May 2020 Q&A with Shopify’s Fintech Head — Virtual Event This Thursday — Beta Access to WaterCooler
Hey everyone, Ian here. Hope things are well and you enjoyed Julie’s great issue of FTT+ which went out yesterday.
As promised, here’s our interview with Shopify’s VP of financial services, Kaz Najatian.
FTT Q&A May 2020: Shopify’s Kaz Nejatian - YouTube
Shopify’s VP of financial services, Kaz Nejatian, talks to FTT founder Ian Kar about his experience in fintech, working at Facebook, and his vision around fi…
Kaz has a deep track record in fintech product development—I got a chance to know him when he was the CEO of Kash, a YC backed fintech company; he then went to Facebook and worked on fintech products there, and after a few years landed at Shopify. Shopify, of course, has been in the news recently for the plethora of fintech products it’s been rolling out: most recently, Shopify Balance, a banking product for its merchants, and Buy Now, Pay Later, an installment product on top of Shop Pay.
Had a lot of fun doing this interview and diving deeper into Kaz’s, and Shopify’s, product philosophy a bit more. It was also really impressive to learn just how nimble the Shopify team is—for instance, when launching Capital in the UK, the team that spearheaded the project was only 12 people and they were able to execute the project in a matter of weeks. It’s clear to me after chatting with Kaz that there’s a ton of different initiatives Shopify can get into to better serve its merchants, and the journey is just beginning.
We have some other stuff to talk about today too!
This Thursday, from 11-12:30pm ET, we’ll be hosting our second virtual event, on Regulation and US Fintech. We’re lucky to have an esteemed group of folks to talk to:
- 11-11:30—Amias Gerety, an investor at QED and ex-acting Assistant Treasury Secretary under President Obama.
- 11:30-12—Melissa Koide, CEO of FinRegLab, former Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Treasury Department, and Vice Chair at the Milken Fintech Advisory Committee.
- 12-12:30—John Pitts, head of policy at Plaid and former deputy assistant director of the CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau)
If you’re interested, feel free to RSVP at the link here. We’ll also be recording and publishing these interviews on our website (coming soon!)
In addition to our website, we’re really excited launch WaterCooler soon too—a community forum product for FTT+ members. I think it’s going to be a great platform for the FTT+ community to share our collective knowledge, talk about what’s going on in the fintech space, and learn from each other. We’ll also planning on some WaterCooler specific content (like AMA’s) which we’re excited about too.
If you’re interested in joining the beta, fill out this short form here! Hope to see you there.
Thanks, Ian