Inside the Alibaba Boardroom: Jack Ma, Masa Son, Joe Tsai & Jackie Reses

Jackie Reses has quietly done what almost no one in finance has pulled off — she's been a Goldman Sachs banker, a private equity partner at Apax, Yahoo's Chief Development Officer, Executive Chairman of Square Financial Services, a board member at Alibaba, Affirm, and Nubank, and now the founder and CEO of Lead Bank, the $1.5B fintech infrastructure company quietly powering Stripe, Ramp, Walmart, Affirm, Revolut, and over 100 crypto companies. In this episode, Jackie sits down with Molly to share the untold stories behind her improbable career — from sitting in Alibaba board meetings with Jack Ma, Joe Tsai, and Masa Son, to brokering one of the largest value-recovery deals in corporate history for Yahoo, to running Square Capital after a 72-hour hackweek project. She also gets candid about the hype around "de-banking," what it's really like inside the White House (her brother is VP JD Vance's Chief of Staff), how she built Lead Bank to $280M in revenue with zero sales team, and why the future of financial infrastructure is programmable, on-chain, and AI-native. Whether you're a founder, operator, investor, or just curious about how the most powerful in American fintech actually work behind the scenes — this conversation is a masterclass. Jacqueline Reses: https://x.com/jackiereses Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒 YouTube: https://youtu.be/0rwmXUnn7Tc 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒 • Brex https://brex.com/sourcery—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery • Turing https://turing.com/sourcery—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery • VCX https://fundrise.com/vcx—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com http://getvcx.com • Deel https://www.deel.com/sourcery—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery • Public http://public.com/sourcery–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets https://public.com/generated-asset, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery • Merge https://merge.dev—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev Follow Sourcery for the latest updates! https://www.sourcery.vc https://www.sourcery.vc/ Disclosure Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time. 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Jacqueline Reses, CEO of Lead Bank (01:06) The swiss army knife of Silicon Valley (02:46) Inside the Alibaba boardroom with Jack Ma and Masa (05:23) Being one of the only Americans on Alibaba’s board (10:29) What Jack Ma and Masayoshi Son are really like (12:32) The biggest lessons Jackie learned from Alibaba (15:12) From Goldman Sachs to Silicon Valley (17:44) Why Yahoo hired a PE investor to run HR (22:53) Yahoo was a hot mess (25:33) The deal that recovered billions for Yahoo (26:31) How Jack Dorsey recruited Jackie to Square

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I don't believe there was deep banking. I think it's a crack of shit. There's 5,000 banks in the United States. We're one of the most active banks in the crypto industry. Our last year's revenue was about $280 million, and about $31 million of net income. It is all referrals, but honestly, our clients are really our sales team.

• 0:18Molly O'Shea?

  You were on the Alibaba board.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 0:20Molly O'Shea?

  You were sitting there with Jack Ma, Josai, Mas's son, and yourself.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  Yahoo owns 40% of Alibaba, and the two companies stopped talking to each other. So I came in and was asked to help clean it up. And what I ended up doing was executing a deal between Alibaba and Alipay that helped pull back tens of millions of dollars of value back to Alibaba shareholders.

• 0:41Molly O'Shea?

  I don't know how to describe you. You're like a Swiss Army knife. You're kind of like a B2 bomber. You're kind of like an F-22. You're very stealth, and you accomplish the mission every time.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  When faced with something that's pretty unprecedented and hairy, like, I run straight into that fire.

• 1:06Molly O'Shea?

  Jackie Reses, welcome to Sorcery.

• 1:08Speaker 00

  Hello.

• 1:10Molly O'Shea?

  Well, thanks for joining us here in L.A.

• 1:12Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm happy to. It's so great.

• 1:14Molly O'Shea?

  It's such a pleasure. I'm so excited to get into this conversation because, I mean, we were talking about this beforehand. I was like, I don't know how to describe you. You're like, you're kind of like a Swiss Army knife. You're kind of like a B2 bomber. You're kind of like an F-22. You're very stealth, and you accomplish the mission every time.

• 1:33Speaker 00

  I, I hope so.

• 1:34Molly O'Shea?

  We'll see.

• 1:35Speaker 00

  I'm still well on my way.

• 1:37Molly O'Shea?

  So I want to lay out, because this is wild, your experience. So you're currently the CEO and founder of Lead Bank.

• 1:46Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:46Molly O'Shea?

  And raised $180 million, last valued at $1.5 billion.

• 1:52Molly O'Shea?

  You're currently on the boards of a firm in New Bank. Your previous boards include Alibaba, Pershing Square, Taotin Holdings, Endeavor with Ari Emanuel. And your previous roles include Exec Chair at Square, Head of Lending, Head of Square Capital at Square, and Chief Development Officer at Yahoo, which you started as an entry role of Chief HR Officer. We're going to talk about that.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  Random.

• 2:18Molly O'Shea?

  We're going to talk about that for sure. On top of that, you started TMT at APAX. You were in M&A at Goldman Sachs for about seven years?

• 2:28Speaker 00

  Seven years.

• 2:28Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, okay, so this is a lot to talk about. I know there's a lot of stories. I want to start with one of the stories that we talked about beforehand that caught my eye and I was just flabbergasted by. I just don't, I don't know how this happened. So you were on the Alibaba board. You were sitting there with Jack Ma, Joe Tsai, Mas's son, and yourself. How did that happen?

• 2:57Speaker 00

  That's a crazy group of people. It was, honestly, it was one of the most fascinating experiences of my life. I went to Yahoo to be the Chief Development Officer. And once there, I was asked to join the board of Alibaba because Yahoo was the largest shareholder. They had the most contentious relationship. If you remember, there was this dynamic where Carol Bartz had been in this contentious fight with Jack Ma that was widely chronicled. And the two companies stopped talking to each other, even though Yahoo owned 40% of Alibaba. And so I came in and was asked to help clean it up. And so what did that mean? There was like hedge funds and activists

• 3:42Speaker 00

  trying to force Yahoo to sell their stock and agreements that were going to cost Yahoo tens of billions of dollars. And so I go into this situation, having never been to China. And I show up in Hangzhou and I met Joe and Jack.

• 4:01Speaker 00

  And work to start to build a relationship to try to bridge these two fractured companies. I mean, this is like an unbelievable relationship and unbelievable value capture for Yahoo and Yahoo shareholders. Yet to not actually have a relationship with the CEO and founders of the other company is unprecedented, let alone the scale of the dollars we were talking about at the time. And so I went to China, you know, as often as I could, multiple times in a month. I spent a lot of time with the principals there. And Joe and Jack and Masa too, but I spent the most time with Joe,

• 4:43Speaker 00

  ended up to be wonderful people that I build a relationship with and ended up doing a bunch of deals with them as a board member of Yahoo in order to continue to grow the company, take the company public, and then do transactions between Alibaba and Alipay, where Yahoo ended up yielding a lot of value back from the Alipay transaction that had been seeded through mechanisms related to the way the Chinese government operates. And so it was a pretty surreal and unprecedented learning experience, that's for sure.

• 5:23Molly O'Shea?

  You were one of the only Americans ever to be on the Chinese board. What was that dynamic like?

• 5:31Speaker 00

  So it is a very weird dynamic to think how unusual it is to have the experience going deep into Chinese companies. But, you know, thankfully, they had a broad enough shareholder base that they understood both eastern and western values. And Joe, in particular, was someone who I regarded as like an incredible deal guy, easy partner to work with. A lot of the team there was incredible. And so he helped bridge the cultural dynamics of operating in China. You know, there was a moment in time, I remember, where they asked me whether I would speak at an entrepreneurialism convention for them,

• 6:14Speaker 00

  where they were presenting to female entrepreneurs in China. And you're like, okay, this will be interesting. And then you realize it's like a convention center of women. It's like a stadium.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  And what they're talking about is that they are working to change the middle-class system in China, to build entrepreneurship in China. And I'm like looking out at this stadium and I am like, oh, this is not like an ordinary course, 500-person event. This is like a gigantic deal in China. And they had this mission to just change the number of people that evolved into the middle class in China. And to do that meant elevating female entrepreneurs. And so it was like this incredible experience because the scale of China was just daunting. And the values and the conception

• 7:10Speaker 00

  that they're just going to try to change an entire classism because of this concept of entrepreneurialism was something I hadn't thought about in advance of being invited to this event. Like, the company changed the country. And that is a pretty surreal dynamic. I mean, I think we're seeing that now with a lot of AI companies. You know, fast forward, you know, 15 years. But at the time, when you think about like, what's the impact of a company like Alibaba and Alipay to the country of China? It's a pretty surreal experience to be a part of. And so as a board member, I loved every minute of it. I mean, there were a lot of times that weren't so happy

• 7:53Speaker 00

  and lots of discussions, particularly around taking the company public. But for the most part, it was a very well-run company, well-governed company, which I think a lot of Americans just have this belief that, you know, a Chinese company wouldn't be well-governed. It was an exceptionally well-run company. And so you watched excellence at its best, you know, at a scale that is pretty unprecedented. And so that was a really fun experience to be a part of. And between Jack and Joe and then Masa as another shareholder, there was certainly a lot of entertainment in any given meeting amongst that crowd of people.

• 8:32Molly O'Shea?

  I can't even imagine.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  It was pretty crazy. And to this day, I still think the best. Sushi meal I ever had was at Mas's office in Tokyo and quite the scene. But there were many dinners with Jack in particular that I'll recall. Where I think like, oh, my God, I'm never going to be in this circumstance again. This is pretty surreal in what this environment is like. But they, you know, they were very kind. I used to bring my kids to China with me. My kids were young at the time.

• 8:58Molly O'Shea?

  No way.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  And so I brought them to China and they would hang out in a conference room during board meetings, which I thought was really weird, but really cool and fun. And I have photos of them at Alibaba board meetings along the side in conference rooms. And if anyone ever goes to Alibaba, the one thing that they do that I have tried to take for myself is that they photograph everything. And so all along the walls of their office in Hangzhou are photos of meetings that they've had.

• 9:29Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, my God.

• 9:29Speaker 00

  And when you look back over the history of a company and you see all these meetings, and at the time, none of them feel very special. But when you look back over retrospective photographs and you're like, ah, I remember that meeting when we had, you know, so and so here. Or, oh, we cut that BD deal and we, you know, we did the following. We got this license. And you go back and you look at that history and I think, oh, my God, if I could just capture that for my own company, for my own kids, my company, my friends. Like, there are so many dynamics of that, which I think there's a lesson that we all should capture about getting these moments, both special and non, so that you can capture like a photographic history of your life in a really cool way.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  And so if you go out with me, I'm a little bit annoying because I'll always try to capture photos.

• 10:19Molly O'Shea?

  You bring the paparazzi with you?

• 10:20Speaker 00

  Well, I bring myself as paparazzi or people. And I'm always the person organizing a group shot. As unprofessional as it is, I kind of enjoy the moment.

• 10:29Molly O'Shea?

  Are there personalities like how they're described online? Like, what are, what is it actually like working with each of them?

• 10:37Speaker 00

  Jack Ma is an incredible visionary. And he is very big picture and thinks conceptually about concepts like, I want to change what middle class looks like in China. Well, that's a pretty bold vision and that includes moving a few hundred million people into and out of poverty into middle class. And he just has a point of view about what he'd like to see achieved. Joe Tsai is truly wonderful. He's more of a common figure now in the United States with sports teams that he and his wife Clara own. And his support over even high school and college sports.

• 11:19Speaker 00

  And so he's, you know, a really nice, wonderful, smart, human being. And then Masa, I did a bunch of deals where Masa and I were the two independents on the board. And we would end up doing a lot of work, which means that I would do the work with Masa's legal team. And Masa would come in and like, yes, it shall be blessed. And I was like, okay, my deal has now been blessed by Masa. That was kind of a fascinating experience to work side by side with him. Because, you know, he wants to also only think about very big picture issues. And so when we were tasked with things that had very execution oriented milestones

• 12:04Speaker 00

  that had to be achieved in order to get the IPO done, in order to do deals between Alibaba and Alibaba. You know, Masa would almost just assume that everyone else would do it. And he would take the big picture concepts of it and just decide whether he was comfortable with it or not. And so it's almost the opposite of the way I work. I can't even fathom operating like that, where you're like, I shall bless this. It was quite fascinating to see.

• 12:32Molly O'Shea?

  Because that was such a unique experience, I don't think anybody can say they've had that experience. What are the biggest lessons that you learned?

• 12:40Speaker 00

  Jack, in particular.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  I think is a great example of where you have a dream. With execution and a good team, you can go do it. And that dream can be company-related, or it could be population-related. He had a dream. He didn't have the background, but he got a great group of partners who became his management committee. And he went and just executed the hell out of it. And even in the face of undaunting, you know, just brutal, brutal challenges, or daunting challenges, he just kept at it. And I think there's a power to that execution and tenacity and grit that I think is incredible.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  I also think he found amazing partners. You know, like he found his alter ego in Joe and other executives on the team. And having that constellation of people that you can trust, who you bring along, who can check you, and who have opinions is incredibly powerful. And I've been lucky that I've seen other founders like that. But to me, that path is one that I've tried to follow around getting a great group of people together, pursuing a dream that you just decide, you know what, I gotta go do this. Like, go forward and just start marching step by step by step.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  And I think it really had an impact on me. China also really had an impact on me. Like, when you spend a lot of time in China, you just feel like they have a singular mission, and they will not stop at anything until they achieve that mission. And it feels so singular in their approach. Look at these cities that pop up. You look at their focus on technology. You look at how they build infrastructure. And it is mind-blowing. And so I think it's the alternative path to what we have in the United States, where we could equivocate and almost go two steps forward, maybe one and a half steps back, two steps forward.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  And kind of democracy is much messier than a totalitarian government. But like, you kind of watch how they've, how they've built that country, and it's awe-inspiring. Like, you really feel like you're living in the future.

• 15:12Molly O'Shea?

  I want to talk about all the maneuvers that you've had in your career. I mean, I think it's pretty incredible. You were at Goldman Sachs for that long and then you went to APAX, where you stood up their TMT practice and led that. And then from there, you go to Yahoo. And so you get into Yahoo and you're chief of HR. So how did you get into that role? And then how did you maneuver that role into the other role?

• 15:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, so Goldman was amazing and I had a few twists and turns at Goldman. I invested at Goldman, which was super fun. I worked in equity capital markets for a stint for this legendary executive and management committee member named Eric Dobkin. And, you know, I had just such an amazing experience there, but I wanted to invest on my own. I was always really entrepreneurial. So like my fear with Goldman was that if I stayed there, I'd never leave. Like at the time, it was private and it was an amazing place to work. But, you know, I had to go pursue this entrepreneurial dream.

• 16:19Speaker 00

  And so I ended up at APAX and I founded the media group. And there were great investors there like Warren Zev, who's actually one of my current investors in my company, who led the tech group. And we went and tried to build, you know, a media technology practice. And so at least I had this entrepreneurial opportunity within the context of a broader private equity firm. I think private equity at the time was interesting, but didn't satisfy the itch. And I really was entrepreneurial in my entire life. I just really wanted to own my own company.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  Like I always had this dream that I wanted to like own the wire hanger company or the box company, like something that no one really knows. I mean, I guess I own a bank now, so maybe I've achieved that.

• 17:12Molly O'Shea?

  I think you may have.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  I just thought like, oh my God, that's going to be cool. You own this thing that's just so institutional. And so I wanted to be an operator. And so when I went to Yahoo, I was very lucky to transition from deep finance to tech. And even though I had run my own teams in finance,

• 17:37Speaker 00

  That's a really hard transition to make and very few people have actually made it at senior levels. And so when I moved to Yahoo, the first job I was offered was the head of HR. And that to me was like a total head scratcher. I remember thinking like, why in the name of God would anybody hire me to be the head of HR at a tech company? And when I was flying out to California and thinking about it, I was like, what about what I am good at screams HR? This makes no sense. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I actually had the skills from private equity. This is like an abstraction,

• 18:19Speaker 00

  like step back and say like, what's a private equity executive good at? So they're good at legal, finance, accounting, tax, structuring, all like the very pragmatic skills that actually get the deal done. That's great. You also get people who are more junior than you to do those things, the more senior you get. So they're executable. Now in the world of AI, they're all really executable. The part that is not executable, though, is the judgment part. Like, you're sitting in a boardroom, you own a company, and you and a CEO and the board are trying to sort levers of growth. And so when you're evaluating how

• 19:02Speaker 00

  to go build a company, you're looking at capital allocation. Capital allocation comes in the form of people, and it comes in the form of dollars. And so you have to go figure out what businesses are going to grow, and how you're going to build the people and teams to allocate to those businesses in order to supercharge them. That is something that someone in HR could be really good at. So when I was going to Yahoo, Marissa had said to me, well, like, now that you're coming, you can't come and not like run M and A, you can't come and not run BD. Like, there were things that were obvious that my background

• 19:42Speaker 00

  led to. And so before I even started, I ended up with a whole series of teams that led me to become the chief development officer versus a head of HR. And that function ran a search affiliate business, was like a third of Yahoo's revenue. But that revenue was deal driven. Okay, I've done deals my entire career. That makes sense. Running BD and M and A, well, that's all deal driven. Running HR, HR in the context of Yahoo was deeply driven by restructuring. If you go back to that era of Marissa when we were restructuring the company.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  And so ironically, it led to kind of a skill match around the HR side. And so people don't think of HR as an operational job. It really is. And I ended up restructuring the company and helping to refactor and reorient different businesses and put leaders in there that were the best leaders for the types of growth that we needed to achieve in each of those businesses. We bought a bunch of things, you know, we divested of some assets. And so, and then we took Alibaba public, which was a, you know, a capital transaction that was just monumental at the time and unprecedented for a US public company.

• 21:07Speaker 00

  And so those are the types of things that were logical for someone with my background to do. It also gave me product experience because I got to go build the search affiliate business for Yahoo. So that was a great training ground in order to learn how to go build products.

• 21:23Molly O'Shea?

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• 22:08Molly O'Shea?

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• 22:53Molly O'Shea?

  I guess just to peel back on Yahoo a bit. For those who don't know the lore and the deep history of Yahoo, what was going on at this point in time?

• 23:03Speaker 00

  So it was a hot mess at this point in time. And there were multiple CEOs. There was an activist investor who had come in and demanded Alibaba be divested. And the core business was struggling at best. And it was a company that had not invested in mobile products at all. So you can imagine their apps on an Apple device, yet they hadn't really built out the quality of those apps and the breadth of those apps based on Yahoo's core product offering. And so they had Mail, they had Search, they had, and they'd just done terrible Search Shields,

• 23:48Speaker 00

  where they'd basically given up the Search business with what I describe as without gaining any terminal value for it. So they did a BD deal, otherwise known as they didn't sell it. So they didn't get multiple for it. And so they had to go figure out, business by business, how to maximize value. There was Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Homepage, Mail. And so all of those assets needed to be shined, built more as a mobile-first orientation. And then the Asian assets, so Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, had to be sold, restructured. And in the case of Alibaba,

• 24:31Speaker 00

  where we were being forced to sell a huge part of the stake at a discount. My goal was to go recapture some of that equity. And so without any ability legally to go do that, I set out on a path to go try to get some of Yahoo's equity value back and pull back from some of these deals that were done before we got there. The whole thing was like a hot mess. Everywhere you looked, there was like challenges across the business lines. And Marissa focused on the core business and I focused on Alibaba, Yahoo Japan, and then some of the deal mechanics and tax mechanics,

• 25:13Speaker 00

  which were, if you recall, like some of the biggest challenges the company was facing around the tax bill associated with the Alibaba stake. That also, it was pretty unprecedented. I think it was going to be one of the largest tax bills ever paid in corporate history. It was, it was pretty surreal from a cap gains tax point of view.

• 25:33Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, so the deal that you worked on, didn't that lead to 40 to 50 billion in equity value?

• 25:40Speaker 00

  Well, we took Alibaba public, so that yielded incredible value to Yahoo shareholders. That was a deal Jerry did. And what I ended up doing was pulling back billions of dollars of equity that we were going to be forced to sell, that we were not forced to sell after doing different transactions, and then executing a deal between Alibaba and Alipay that helped pull back, again, tens of millions of dollars of value back to Alibaba shareholders. And so the sum value of that was pretty phenomenal. And I think it's because of the growth of both Alibaba and Alipay

• 26:22Speaker 00

  that we were able to recapture, you know, tens of billions of dollars of value. It was pretty unprecedented at the time.

• 26:32Molly O'Shea?

  How does this then lead you to Square and Jack Dorsey?

• 26:36Speaker 00

  Jack's the best. So, you know, I was working at Yahoo and out of the blue, one day I get a phone call from Jack who said, "I've heard about you and I understand you run HR at Yahoo. Can you explain that to me?" I was like, "I don't understand this phone call." It was so funny to just get a phone call and ask about my job. And so, we talked multiple times about what it was like to run HR as an operating person and not a traditional HR person. And that was a model that hadn't been used that much within Silicon Valley. And he was really curious about it because he thought that HR

• 27:21Speaker 00

  should have more of an operational bent to it than a lot of traditional HR leaders deployed. And I think he also trusted the function as an advisor. You know, at the time, I called, when I ended up going there eventually, I felt like I was more of an advisor than a business advisor than, you know, what a traditional HR person would do. And so, he asked me whether I would come to Square. And at the time, it was before the Alibaba IPO and I didn't think I could leave before the Alibaba IPO. And so, I felt like my job wasn't done at Yahoo. So, I waited for the Alibaba IPO. It was amazing. Then, we reconnected and I ended

• 28:06Speaker 00

  up where I was in the middle of this huge tax transaction for Yahoo. There was a massive capital gains tax bill and I was tasked with trying to solve how to manage that. And the complexity of that, again, was just unprecedented. And so, I set out with lawyers in, you know, like five different countries to go figure out how to solve this massive tax problem. And it was a really cool problem. And when faced with something that's pretty unprecedented and hairy, like I run straight into that fire. It was like, it had my name all over it. And so, I ended up, you know, delaying the conversation with Jack again. And then...

• 28:49Speaker 00

  You know, fast forward to 2015, Square was getting bigger. And I ended up talking to Jack again about running Square Capital. It was actually a Hack Week project that a bunch of folks had started. And so I took over for this amazing Hack Week project. And I ended up going to run, literally, this thing that had started. It had 10 colleagues that were pulled together from like the risk team and the finance team and an operating team. And I pulled the team together and ended up going and building what became Square Capital. And then Square Lending, and then Square Banking.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  And you know, it became a pretty broad base of financial services products. And so it was a really cool idea. I also love that it was a Hack Week project. And anyone who gets to go build something from a Hack Week project, I think that's kind of cool to see it turn into this huge, multi-billion dollar business.

• 29:54Molly O'Shea?

  That's pretty intense. Wow. So in terms of the origins of Square, I know you also leaned into crypto when no one else was doing that. So why did you decide to do that?

• 30:10Speaker 00

  So Square leaned into crypto very early on. And that was really Jack's brainchild. He had a vision for Bitcoin trading that he wanted to see executed. And in the way that he and a team started Square Capital, he and a team of three engineers sat down on a Thursday and wouldn't leave the office until Friday night. They coded the system. And I actually sat alongside of them for part of it and did whatever I could to be helpful. And I felt like I was their pizza orderer, their comedy routine, their breath of fresh air,

• 30:53Speaker 00

  and just someone to coach them and, you know, be happy to cheer them along. And so Jack wouldn't leave the office until that product was launched. And so he sat there for a few days and made that happen.

• 31:10Molly O'Shea?

  So Square was one of the first fintechs to lean into crypto when it was still a little taboo. It was a little hypey, honestly, in the crypto world.

• 31:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, kind of. It was edgy.

• 31:21Molly O'Shea?

  It was edgy.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  Super edgy.

• 31:23Molly O'Shea?

  So what was going on there and why did you lean into it?

• 31:25Speaker 00

  I love this story because it's all Jack. And the amazing part about Square and its crypto origins is that, like, everything about it was Jack's personality. So Jack Dorsey just decided that he wanted to have a crypto product. He wasn't waiting for anyone. He wasn't gonna deal with anyone's, you know, objections. He was just gonna go get the job done. He took three engineers and he sat at the corner of the sixth floor at 1455 Market and didn't leave the office for three days. And so everyone sat there, he included, and they coded up the crypto trading platform.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  And so on Friday night, when they finally were able to trade, it was like the moment that they all left the office. And I, you know, my space for Square Capital was right next to where they were sitting. I love the group of people who were doing it. It was a very small group that I happened to be close with. I was more than happy to light up the space and keep smiles on their faces. And so I just thought it was the coolest thing that in January of 2017, they were gonna launch this crypto product. And then like the chaos starts, which is you're a public company and you wanna launch a Bitcoin product, but there weren't really public companies that had Bitcoin.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  And so you have like accounting implications, which is a really weird thing. You have SEC implications. So you have to take this idea to the SEC, but no one knows how to account for it. And so that is wackadoodle, right? You're trying to go then explain what kind of accounting it should be to your accounting firm. And so we almost got held up that first quarterly earnings period because we couldn't... Didn't get accountants in the SEC to agree that we were accounting it correctly. And then actually get it in the numbers in order to launch the product. And so, and we weren't gonna wait another quarter to make that happen. We were just anxious to release the product.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  And so, I think everything about that experience just screams Jack Dorsey and his personality on steroids because of the energy and the creativity and the bombastic nature of the way he wanted to go get this product into the world.

• 33:51Molly O'Shea?

  What are his key leadership traits? I know you just mentioned a few, but like, what is, what is Jack Dorsey like? I have no idea.

• 33:59Speaker 00

  So, I loved working with Jack. You know, he's, he's more of a normal person than you would think because people portray him as this iconoclastic quirky character. And there are elements of his personality that are quite iconoclastic. However, he's deeply thoughtful. He's very caring for his family. He's very healthy. He's very curious and he's an amazing listener. And I think a few of the things that I've loved about him is when he has an idea, he actually says like, "I kinda wanna see this come to fruition," and he just makes it happen.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  Like, how many of us have dreamed about an idea and then you just let it sit? And you let it stew in your brain and you do nothing about it? That is not Jack. When Jack has an idea that he thinks is gonna change the world, well, of course, we're gonna put people behind it and go execute against it. That's just the way he is. And so, sometimes he's wrong on timing, but he's never wrong about the idea. And so, following his instincts is a great way to follow what to expect in consumer products. His, his listening skills are unparalleled. You know, he'll sit in meetings and not say a word. Like, not say a word.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  And you can either think that he's really freaky and you're like, you know, off put by it, or you kinda watch why he's doing it, what he's synthesizing, what he's capturing, and then realize there's real wisdom in his ability to just zip it.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  And that's probably the biggest takeaway I have from my experience working side by side with him for so long is just like, zip it. You know, you don't need to talk, you don't need to put your ideas out there first. Listening really matters and making sure that you're capturing the essence of what people are saying, even when it is a opinion that is divergent from your own. That can drive a lot of value in making your thinking crisper.

• 36:12Molly O'Shea?

  And what was it like with Twitter going on? Was that chaos?

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Oh, it was a disaster. Like honestly, the worst job I ever had was being the head of HR at Square. So I ran these financial services products and I ran HR. And the HR job at Square could have been okay, but for the fact that Jack is running Twitter. And anytime that there was drama at Twitter, which was like every day.

• 36:37Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  You know, people at Square would have a hissy fit about something that was going on at Twitter, but we couldn't do anything about it. Be like, Jack, you know, Laura Loomer locked herself to the office today at Twitter. What are we gonna do? He'd say, what do you mean, what are we gonna do? This is Square. It'd be like, I know, but everyone at Square really cares about like what's happening a half a block away. And it's like, you know, and so you're literally sitting there with your arms tied behind your back. You don't know what you can say. He won't say anything. And it was almost like, weirdly, Twitter never would be said at Square. And people would talk about like some controversy, but like we didn't talk about Twitter.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  And one of the things I found incredibly frustrating was even today, like analysts or reporters will say Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, you know, reports earnings. And you're like, no, Square reports earnings. You know, Square's CEO, or Block now, for a long time now, Block's CEO reports earnings. But like everyone loved the drama of Twitter. And Twitter was really fun to hang out with in Soho, but Square was where. You got the stability and the steady love and the family that was just steady Eddie over a long period of time. So it was quite the experience.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  But that conflict of not being able to control what was happening at Twitter was just like an impossible, impossible job. I used to call their head of HR, who was also their CMO, Leslie Berland, who was a friend of mine. Leslie and I would get on the phone on a regular basis and we would have like the, "Oh, God, what are we gonna do about this now?" And so we had some amazing moments of camaraderie. And the two companies, a lot of the executives thought of ourselves as cousins. So if we would have dinners together, we would have very funny moments of just making fun of Jack because we all considered ourselves like the family. And so that was a really fun experience.

• 38:48Speaker 00

  That was actually a more fun experience than just having one company to run is like the chaos of having this cousin on the side.

• 38:55Molly O'Shea?

  That is so wild.

• 38:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, and they got into so much more trouble than we did. It was like being able to look at your hot mess of a sibling and be like, "What are you people doing over there? You're always up to something." And we would be dotting our i's and crossing our t's like the financial nerds that we were.

• 39:14Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, you're silently working at your desk and then you open the door, you go over there and everyone's screaming at each other.

• 39:19Speaker 00

  Well, silently working, but we're like making debit cards and point-of-sale systems and loan products. And they're in the sexy, hot mechs of American and global culture. And we're talking about whether our debit card has our logo on the front or the back and how thick the metal is. It was like the contrast couldn't have been more extreme between the two companies. Even our executives, we were such nerds compared to them. They were like the cool kids a half a block down the street. And even in technical jobs, somehow they always seemed to be much cooler than the square execs were.

• 40:03Molly O'Shea?

  I guess maybe that's a good way to ask. So as you've seen through different tech cycles and through many different lenses of companies, how do you discern through hype and then also durable innovation over time?

• 40:20Speaker 00

  Oh my God, there's so much hype. You know, interestingly, being involved in the crypto business, because we're one of the most active banks in the crypto industry. We operate in an industry that feels like hype and momentum is kind of the underbelly that has kind of catapulted the industry from 2009, when Satoshi wrote the white paper, all the way through to today, where it's, you know, multi-trillion-dollar established set of industries on a global basis. And I think the characteristic that I look for mostly in crypto products, and I think the discerning kind of framework to look at,

• 41:04Speaker 00

  you know, for hype in general, is like, is there a real use case? Like, does this product actually add durable value? There are so many things in my industry where you kind of have to scratch your head and say like, "Yeah, but I don't understand why that makes something better." Like, is this better? Like, or is it just like a different version of doing that? Because if it's not making an experience better, a product better, I'm not quite sure why there would be product-market fit for that experience. And I think, you know, AI is at one end of the spectrum, where the mass adoption, I think, makes it so obvious to see where there's value being created and people are using these tools to really change the world.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  And then crypto is somewhere in the middle, where you have big parts of crypto that have lots of hype and momentum attached to it and less of a durable use case. And I think we're really starting to see a breakout between those products and crypto, for example, where there is a use case and durability. And those products which won't stand the test of time. And so I think the framework that I've applied to crypto is probably the same that I'd apply to any other product.

• 42:21Molly O'Shea?

  What did you think about the de-banking situation that was going on?

• 42:24Speaker 00

  Okay, I don't believe there was de-banking. I think it's a crock of shit. I think it's an absolute crock of shit. Let me just say this. There's 5,000 banks in the United States. We have a lot of red states. Are you telling me that in lots of red states, including where my company is headquartered, which is Kansas City, Missouri, those banks were not willing to bank, for example, conservative companies? I think you have to believe that that's not true. That's one piece of the de-banking argument. Second piece of the de-banking argument, you can't bank crypto companies in, you know, the 2022, 2023, 2024 framework, time period. Well, let's think about this.

• 43:08Speaker 00

  There are lots of crypto VC firms. When those VC firms were wiring money into the portfolio companies that they were investing in, were they bringing it in a wheelbarrow of cash? Or was it being wired to somebody's bank account? I think I heard bank account. And so as we go and fund crypto companies of that era, they were being funneled into bank accounts. Now, it might not be the banks that everybody wanted to use, but there were plenty of banks that were funding and supporting the corporate accounts of all of these companies. And so then you have to ask yourself,

• 43:50Speaker 00

  well, were these companies actually getting de-banked? So let me tell you what was happening. So what de-banking actually means is that banks transitioned out of offering crypto products or risky products like adult entertainment or something like that. Why did they choose to do that? They either didn't have enough density in their client base. So it wasn't, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. Like, you don't have enough density of clients. So you don't go hire specialist compliance teams. You don't go hire specialist finance teams. That yields you pulling back from an industry. You go, it's just not worth it for me. I don't have enough clients. That was one thing that happened.

• 44:35Speaker 00

  That's legit. That happened to lots of companies. But that is not systematically de-banking. That's choosing not to invest in the industry. The second thing that happened is that there was an era when digital asset companies were less mature. Some of them had chosen not to pursue all of the legal and regulatory issues that you need in order to comply with banking regulations. If you're not going to comply with US banking regulations, guess what? You're not going to be able to keep your account at every bank. And so a lot of companies, depending on what they were building, the infrastructure that they were building,

• 45:17Speaker 00

  there were parts of that infrastructure components that like wouldn't have met a KYC standard. KYC is know your customer. And those clients were removed from that bank's system. So they were technically de-banked. But if you're not willing to follow some of those KYC requirements, I'm not sure you should be banked. And so there's lots of logic as to why that happened. And then there might be cases where a bank just decides to not include executives in a particular industry, or they choose, they don't want the risk associated with something. That is their prerogative. And banks can make decisions based on their own reputational risk.

• 46:01Speaker 00

  Now, whether we all see reputational risk in the same lens, I think that's up for judgmental debate. But thankfully, you have 50 states and 5,000 banks. And there are plenty of people who would take a pro and a con of each side of those judgments. And be able to offer services to many of those people who say that they were excluded from the banking system.

• 46:25Molly O'Shea?

  Today's episode is sponsored by V C X by Fundrise, the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. Learn more at get V C X dot com. Some of you may not have heard this yet, but our sponsor Public just launched something called Generated Assets, and it brings A I into investing in a way I've honestly never seen before. Here's how it works. You type in an idea like A I powered supply chain companies with positive free cash flow, or defense tech companies growing revenue over 25% year over year. Public's A I then dispatches a swarm of agents that scan every single U S stock, evaluates them, and instantly builds a custom index around your thesis. What really stands out is how clearly it explains why each stock is included.

• 47:10Molly O'Shea?

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• 47:55Molly O'Shea?

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• 48:11Molly O'Shea?

  So let's pull this forward to today with Lead Bank. You've raised $180 million at a $1.5 billion valuation from some incredible names, which I can't even list off the top of my head because it's a long list. But you've raised from Andreessen Horowitz, Co2, Greycroft, Iconic Capital, Coastal Ventures, Zee Partners, Ribbit Capital, and also Larry Fink, Rob Goldstein, Larry Summers. So when you were starting this, why did you decide to buy an 100-year-old community bank?

• 48:47Speaker 00

  So in order to do what I wanted to do, you needed to own a bank. And you needed to own a bank holding company. So I had a vision to build a fintech infrastructure company, to be the underlying infrastructure to support fintech, crypto, e-commerce companies. So in order to do that, you have to have the right set of licensing in order to go build those products. So I went and looked across the country for the best banking law to support what I wanted to build. And I came across Lead Bank in Kansas City, Missouri. So I went and bought the bank

• 49:29Speaker 00

  and then brought a technical team of product design and engineers in order to build the technical infrastructure that was needed to build the products that we now support. And so it was a really cool idea. It was actually born out of the struggle that we had while I was at Block. You know, like I ran all these financial services products, and they were all built on the rails of old-school, traditional banks. And those banks are all in, you know, typical red states. They're all sub $10 billion. They were typically like a billion-dollar to $5 billion banks, and most of them had no engineers.

• 50:12Speaker 00

  So imagine being the world's biggest fintechs and operating on the rails of these tiny banks. And so when I was working with a lot of these institutions... I decided that I didn't want the risk associated with their infrastructure. And I went while I was at Square and built a bank. So we coded the first line of code. We built all the policies. And that bank was something that no tech company had ever done before. Even today, fast forward 11 years from when we did that. I think it took 11 years from when we went and pursued that license for the next person to go and actually get one of those special licenses.

• 50:56Speaker 00

  And so it just wasn't something that tech companies ever did. And so with the really arcane knowledge of how do you go build a bank? I then knew enough to know that I wanted to go buy a bank in order to build this infrastructure myself. And I knew how to build it so that it would be scalable and built in a way that clients could deploy it against massive financial services products.

• 51:23Molly O'Shea?

  Let's talk about your clients because you have no sales team. This has all been referrals. And you've reached over 200 million in revenue?

• 51:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, our last year's revenue was about $280 million. Yeah, and about $31 million of net income.

• 51:38Molly O'Shea?

  Wow. And all referrals. Can you list out some of your clients?

• 51:44Speaker 00

  It is all referrals. But, and honestly, our clients are really our sales team. And between our clients or me,

• 51:54Speaker 00

  that's sales. And so, you know, our first client was actually Ramp. And at the time, I was at a COTU conference. And I was with Eric. And I pitched him on what we were building. And he was like, I'm in. And we ended up working on one product with them. And his philosophy was, you can be no worse than the traditional banks that we use. And given the roadmap that you're going to build and the technologists that you're working with, you'll be incredible. And so I'm willing to wait the six months when you go build out your tech and advance your technology in such a way that we're willing to wait.

• 52:39Speaker 00

  And I know you won't be worse than what we work with. And so we got very lucky to have such a high-quality client. And so... That was our first client and then Atlas was one of our other clients and they had just had a situation where another bank ran into trouble and Atlas had to come off their rails along with a handful of other clients. So they immediately came to us in an emergency and said, can you take us? We hadn't even closed the deal when I said like you have to go talk to the team before we own the company, but if they onboard you, we will absolutely deploy our technology to your products. And so we ended up onboarding Atlas

• 53:22Speaker 00

  as our second client. And then from there, we've added Stripe, Walmart's One Pay, Affirm, Flex, Self. And so we have an amazing, amazing roster of clients. Revolut is a client. And so I think they're just absolutely incredible clients to work with and they're the world's best consumer and fintech companies. We have lots of crypto companies as our clients, over 100 of them. And so we're lucky that they refer us into the network and our investors

• 54:02Speaker 00

  refer people to us and it's all word of mouth. We're, you know, we're really lucky to have such an incredible client base.

• 54:10Molly O'Shea?

  What is the core of the technology and how did you build that tech stack?

• 54:15Speaker 00

  So we have five core API sets. First is lending. Second is money movement. Third is issuing. Fourth is accounts and fifth is stable coins. And so all of those things sound absolutely boring. Like it sounds dreadfully boring and as if we're stuck in 1974 with the exception of the stablecoin one. But all of those APIs are built around modern programmable, interoperable APIs that can be adjusted to build any kind of product that a client needs based on like their infrastructure needs. So we provide the components that

• 54:57Speaker 00

  Make their systems operate underneath. And so you could be Bridge, which is now owned by Stripe. And we help build their stablecoin-backed cards. And we deploy account technology. And by accounts, I mean literally bank accounts. The only difference is we could spin up a million of them in very short amount of time versus sitting there with a pen and paper and hoping for a free toaster at the end of your half an hour signup for a bank account.

• 55:29Speaker 00

  You know, we could deploy a million accounts instantly. But they're really cool products. They just sound dreadfully old school, even though there's nothing about the construction of our programmable APIs that's remotely old school, including like our stablecoin products, where we're one of the only banks in the United States that could build both fiat and stablecoin on-chain rails concurrently. And so I think, given where the financial system is going, you know, I think that product suite is highly relevant to the future of finance.

• 56:03Molly O'Shea?

  Where does AI fit into the platform?

• 56:06Speaker 00

  Well, AI is incredibly powerful to everything we've built. I mean, first, from a team. Our team uses AI in every team in our company. And it doesn't matter whether you're in the ops team, you're in the local lending team, you're on the HR team. And obviously, our technical teams deploy almost all of their code with AI. But then, as it relates to products, there are core components of our products that deploy AI in the products so that our clients can use them for agentic commerce. And so the way that they're built, the way that they're deployed, they're pretty powerful from like a money movement. It's completely programmable,

• 56:48Speaker 00

  such that you could deploy it in a real-time payment network or in a checkout, a checkout modal prompt. And you could use it for agentic commerce or any type of financial product you're trying to deploy in context of whatever your product is doing.

• 57:07Molly O'Shea?

  So you not only are an icon in Silicon Valley and banking, but your brother is JD Vance's Chief of Staff.

• 57:17Speaker 00

  Crazy.

• 57:17Molly O'Shea?

  And you have deep ties to DC. So what's going on there?

• 57:22Speaker 00

  Well, I'll start on the nutso part because I'm from Atlantic City. And so I don't think anyone expected these two kids from Atlantic City to end up where we are. But yeah, no, my brother's worked for JD since pre-his Senate run. And he has this amazing job as his chief of staff, which is pretty surreal. And it's really cool to see, even from my vantage point, because I've never really had that much of a view into politics. And now, he's just living his ordinary life. And like where he is in the world, or what he's doing, which is chronicled all over the news,

• 58:02Speaker 00

  is on a family thread where you're like, you know, dude, you gotta get your stuff out of the house. And he's like, I'm on my way to Islamabad.

• 58:12Speaker 00

  And so, you know, it's a very funny dynamic to have where you realize that people are just people, no matter what their job is. And everyone's just trying to kind of do their best. But it certainly is fascinating to look at the world through his lens and the lens of his colleagues. Because at this point, they, you know, are in huge jobs across the executive branch.

• 58:39Molly O'Shea?

  What's it like going into the White House with a family tie there versus for work?

• 58:46Speaker 00

  It's weird. Like, it's very weird. Like, I'm very deferential. Like, I really feel like I should walk in and curtsey to everyone I see. Like, it's still the White House. It doesn't matter who's in it at the time. You have to kind of go in with the attitude of like, this is a historic house that has been part of our country's history. And so I have that kind of deep respect for the institution. And then, it's just crazy because it's your sibling. So you can like, ask stupid questions that you'd otherwise never ask people. Or you go into rooms that you probably wouldn't ever be allowed to go in in a corporate environment, or where you're trying to be more formal and polite.

• 59:32Speaker 00

  But it's your brother. And so, that's kind of a fun and surreal... Experience that I, you know, I've loved. I feel grateful that I get to do that. And so, you know, going into some of those places in the White House has just been like eye opening. Like it makes you feel really small and like a tiny, tiny little part of history. Just because the, the House and the institution of the American government just is so storied, regardless of who's in there. And so, you know, I feel like it's my moment to witness history in a weird way. Like I've gone on Air Force Two, that was super cool.

• 1:00:17Molly O'Shea?

  No way.

• 1:00:18Speaker 00

  Wildly cool.

• 1:00:20Molly O'Shea?

  Where'd you go?

• 1:00:20Speaker 00

  It's like a life moment. We went from the Atlantic City Airport. As I said, I'm from Atlantic City. We went from the Atlantic City Airport to the White House. And JD and Usha and many people from the White House were kind enough to come to my father's funeral last summer. And so we flew back to DC and they were nice enough to take me. It was so cool. And I have to say, it kind of looks like a business class flight. And I've been on many planes that are much nicer, but it's kind of amazing. And may I get to go again, I'd be absolutely thrilled. But it's super cool. Like what a life experience to have.

• 1:01:03Molly O'Shea?

  That's wild.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's pretty crazy. And then the rest of my government experience, I spend a lot of time with the FDIC, with the OCC, with the Federal Reserve. I do a lot of work in trying to improve banking regulation for the digital and AI age. And doing a lot of work around crypto legislation. It's super fun. Like I genuinely like our regulators. I think they're good people. They've been wonderful to us at LEED. And so I've been able to build these relationships over the last 15 years. You know, throughout the organization. Like I remember in 2016, you know, Hamam, my co-founder, helped the FDIC think through machine learning.

• 1:01:50Speaker 00

  And how algorithmic lending works. And so from that era where it was like the first glimpse into what the precursor to full AI underwriting models look like. I've been deeply embedded in a lot of these regulatory environments to build relationships from all levels of the organization. And so I've loved being included. I, you know, I've loved being part of the Fed family. That's super cool. And the Fed has been largely nonpartisan. And the nerdiest group of economists you've ever seen. Really just trying to divine economic wisdom across the United States to make employment and inflation judgments,

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  make the American economy better. And so that's been fun to be a part of because I didn't understand it before I got involved at the San Francisco Fed. And then John Williams and now Mary Daly have just taught me so much about economics and how they make decisions in order to move interest rates.

• 1:02:53Molly O'Shea?

  What do you think the biggest misconception is about working with the government?

• 1:02:57Speaker 00

  They can't actually have a conversation. I think the more honest and open you are and square about what your agenda is, the more you can have a conversation that actually provides advice or listens to a perspective about what they're trying to achieve. Like, there's so many things that need to be changed to update the world for the AI age. And I don't think the experts are going to be in the government at all. Therefore, the people who are the experts need to show up in droves and actually provide their insights to the government so that they then can distill the best framework for judgment to build laws.

• 1:03:40Speaker 00

  Like, I think lawmakers are good at figuring out what level to write those frameworks in, but they're not going to be able to do it in AI based on their insight and knowledge and experience. They have zero of it. And so I think all of us who have specialized knowledge, mine around crypto, financial Services, building out digital rails. Many on the AI side probably lead. Many of us are experts on what regulatory frameworks need to be changed for agenda commerce. But like true AI legislation on the core of the technology. I think, you know, it behooves all of those executives to just show up in droves.

• 1:04:21Molly O'Shea?

  I know we have to wrap up. I'm getting some signals, but a fun fact that I learned is that the bank is 60% women.

• 1:04:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:04:31Molly O'Shea?

  That's crazy. Where did you find all these female bankers?

• 1:04:34Speaker 00

  Well, they just happen to be amazing at what they do. So my co-founder, Erica, is obviously female. My other two co-founders, Hammam and Ronak, we all work together at Square. So we're obviously half female, half male as co-founders. And then our executive team is half female. And then our entire company is almost 60% female. And it's not by purpose. We just happen to be that way. And we hire the best people for the job. I think we're lucky because that means our network includes 100% of the people who are available for the job and not 50%.

• 1:05:14Speaker 00

  And so we get the benefit of having a broad perspective on what amazing looks like. And so I think we're really lucky because our team is absolutely killer. Like we have an amazing culture. We have an amazing group of executives and we're really lucky that we have a great place to work in.

• 1:05:35Molly O'Shea?

  So as we wrap up, I always have one question. What are you most looking forward to in the next year?

• 1:05:41Speaker 00

  I have to say two things. One, personal, one, work. We're building the coolest shit. I am so excited for what is going to come out of lead. And our teams are fired up and we are going to launch some amazing products in the next year. And then on the personal side. One of my kids is graduating college and my kids are in an amazing place. And I feel like the next year, they're just thriving and it makes me so happy. So, so happy. So I'm just excited to watch them grow over the next year. I know that's like sappy and mom-like, but it is true. It's one of the things that gives me the most joy.

• 1:06:21Molly O'Shea?

  That's so exciting.

• 1:06:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's good. It's good. I love both. I mean, lead is like my child. I love lead so much. It's like my baby. I don't think of it as work. I think of it as like my favorite thing to do every day when I wake up. But like, both are really my pride and joy, even though that's weird to say that my job is my pride and joy. My company is, I guess, my pride and joy.

• 1:06:44Molly O'Shea?

  Well, that's a lovely place to end on. Jackie, thank you so much. This was an amazing conversation.

• 1:06:50Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:06:51Molly O'Shea?

  Fascinating.

• 1:06:52Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:06:53Molly O'Shea?

  Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, sorcery.vc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up.