Podcasts

Nick McShane, founder of Progress Partners, shares his experience of working with pioneering internet companies and his journey to founding a boutique investment bank that now helps startups with M&A, go-to-market strategy, and accessing new markets. Nick McShane makes for a fascinating guest on this latest episode of Finalis’ Pencils Down podcast, having experienced first-hand the meteoric rise of the internet during the late ‘90s to early 2000s and working with some of the worldwide web’s pioneering companies. He went on to found Progress Partners, a boutique investment bank, and has since been helping startups with strategy work, go-to-market strategy, and accessing new markets. With 35 people based in Boston, New York, and Washington DC, Progress Partners is now also involved with M&A and helping clients who are ready to buy and sell companies. Listen to this episode to learn about Nick's unique journey to founding Progress Partners and his perspective on the modern world of investment banking.

Earlier this year, Finalis took a major step forward, expanding overseas with the launch of its 15a-6 chaperoning line of business, introducing the UK investment banking sector to Finalis’ tech-enabled regulatory compliance solution. Join Finalis CEO Fed Baradello and his Pencils Down guest, Mathew McConnell, the company’s new International Business Manager, as they discuss how non-U.S. boutique investment bankers can gain efficient and expedited access to US capital markets via Finalis’ platform. And, conversely, how bankers on the Finalis platform can potentially access deals and funders in the UK and, eventually, across the EU.

Investment bankers arrive at their eventual careers in a variety of ways, some more orthodox than others. Chad Harding’s was fairly unconventional, in that he started out in chemistry, mathematics, and engineering, from which he took an abrupt 180-degree turn to banking. In his wide-ranging conversation with Pencils Down’s host, Finalis CEO Federico Baradello, Chad talks about that journey and the various paths and byways that led him to a career in investment banking and venturing on his own firm, after a couple of false—but nevertheless illuminating—starts. There is much hard-won wisdom to be gleaned in Chad’s story, for entrepreneurs and prospective founders. Join him and Fed in this fascinating story that truly humanizes investment banking, from just a domain that centers on deals and dealmaking, to one that shows that it’s eminently possible to have banking “with a heart.”

Leaving Goldman Sachs—where Centerfin CEO Kyrill Asatur's career was ascendant—was definitely not a move for the faint-hearted. In the years since founding his own boutique investment firm, Asatur's firm has been involved—much like Finalis is doing—in the democratization of the investment banking space, which is nothing less than a progressive transformation of the industry, with deep and abiding consequences for the future of finance. Join Asatur as he shares this story, and much more, with Pencils Down's host, Finalis CEO Fed Baradello, in Episode 19 of the podcast.

The past two and a half years have been an unparalleled time in world history for so many reasons, starting with the exogenous shock of the Covid-19 pandemic. A "black swan" event, as Finalis' Community Manager characterizes it in his wide-ranging interview of Finalis' CEO Federico Baradello, the global pandemic in early 2020 coincided with the launch of this regtech startup with an unapologetically audacious goal—nothing less than creating the world's largest securities brokerage platform. Tune in to this special episode of Pencils Down, in which its usual host becomes its guest and interviewee instead—as Fed talks about Finalis' beginnings and its phenomenal growth trajectory in just a little over two years, sharing deep and actionable insights about what it takes to found and grow a startup in a space no one previously had thought to develop.

Even though the concept has been around for a long time, the term “impact investing” didn’t hit our nomenclature until 2007. Historically, that tells you all you need to know about the type of priority something like climate change has had on investing. That’s all changing Logan Yonavjak, Director Of Sustainability at International Farming & Venture Partner & Advisor at SeaAhead, and Founder at Fuego Capital, is upending everything the financial industry has to say about the legitimacy of ESG and cause-based investment.

A rare positive story from the pandemic is the journey investment banking has taken navigating the shock of COVID-19, moving from adjusting to virtual technologies to embracing the hybrid between in-person and remote work. Gaurav Bhasin, Managing Director at Allied Advisers, has engaged i n cross-border investment banking throughout his entrepreneurial career and sees the challenges of the last three years as an opportunity to push the industry forward, adapting to the needs of clients.

Most people do not leave Stanford University before receiving their degree, but that is not the case for forward thinking problem solver Shubham Goel and his partner, as they took a leave from Stanford University to build Affinity. Shubham Goel is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Affinity. Affinity is an intelligence platform that allows dealmakers to find, manage, and close the best deals. Affinity is focusing on building relationships.