Ash Sampat

May 14, 2021

Shopify's unique relationship with merchants

Imagine your strategy makes a conscious decision NOT to help customers, to help them succeed. Whilst strategy is as much about what you’re not going to do as it is about what you will, not doing something purely for the benefit of your customer is unique. This is what Shopify does. On business breakdowns, Alex Danco talks about how Sho...
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April 18, 2021

Employee Centred Design

Citi's $900 million slip-up is a great example of why internal tools matter. Bespoke internal software at large corporations can feel as though it's been put together by someone who's never met another human being. There's an opportunity to unlock vast amounts of value by taking as much care in design for employees as firms would do fo...
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April 5, 2021

How can Product embrace regulation to innovate?

Regulation capture is a serious problem. Second-order effects can destroy competition and stifle innovation. It's estimated that 80% of legacy bank's annual budget is spent on compliance and mandatory change, leaving 20% for innovation. If regulation is this resource-intensive how can new entrants compete? The good news for FinTech pro...
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March 9, 2021

Why BaaS?

Banking as a Service (BaaS) is the most exciting area in FinTech. 11:FS define BaaS as the provision of complete banking processes as a service using an licensed bank's secure and regulated infrastructure with API-driven platforms. That's broad, but then again that's what excites me, there are plenty of opportunities in this space. I'm...
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