Episode 217: Citi Ventures' Victor Alexiev on Problem Solving

This week on the podcast, Wei-Shen talks with Victor Alexiev, director and head of programs and strategic partnerships for Citi Ventures APAC. They talk about some of the challenges and opportunities within banks and how D10X—Citi Venture’s internal entrepreneurship program, which looks at moonshot projects—tackles them. 3:30 – Victor joins the podcast and gives an overview of Citi Ventures and its three pillars—investment, exploration, and learning. 10:30 – Then he delves into some of the projects D10X has worked on recently. 13:00 – Most of the solutions don’t necessitate using emerging technologies. 15:00 – Defining the problem comes first. 20:00 – Challenges and themes Citi Ventures and D10X are looking at. In Asia, Citi is interested in the lifecycle of tokenized securities. 28:30 – Victor explains how the team at D10X is expandable. 32:00 – The team is looking at advanced data analytics, ML, and NLP to mine external content for signals.