In this conversation, we chat with Jesse Proudman, the VP of Crypto Investing at Betterment, who was also the co-founder and CEO of Makara. Proudman shares his journey of building a web-design business, which eventually morphed into a cloud computing service and was later acquired by IBM. He then explains his interest in blockchain and the business he built to manage crypto portfolios, which led to the creation of the private cloud product. He discusses the challenges of the public internet versus private internet, public cloud versus private cloud, and public blockchain versus private blockchain, and how the industry has evolved since the ICO collapse of 2018.
MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION
Betterment website: https://bit.ly/3WlCM8B
CEO’s Linkedin profile: https://bit.ly/3Ww8mQG
Topics: fintech, roboadvisors, crypto, investment, blockchain, cloud, cloud-as-a-service, digital assets
Companies: Betterment, IBM, IBM Ventures, IBM Cloud, Strix Leviathan, Makara, Plaid, Gemini
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TIMESTAMPS
1’28”: The entrepreneurial journey and the influences that led Jesse to becoming a founder
3’04”: Connecting the dots between designing websites for the local dentist to running cloud-as-a-service and getting acquired by IBM
7’41”: Public technology vs private technology and whether they solve for a similar answer
10’36”: Building an accelerator for IBM Ventures and how this drove the inspiration behind Strix Leviathan (a quantitative crypto hedge fund)
16’16”: Building a quantitative crypto hedge fund in the first crypto bear market and the investment strategies needed for it to work
20’32”: The trigger(s) that led to founding Makara (a cryptocurrency robo-advisor startup)
24’58”: The acquisition of Makara by Betterment, the combined offering as a result, and the psychographics of who this offering is for
30’26”: Custodial vs non-custodial holding of crypto assets, and the regulatory mine field of providing investment advice in the United States
33’53”: Betterment’s approach to modelling the full user journey/financial picture combining the traditional asset allocation with a crypto asset allocation
39’38”: The strategic vectors within the digital asset advisory business and what the future looks like for this industry
43’07”: Channels to use to connect with Jesse & learn more about Betterment
