#76 Goldfinch: Building the World's First Decentralized Lending Platform | Mike Sall, Co-Founder & CEO

In Episode #78, we explore building the world's first decentralized lending platform. We’re joined by Mike Sall, Co-Founder and CEO of Goldfinch. We cover why raising capital in emerging markets is so difficult, assessing comfort levels with borrowing in crypto, and crypto regulations and compliance. “I don't think it's necessary to just get all the data all up front, no matter what. It's important to know exactly what questions that data's going to help answer.” – Mike Sall EPISODE GUIDE (LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES, AND BOOKS MENTIONED) https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/crypto-loans-emerging-markets-goldfinch-mike-sall-ig-show-notes  FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/crypto-loans-emerging-markets-goldfinch-mike-sall-ig-transcript  CHAPTERS This episode is our definitive guide to building the world's first decentralized lending platform. In it we cover: (00:00:00) – Introduction (00:01:58) – How Goldfinch is helping entrepreneurs (00:05:38) – Mike's background and interest in data science (00:09:50) – Mike's experience at Coinbase (00:15:12) – The origins of Goldfinch (00:19:54) – Why raising capital in emerging markets is so difficult (00:22:47) – Assessing comfort levels with borrowing in crypto (00:35:10) – Mike's previous businesses and learnings (00:45:11) – The Goldfinch Flight Academy (00:47:01) – On crypto regulations and compliance ABOUT GOLDFINCH Goldfinch is a decentralized lending protocol, which went live on Coinbase and other crypto exchanges on January 11, 2022 under the ticker simple GDFI. Goldfinch aims to displace traditional banks and financial institutions with fair, decentralized community controlled protocols. And when it comes to DeFi, one of the hardest problems to solve has been lending against real world assets globally. Things like businesses in real estate in a truly decentralized way, because that problem is incredibly hard to solve. You need to figure out how to vet borrowers all around the world, how to KYC lenders from every country imaginable, how to determine when to underwrite a loan based on the actions of thousands and even millions of users. This is exactly what Goldfinch has done. They recently closed a second round of financing, valuing their network at a $400 million, which was led by a16z, and have proven they can fill multimillion dollar loans in near hours instead of days.  💌 FREE NEWSLETTER https://www.outlieracademy.com/newsletter 🎙 LISTEN ON iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/outlier-academy/id1523851182 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/58edVNgqaPNaCSGSxM6pef?si=88f37a5d20434775 Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1523851182 ABOUT OUTLIER ACADEMY Learn timeless lessons on work and life from iconic founders, world-renown investors, and bestselling authors. Outlier Academy is the forever school for those chasing greatness. Past guests include Gokul Rajaram of DoorDash, Scott Belsky of Benchmark and Adobe, Joey Krug of Pantera Capital, Mark Sisson of Primal Kitchen, Luke Gromen of The Forest for the Trees, and Brian Scudamore of 1-800-GOT-JUNK. Website: https://www.outlieracademy.com Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/outlieracademy ABOUT DANIEL SCRIVNER Outlier Academy is hosted by Daniel Scrivner. Over the last 15 years, Daniel has led design teams at Square and Apple, turned around a $3M+ ARR SaaS business, and invested in more than 100 companies. He launched Outlier Academy in 2020 to learn from the world’s best founders, investors, authors, and peak performance experts. Website: https://www.danielscrivner.com Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/danielscrivner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices