as a global leader in AI. How did it happen? And I guess what it means for innovators and investors entering the space and is it too late to get into the game or is this just the beginning.

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah so, I mean when we got into it the AI Buzz wasn't I When I decide to do this we really mean think about AI. It was a consideration that we were going to use predictive analytics and machine learning really. I mean I think about eight months into it really this whole AI boom started, and we were fortunate enough to be very well timed and being supported by the community very early on when they were still figuring it out. Now it's at a stage where  I think it's fairly it's grown. But I think it's still got a long way to go. The community still figuring things out and that's going to take a while. I encourage anyone who sees it sees a problem a big problem that they could potentially solve as being prime candidates towards starting their own companies. And I think they'll do great again as long as they're focused on the problem and ensure they have the right tools the team necessary to execute. That opportunity is always going to be there. I think from the challenge right now is for entrepreneurs and innovators has higher levels of competition. And that's something that we're going to continue to see. And from an investor standpoint again I think there's a lot of noise over companies that are doing truly innovative stuff and have a good go to market plan versus companies that are just putting A.I. in their deck because it's hype right. They may be great companies not doing anything related to this stuff, but they may be putting it in there that basically to get investors’ attention. And I think that that's come to a point where it will work against you if you just say you're doing AI without having some sort of a fundamental proof that your technology is based on some sort of. Cutting edge technology that's been accessible to us over the last that say three to five years.

Manseeb Khan: What's going to change that would be the education factor towards the right like you're saying Hey you're seeing a lot of startups even throw ICO and even just tokenize their whole business even though they may or may not even actually need one. It's the lack of education. I think in the next three to five years they are amazing companies like you and some of the other ones in space educating people teaching people that like hey this is what AI is, this is what AI means to us. And the more informed the general public just innovators and investors are when it comes to that space. It's just going to start weeding out all the B, C, D players.

Saroop Bharwani: It is yeah people are just going to become as you said more educated on this and I think that the great thing about these podcasts that you're doing is it enables people to become more in the know when it comes to .What is actually real versus what's not, what's worth investing time and money into versus not. And look I'm very sympathetic towards all entrepreneurs and I encourage even first-time entrepreneurs to go for it and really think through and mitigate your risk in starting this and you'll be supported by the community. But ultimately you know entrepreneurs usually have to go through a road of paying their dues in order to realize what this game is all about. But everybody's got to go down that path. Right. but I think that as people get more educated through podcasts like this and through the community. It's going to be easier to differentiate. Between ones that are real and not.

Manseeb Khan: There's no shortcuts when it comes entrepreneurship even though podcast and blog posts and videos on YouTube are definitely going to greatly help who still have to pay your dues. Still go through many obstacles fail, try again, fail try again right. there's no there's no shortcuts. And again these B.S. CD players are going to learn that sadly the hard way. But again, that's life. Man, versus machine. I know we touch this we touch a little bit of what is this going to look for the generations to come. So, man versus machine. Who's winning. And I guess what the future look will like for our kids. Right we're already seeing this rise of you seeing babies just being drawn towards tablets and I don't know if you see the cute little video of this baby who had a tablet and that the mom took away the tablet and then She was just on the table. And then it was a glass table. And she was to swipe, and she couldn’t it and she was like she's looking at the parents like whoa what happened like they give her books you can swipe on the book like she's losing her mind I guess is that is that the future for kids like is it only going to go downhill from here. Like what's your opinion on that ?

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah, I mean look I don't know. It's downhill. I'm more I'm an optimist when it comes to technology enabling us to do better. That's right I also see the other side of it. And look I look at it from the perspective of my dad you know like having a young daughter at home. Really. I see her older cousins. And all the people that are around are the kids that are around her really being attracted towards technology. And I think generation after generation it's just becoming more and more natural for these kids to resonate towards technology and I think it's inevitable. The path that we're going to go down I don't see anything stopping it. Maybe regulation can come in. But technology has always found a way to break through. It may pause it for a little bit or it may slow it down but it's inevitable that one day something incredible is going to happen. And it's also scary too right. So, I think our kids are going to grow up in a very different world. And we grew up and I remember when I was a kid and it wasn't about sitting at home you know playing videogames or anything like that it was playing outside and not coming home until dinner time right. Like I was I was like literally my summer vacation. You know it was. It was never in front of screens or anything like that. Kids today are very different in that technology is part of their lives from the minute, from the minute they're born. And you know I think that that's something that we need to accept. And I think that based on our discussion the last question on educating entrepreneurs and venture capitalists on what startups are real or not. We also have to educate our children. From a very early stage about things like what are the costs and consequences about sharing your data. Don't just freely share your data. Think about the fact that when you share your data someone needs to give you something in return and you have control over that data. Understand that everything that you post or everything that you display publicly is accessible to a man or a machine that could use that data for good or for evil. Right. And these things could have consequences to you as you get older. And I think that it should be a part of our education system and teaching our kids to be very conscious about the way they look at interacting with machines. On the other side of it I think that machines. Being a part of our lives, we wouldn't be where we are today, and we wouldn't be able to do all of these things these virtual podcasts or anything like that without the augmentation of machines. And I think it's incredible the fact that anyone can create this out of their bedroom or their garage. And I'm excited for that. I'm excited to teach my kids to be entrepreneurs and to use technology to create, and to make and to build for their entire lives. Because when you think about the future of work I see it more like being an entrepreneur versus working in a cubicle for 30 years and a large corporation. And that is the future that I find exciting and I think if our kids are educated they'll grow up in a way we'll harness this technology and use it for good in a controlled way where they'll protect themselves at the same time.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah, I think having the talk of just understanding the both the positives and the consequences of technology and the new waves of technology I think that's a very important talk for parents’ teachers. Like any anybody with like younger siblings or younger kids and making them understand like Hey the terms and conditions that everybody skips over is very important to  actually understand having these free services and you freely sharing information that there might be consequences and repercussions in the future and just understand that like right like everything on the internet forever and you have to be cognizant of like even though you're a kid you have to be still be cognizant of what you say and what you don't say.

Saroop Bharwani: Absolutely. And look I hope our education system is thinking about embedding these sorts of learnings consistent learnings throughout the process from a very early stage. Look I think that in the future even now that the talk with your kids about screens and machines is as important as the birds and the bees.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah no absolutely agree with you. And it might not even be school systems it just might be another educational entity. You're seeing a rise of online courses  everything. I learned business wise and marketing wise I learned online what I learned through YouTube and like Udemy and all these other courses compared college, so you might be seeing a shift when it comes to kids as well of like. If they want to learn how and what the  Decentral AI looks like boom, there's 15 YouTube videos I'll just give you step by step walk through of what that looks like.

Saroop Bharwani: On that on that note right. I think you know one of the other fundamental shifts that's going on right now is that if you're not a lifelong learner. ultimately, you're going to fall behind because things are changing at an exponential pace. It's not about getting a university degree anymore and working at the same job for like 30 to 40 years. your graduation from a university is just the beginning of your learning path for the rest of your life. And I think that society needs. To go more towards that than anything else and that is essentially why entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs because their inherent value ultimately is going to increase along the way at a much faster pace than if you're in an environment that doesn't enable that type of forced learning. Based on the situations that you're put in front of that you really got to dig yourself out of. And that's what entrepreneurship is great for and all about despite how hard it is. Your inherent value increases at a much faster pace. Yup no I totally .

Manseeb Khan: There's a really great Muhammad Ali quote when he said that if I think the exact same way that I thought 30 at 50 then I wasted 20 years of my life.

Saroop Bharwani: I know that one all too well. I know it's great quote. And that's exactly what I'm talking about.

Manseeb Khan: Saroop, thank you so much for sitting down with me today. I cannot wait to have you on the show again.

Saroop Bharwani: Awesome pleasure. Thanks so much for doing this.

End of Podcast

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IRS Crypto Rollback Raises Questions for Canada

April 15, 2025

Crypto Regulation | April 15, 2025 Trump Repeals IRS Crypto Reporting Rule. Here's Why Fintechs in Canada Should Pay Attention On April 10, 2025, U.S. President Trump signed a bill cancelling a key IRS crypto reporting rule that would have required decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms to report customer transactions to the tax agency. See:  UK FCA Plans Full Crypto Licensing Regime by 2026 The IRS' rule was called "Gross Proceeds Reporting by Brokers That Regularly Provide Services Effectuating Digital Asset Sales", which expanded the scope of traditional broker definitions to include DeFi apps like Uniswap and Metamask, and had an effective date of February 28, 2025.  However, the IRS provided a transition period given the reporting complexities involved, so the rule was set to apply to digital asset sales occurring after January 1, 2027.  But with Trump's bill nullifying the IRS rule, the implementation is now cancelled and the rule is officially gone. What does this mean for fintechs, crypto startups, and regulators in Canada? What Changed? The IRS crypto reporting rule was part of a broader push to increase tax compliance among crypto users but industry argued that it wasn't manageable because DeFi platforms don't control their user's data.  ...

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Insights from Jamie Dimon’s 2024 Letter to Shareholders

April 15, 2025

Markets and Economy | April 15, 2025 Jamie Dimon’s 2024 Letter Outlines Global Risks and Advice for Leaders On April 7 2025, CEO Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase published his annual 2024 letter to shareholders (58 page PDF), which is widely read by business and policy leaders around the globe.  This year's edition, his messages are especially urgent.  He describes a world of rising risks, and big decisions ahead with profound implications that stretch beyond simply Wall Street.  Below are 5 insights that fintech founders, investors and Canadian decision makers need to know: 1. The U.S. Dollar’s Strength is At Risk “History has shown that as countries become weaker, their currency loses reserve currency status.” Dimon issued a clear warning that's rarely said out loud by execs of America’s biggest banks.  That is the U.S. dollar’s global dominance is fading because it's strength relies on TRUST in U.S. institutions, alliances, and policy, BUT that trust is now eroding. Last week, the U.S. dollar dropped significantly reaching a 3 year low against major global currencies.  The decline is largely due to the Trump administration's escalating tariffs and trade tensions on imports from several countries, such as China, Canada and European nations.  ...

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Plaid Raises $575M to Scale Fintech Infrastructure

April 14, 2025

Financing | April 14, 2025 Plaid’s $575 Million Series D Signals a Deeper Strategy in Fintech Data and Embedded AI Financial infrastructure provider, Plaid, announced on April 3 2025, that they raised $575 million Series D at a valuation of $6.1 billion valuation led by Frank Templeton, BlackRock, Fidelity, and others including existing investors such as NEA and Ribbit Capital.  While the valuation is significantly lower than it's 2021 peak of $13.4 billion, Plaid's latest round is a story of consolidation of it's role at the heart of embedded finance, and not of decline. Plaid is a backbone of embedded finance with a footprint that spans more than 8,000 apps, including many widely used fintech tools and providers in Canada and the U.S.  For Canadian fintech companies, this raise hints at where industry is heading and who will control its most critical pipes. A Profitable Platform in a Tough Market Unlike most fintech firms still chasing break-even, Plaid finished off 2024 with positive operating margins, strong ash flows and a 25% yoy revenue increase.  In Plaid's letter to shareholders, 2025, CEO and Cofounder Zach Perret explained that it has a usage based billing model where Plaid earns revenue when an ...

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Strengthening Resilience and Leading Through Uncertainty

April 14, 2025

Leadership | April 14, 2025 Why Embracing Uncertainty Can Help Founders Gain Insight (During Chaos) In an economic climate where geopolitical tensions are high and markets volatile with inflation spikes and policy u-turns, founders and innovators that embrace uncertainty can gain an edge.  Uncertainty isn't a side effect of innovation, it's the starting line.  Inspired from Deepak Chopra's recent article on the power of uncertainty, this article looks at the impact of embracing the unknown and how it can sharpen decision-making, unlock creativity, and help build resilience during times of rapid change and uncertainty. Key Actionable Insights 1. Uncertainty Isn't the Enemy...It's the Edge Chopra argues that trying to eliminate uncertainty kills creativity.  When everything is 'the exact same', it breeds complacency.  We've all experienced this.  During some routine periods, a founder may feel that time is passing by very quickly.  Yet during times of great change, novelty, innovation, a founder may feel that time is going by slowly.  Fintech leaders who stay agile during times of ambiguity can separate themselves from those who stall in the face of uncertainty.  Put differently, successful founders don't just survive during chaos, they scan for signals of change/chaos that others can miss, often ...

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Navigating SEO for Effective Crowdfunding

April 14, 2025

April 14, 2025 If you’re running a crowdfunding campaign, visibility is key. Without the right SEO strategy, potential backers may never find your project. Below is a practical, research-backed guide to improving your campaign’s visibility through SEO. 1. Understand Your Audience First Start by knowing who you’re targeting. This helps shape your keywords, content, and messaging. Build a profile of your ideal backer Use keyword research tools like Google Trends or Ahrefs Read forum discussions and questions from your audience The more specific your understanding, the more relevant your content becomes. 2. Focus on Search Intent, Not Just Keywords Group your keywords based on what users are looking to do: Informational: “how to launch a crowdfunding campaign” Transactional: “support [campaign name]” Navigational: “[brand name] Kickstarter page” Use these keywords naturally in: Headings and subheadings Meta descriptions Blog updates and campaign FAQs Image alt text Write for people first, then optimise for search engines. For more insight into how keyword strategy aligns with intent and structure, consider following this website, which outlines foundational SEO practices that support long-term visibility. 3. Build a High-Converting, SEO-Friendly Landing Page Don’t treat your landing page as just a pitch. Make it SEO-ready: Clear, keyword-rich headline ...

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OneVest Closes $20M Series B to Lead Wealthtech

April 11, 2025

Financing | April 11, 2025 OneVest Secures $20M in Series B to Build the Future of WealthTech in North America On January 29, 2025, Calgary and Toronto-based fintech firm OneVest announced the close of a $20 million Series B round, led by Salesforce Ventures and joined by Allianz Life Ventures, TIAA Ventures, and returning backers like OMERS Ventures, Deloitte Ventures, Fin Capital, Luge Capital, and Pivot Investment Partners. See:  OneVest’s Rapid Expansion Powered by a $17M Funding Round led by OMERS Ventures OneVest estimates that $84 trillion of wealth will be passed down from Baby Boomers to Gen X and Millennials over the coming decades, creating a massive opportunity and challenge for financial institutions. OneVest's platform is positioned to offer financial institutions, such as banks, insurers, asset managers and RIAs, a module tech platform to build or upgrade their wealth management services.  Companies ca upgrade outdated infrastructure by plugging in only the components they need, reducing time and cost to market. Amar Ahluwalia, CEO of OneVest: “We are tackling massive challenges in an industry that’s been traditionally slow to adopt new technologies. Having such esteemed investors solidifies our position to reimagine wealth management technology for enterprises across the U.S. and ...

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SEC Issues Covered Stablecoin Statement, Risks Remain

April 10, 2025

Regulation | April 10, 2025 SEC Says Some Fully Backed, Payment-Only 'Covered Stablecoins' Aren’t Securities On April 4, 2025, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a statement that clarified some U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins may not be considered securities.  While the statement was welcomed and creates some breathing room for crypto and fintech projects, the announcement ignited an internal debate at the SEC and many are wondering what's next. Covered Stablecoins The SEC said certain U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins (referred to as 'Covered Stablecoins') are not considered securities if they have all of the following characteristics: Stablecoin must maintain a 1:1 fixed value equal to the U.S. dollar, without fluctuations Each stablecoin must be fully backed by an equivalent amount of high quality assets such as U.S. Treasury bills, cash, or cash equivalents that can be redeemed on demand. These assets must be held in custody and verified regularly No expectation of profit - cannot be promoted as an investment or marketed in a way that leads buyers to expect profit from simply holding the token See:  U.S. Senate Moves to Regulate Stablecoins No voting rights, control over the issuer, or shares in any profit or management decisions (no governance) ...

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Data Shows Tariffs Are Threatening Early Stage Innovation

April 10, 2025

Funding | April 10, 2025 Regulation Crowdfunding Markets Show Tariffs Straining Innovation Economy Regulation Crowdfunding (RegCF) has proven to be a resilient market for early stage entrepreneurs and investors alike.  When uncertainty strikes, it's often traditional venture capital that pulls back, while the community-driven model continues to offer early stage start-ups access to capital allowing them to innovate.  However, just in from Sherwood (Woodie) Neiss, NCFA Advisor and Principal at Crowdfund Capital Advisors, data shows that tariffs are starting to strain RegCF markets - from March 10 to April 9, 2025: RegCF investment volumes declined by 24% (yoy) to just $57.48 million New campaign launches dropped over 40% Number of investor checks also declined by 15% Average capital raise size dropped to $720,000 (from $1.2 million) Sherwood Neiss, Principal at Crowdfund Capital Advisors: “We’re seeing the first real signs of pullback in what has otherwise been a resilient funding ecosystem.  The numbers tell a story not of panic, but of pause. Investors and issuers alike are waiting for clarity—on costs, on policy, and on risk.” Tariffs Introduce New Risks for Early-Stage Companies In a volatile environment where U.S. tariffs are levied one day, and then paused the next, founders must now face ...

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Trump’s Tariff Pause Leaves Canada in the Cold

April 10, 2025

Economy | April 10, 2025 Trump Temporarily Halts Tariffs for Most Countries But Keeps Pressure on Canada, Mexico, and China On April 10, 2025, President Trump announced a 90-day pause on most of the newly implemented global trade tariffs after market backlash and political pressure.  The break was extended to countries in Europe, Asia, and parts of South America, but Canada, Mexico, and China are still under tariff pressure. Strategic Pause, Not for Everyone While Trump paused the most recent tariffs for over 75 countries, U.S. tariffs still apply to Canada and Mexico primarily on cars and auto parts (25%), steel (25%), aluminum (10%), and some agricultural products like dairy, grains, and processed foods, and continue to affect cross border trade in manufacturing and farming sectors. Trump's pause also didn't apply to China  In fact, Tariffs on Chinese good were raised to 125%, as China hit back with an 84% tariff on U.S. goods and filed new complaints with the World Trade Organization. See:  Klarna Delays IPO As Markets React to Trump’s Tariffs After the tariff pause was announced, markets surged with the S&P 500 exploding 9.5%, the largest one day gain since World War II, according to Business Insider ...

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Tailscale Raises $230M to Power Identity-First Networking

April 9, 2025

Funding | April 9, 2025 Toronto’s Tailscale Secures $230M and $2B Valuation for Identity-First Networking On April 8 2025, Toronto-based Tailscale announced that they raised $230 million CAD Series C (about $160 million USD), valuing the company at approx $2 billion CAD.  The round was made up of U.S. investors, led by Accel, CRV, Insight Partners, Heavybit, and Uncork Capital, along with some prominent individual investors notably George Kurtz CEO of CrowdStrike (returning investor) and Anthony Casalena CEO of Squarespace.  New funds will be used to grow product and engineering teams, expand globally, and improved support for fast scaling customers. Tailscale - A Shift from IP Addresses to Identity Tailscale was founded in 2019 by former Google engineers Avery Pennarun, David Crawshaw, David Carney, and Brad Fitzpatrick, and officially launched in April 2020 to help users connect devices and apps securely without relying on traditional VPNs, IP rules, or firewalls. Tailscale uses a technology called WireGuard which is easy to setup and lets devices connect directly to each other, safely and privately.  What's unique about Tailscale is its approach to solving networking challenges.  Instead of relying on where a device is located (IP address), it focuses on who or what is connecting. This ...

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