NCFA Canada | Nov 9, 2018

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Transcription of Interview

Intro: Welcome fintech Friday's a weekly podcast brought to you by the National Crowdfunding and Fintech Association of Canada and partners.Covering all things fintech block chain be AI and alternative finance.

In this episode we cover how AI can supplement salespeople,  the excitement behind computer vision and the future of business AI.

Manseeb Khan: Hey everybody how is you doing today? Manseeb Khan here and you are tuning in to Fintech Friday. Today I have an absolutely incredible guest. Assad. OK from a Fortuna.ai Thanks so much for being here today. I mean this means the absolute world to me.

Asad Naeem: Yeah thank you so much for having me. It's an honor.

Manseeb Khan: So, could you just for a second. Give us a little bit more of what Fortuna is and a little bit more about you and your background.

Asad Naeem: Yeah absolutely. So, I'll start with me with my background so basically, I've done sales all my life I started out in the in the trenches at the future shop and some of the guys have done sales and you know they've gone through that process. They know exactly how that is. So, after that I went to school obviously once you know University  of Toronto for bio and then attended Carlton university for political science. There started my career in the bank. So, I've been all over the place. But with the bank basically stuck around started you know at the lowest level kind of rose through the ranks eventually ended up at CIBC Asset Management. Where I was doing third party broker dealer sales. I did that for about a couple of years and kind of had the genesis of the idea for Fortuna while I was there. Move over to Fortuna. Basically, what Fortuna does is it's top of the funnel sales process automation which is your client discovery and client qualification. So, the entire ethos behind our product and our company is that you know salespeople today are spending but 80 percent of their time doing mundane admin tasks we're using AI to automate that portion, so they can spend more time and you know more focus on higher value consultative of selling processes.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah no I mean I can definitely relate on the sales angle because my first job as a door salesman. So, its sales are brutal 100 percent. So, could you talk a little bit more on the AI the process of it. Do you map it a little bit towards the more to the salesperson like does the AI kind of work like okay  I'm Manseeb and this in my sales style? And I guess my chat bots or whatever we may have you might be tailored towards that. Or is it just more of a generic AI.

Asad Naeem: The way it works is we're employing AI in two spots right now and the first one is a little bit sandbox experimental the second one is actually we're using right now the client discovery portion is basically we're using to figure out exactly who is it that you should be going after. Now this happens by taking a look at your transactional. Let's say you’re a client of ours. We look at take a look at your transactional record, take a look at your sales campaign see where you are having the most amount of success. And then just building models based off of that to see exactly you should be going. Who you should be going after,  the second place where it's really my interest and where I'm paying more attention to is the NLP component of it. The natural language processing where we started the conversation with what your prospects are leads that are coming in. And then we basically lead them down the qualification funnel. we'll and find out you know the three things that you need for any sale to occur is hey is there any interest here. You know do they have the authority to make this decision and then the third one is do they have the budget to make that happen of course. So, we use a conversation and general AI chat bot to figure out those three things based on your own sales playbook for your company. And once we have that component done, we kind of handed off to a real-life human sales agent which will be your sales rep. So, we don't sit in a space where we go you know we're going to use AI to get rid of all sales people, but we actually say that no you know there is a space for AI, there is a space for real sales people. There's a because sales are a very high touch in a lot of industries very high touch. Oh absolutely. You know process, so we want to argument  that process and we want to help the sales people be more productive and more efficient.

Manseeb Khan: Right. So, I mean you guys are pretty much helping a lot of slack time when it comes to just like building a list prospecting, calling and everything you guys are just literally helping streamline that a little bit more.

Asad Naeem: Absolutely, absolutely. All the mundane admin tasks basically the salespeople and they just absolutely hate. Exactly. And that's not their forte. No not at all. Right now, I'm here to sell, I'm not here to put everything in my CRM and make double check and make sure what stage of the sales cycle their on. oh man.

Asad Naeem: At the end of the day if you look at it some sales people are especially high value industries like finance and you know even car sales. Yeah you know there are six figure employees. Absolutely. And then if you're expecting as a company that you're a six-figure employee to be doing admin tasks scraping LinkedIn and all that other stuff their value is really in being able to do that consultation process not do data mining right. But then what happens is companies started to realize this. So now they have you know SDR, as they have L.D. which is lead development reps and now you're paying these people 30 40 thousand dollars a year just to sit there and scraping lists, you know emailing back and forth to figure out if there's interest. Yeah this can be automated. And that's where we come from. And that's our perspective that you know hey let's get your people to do more high valued asked leave the mundane admin tasks to machines essential.

Manseeb Khan: So, I guess what's how do you see the trajectory from here?

Asad Naeem: So right now, you know where we're focused on finance, we're focused on some of the other high value nurses as well. We recently started expanding out. we're doing you know car dealership, we're doing you know automotive companies were doing, you know merchant accounts like alternative to finance things like that but eventually all of us you know like were our aim is to see how this solution fits in organically into other industries and slowly get there. But right now, we're very niche we're very focused because as you can imagine in a building any natural language understanding models you know industries being industry specific helps us because I come from finance, Omar my business partner comes from finance as well. So, we understand the language that's being spoken. Of course, you can train our models based on that as well.

Manseeb Khan: So, I guess how easily you integrate with the current CRM system like the HubSpot’s and the Salesforce is out there because you are seeing, out there that they are slowly trying to build their own model similar to you. How do you how you either integrating with them and how do you see yourself competing with them?

Asad Naeem: So right now, I wouldn't say we are competitors, so CRM I say you know we a more of an asset. Exactly it is more of an asset we hook in. If you look at any CRM system even if you look at HubSpot like HubSpot started out it was very pure it was very minimalist right I mean and you look at it today it's got all these different angles it's got a chat bot it's got a meeting scheduling thing just becoming very big and they're doing a lot of things. So, I haven't seen a direct focus for any of the CRM you know manufacturers right now that are going strictly down the path of just automating conversations using you know natural language understanding and processing. So, we're basically a perfect shoe in and we are  compliment to that strategy. We're not looking to replace a CRM we're looking to enrich the data that's already in there and basically anything else that you put in you know the qualification portion of it we want to handle it.

Manseeb Khan: No, I love that that's very comforting for a lot of the business owners out there knowing that. So, I mean given being AI it's an it's a brand new, it's a very disruptive industry and it's a brand new disruptive potential market. Just saying that you guys are just going to supplement everything else such as a breath of fresh air.

Asad Naeem: Oh absolutely. Absolutely we're not we're not of the mindset you know we're going to replace humans or we're going to you know destroy industries or whatever the case is you know we look at AI as something that can be used for good and you know it can be used to make people's lives easier as technology is supposed to do. Technically you know, and this is where our mindset comes from that we want to use AI and machine learning to help people be more efficient more productive and also just to help companies be more efficient more productive as well.

Manseeb Khan: Right. Right. I mean I can even see that the case of like just having thousands of data sets of sales like you guys could even like potentially pivotal actual sales learning platform. Absolutely right. Just like Hey these are the car dealerships these are everything. like these are the case studies, there are of all the potential objections that you are going to have, this is how you handle them all that kind of stuff, so the potential is there. It's definitely incredible.

Asad Naeem: Yeah absolutely. Building sales playbooks. That's a separate industry. Oh yeah no I mean there's organizations out there you can hire right now that look at your product, who you're selling to your target market. Build sales playbooks for you right. Yeah. So yeah hopefully. I mean that's our primary focus for sure is focused on what we're doing. But you never know what the future holds.

Manseeb Khan: No absolutely agree with you. I'm going to pass this off to you, so I guess you're in the space right. What about AI truly excites you?

Asad Naeem: Oh, the possibilities, the possibilities. Right. I mean we look at we look at natural language processing and  that's the least that I'm really interested in right. It's the we have the understanding component down packed like we can understand intent. we can extract you know what is it that somebody sort of say what is the intention behind it and we can't even go as far down as you know looking at what are the emotional cues, and somebody is writing. okay. You have a great company here in the DMZ shoot out to Trualt. You know they do they do emotional analysis on text. So, you know things like that but where we haven't been able to make a big breakthrough is the generation component. So right now, and you know like if somebody is going you know we use to generate e-mails, or we use to do generate text. Yes and no at the same time it's very vague and it's also a lot of it is template based. Yeah right. It's decision trees they're going OK if somebody says this. This is the intent, you know be extracted out you know use this template to reply back whereas organic language generation. It's still very nascent it's still in the labs, is very academic in its pursuit. So, we're not there yet. I want to see the possibilities of when that occurs where machines are able to communicate back you know organically without using any templates or you know any pre-determined schema in terms of how and what to say. That would be very interesting. I mean aside from that I'm a big fan of computer vision. I think there's tons of possibilities out there. There's a lot of great stuff happening right now. For example, you know crop analysis that's going on there's a new just we're just reading up on it recently as well. There's a company there's a new start up that basically  that that's building computer vision AI to help when people get lost in the woods to help you know like firefighters and forest rangers and things like that to be able to locate people so there's a lot of interesting stuff happening. I mean this is just the tip of the iceberg there's this stuff happening in mining there's stuff happening, and you know like pollution prevention you know doing surveying all sorts of different things. So, computer vision is also very, very interesting.

Manseeb Khan: So, I guess how you see. I mean or just AI sales in general how fundamental do you think it is when it comes to AI business?

Asad Naeem: The thing is deploying AI is becoming kind of a priority for a lot of big enterprises and big businesses. And you know I think sales is an untapped market when it comes to machine learning and being able to learn from historical transactions, online, retail sales you know sales campaigns, marketing campaigns. So slowly we're going to see a lot of activity in this space. Marketing is already kind of seeing it. You know there's a lot of great companies out there that are basically deploying AI to fine tune and help you really personalize the marketing that you're doing. But slowly you're going to see it happening in sales, direct sales as well and whether it's inbound , outbound or whatever it is you need to find people for your business to sell too. Of course. You need to qualify them right. Right now, that is a very human, very labor-intensive job. So eventually I see it being a space where machines excel. where they help you find the people, qualify them and then you know once the actual sales process kicks off a human agent takes on and is able to basically close that process. So, the end result here is that you're going to compress your sales cycles. You're going to make sales more efficient and you know you're going to make your entire organization more efficient because of that.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah and you're going to have a lot of more harder numbers to work off of.  because that's a very tricky thing about sales because since it is so labor intensive and since it's the human error when it comes to sales it's so astronomically high. And it's also laziness, too right? I mean yeah no absolutely, no I absolutely agree with you there just like again like we talked about just manually inputting everything into the CRM it's like OK I emailed them back, it's third touch booking a call-in next Thursday at 4 and let's  see how it goes. And then we just wait.

Asad Naeem: Absolutely dude there's a lot of research out there that says you've got to reach out to your potential prospect like five to seven times, like five to seven touch points and I'm a salesperson. Yeah so have you. I mean how many times can you honestly say that you did seven touch points. It's a lot of work. It's a huge emotional toll too because you're if your hearing no's all day. oh, my goodness. Yeah. The twenty or the twenty fifth or the fiftieth. No, it's like you cringe a little bit. Yes.

Manseeb Khan: So, I mean especially during the day. Right. Depends like you mentioned car dealerships. Right. Like cold calling 150 people if not more. And it just here. No, no ,no, no, no. It's definitely gets to like cleaning that out. cleaning process out definitely it's going to make it a lot streamline a lot more  easier. I mean you guys are not even like what a year and a half year old. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean what is the next five years a Fortuna to look like for you and the company?

Asad Naeem: Yeah absolutely. So, like you said you know we're still a very young company so we're in the throes of you know full blown product development now. we had our version one you which the market was  really receptive to. You know we've had the fortune  of being you know revenue positive since day one, since we launched you know where we're making money as well. So  it's a very exciting time to be because we're really taking the feedback that we're getting from our initial batch of clients and fine tuning the product making sure we're you know adding features that there's an actual market demand for and just basically making sure that it's a seamless experience for the sales teams that were getting on boarded and even the individual sales people that we have right now you know they just having a good experience. So right now, we're fully focused on building a product that our customers love and that our customers and our clients are recommending to their friends and they're the people that they have in their network. So that is the short-term goal right now. The next five years honestly it can go a lot of different ways but what  we're aiming at is we're growing our team really rapidly you know 11 people right now the company. But a we're probably going to double by mid-2019. So, you know we're full blown aiming at making sure that we're doing all the right things for our customers making sure that you know our product is on point. And then also just making sure that we're helping as many sales professionals and sales teams as possible you know reduce the workload become more efficient become more productive and hopefully in the next five years you know you can you can hear us as a household name helping sales out everywhere and you know cutting down on the manual boring admin stuff that a lot of sales guys have to do.

Manseeb Khan: I'm very excited of like just more of a personal stand point like from a salesman to a salesman like I'm very excited to like oh thank god like. hey me too you. You're saving I mean the countless number of hours of just you're going to be saving it's just again it's astronomical. Absolutely. Really is it just like it just going to make sales so much more. Salesperson you really use this term lightly because much easier. Oh yeah for sure. And it just a lot more stress-less and just like streamlined right.

Asad Naeem: I mean as long as sales is it going to be hard. even once you qualify somebody there's a lot of you know nuances that go into actually closing the sale. So, it's always going to be hard but as long as we can make the the front-end grunt work a little bit easier and you know at least taken us somewhat off the shoulders of the actual sales people. It gives them the flexibility to be able to focus more on the actual sales process and then being able to you know really being consultative and helping rather than you know just rushing through everything and trying to get to the next guy right. So, the aim really here is that we want to make sure that sales is as it stays as human as it possibly can. But at the same time, you know removing everything that is mundane and basically admin work that that can be automated.

Manseeb Khan: This is probably more of a nitty gritty question but like when it comes to qualifications and just building your models. What is your data sets look like, like where are you really pulling it from and ideally where do you want to start pulling from to get even more tactical data to work with?

Asad Naeem: Yeah absolutely. So right now, presently we're building all our data sets our self because I mean we started out by running the entire sales process for us manually. You know this is this is before we had a product, we were basically kept a record of every communication we've sent out. All emails all, the you know like social media messages whatever it is the response is we've had we've had them tagged internally because we have, we've been lucky enough to work with a with a very brilliant data scientist as well. And she's helped us. You know tag this data, clean this data, and built our models on top of it. So, you know right now we're generating our own data sets and also our clients for the first batch that signed up with us and even the second batch sent out with us. They're helping us build some of these models on as well because you know they've given us permission to use some of the data anonymized obviously to see what the sales process looks like what types of objections you get. What does a rejection look like? What does an ambiguous response look like. So, figuring out are all of these things where we would hope we could get more data is basically you know doing a partnership with a larger organization that has a very heavy focus on sales which I would think it would be every organization. Yeah no. I mean ideally every business should be focusing on sales. Exactly. And then being able to see some of the sales campaigns they have run, and you know using that transactional data essentially to be able to better our models because the more data we can feed into our model they just make the model so much about exact. Yeah exactly. It's a data play

Manseeb Khan: 100 percent is a data plan that's I'm glad you guys realize that. I mean it's a sales thing right. Exactly. It's a numbers game. All it is a numbers game. Law of Averages really. So, Assad. So just to quickly wrap this up would be the best way for people to either contact you Fortuna. Do we e-mail you? Do we tweet you? Do I send you a snapchat? What would be the best way to contact you?

Asad Naeem: Yeah absolutely. If anybody wants to get a hold get in touch with us. Just go to Fortuna.ai. So that's www.fortuna.ai, I just contact us there or you can just directly email me, my e-mail is asad@fortuna.ai.

Manseeb Khan:  Asad thank you so much for again sitting down with me today. I mean this is this has been a very fun conversation  I mean salesmen on other salesmen. And again, I'm very excited for your trajectory you guys are definitely inbounds of doing really incredible things.

Asad Naeem: Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Thanks for your time.

Manseeb Khan: Absolutely man cheers. So, on the behalf of Canada's leading international fintech and crowdfunding association. I wish you an amazing fintech Friday and weekend.

Outro : you've been listening to fintech Fridays brought to you by NCFA and partners. Tune in weekly for the latest fintech Friday podcast by subscribing to this channel. The National crowdfunding and FinTech Association of Canada is a non-profit actively engaged with social and investment fintech sectors around the globe and provide education research industry stewardship services and networking opportunities to thousands of members and subscribers. For more information please visit and see if a Canada dot org. Oh yea.

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Not yet a done deal

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Investment Executive | By James Langton | Nov 23, 2018 Many hurdles remain for the CMRA before it becomes a reality Canada’s regulatory landscape faces a transformation as politics, shifting priorities and new legal realities push the investment industry’s overseers in new directions. Most obviously, the prospect of a fundamental reshaping of the regulatory framework in Canada now is, at least, a possibility – given the Supreme Court of Canada’s (SCC) long-awaited decision on Nov. 9, which reversed a lower court’s ruling in Quebec, that declared that a proposed federal/provincial model for a co-operative capital markets regulator is constitutional. But while this decision knocks down a basic legal obstacle for the new model for overseeing the securities industry, that doesn’t mean that the adoption of a co-operative regulator is imminent – or even inevitable. Indeed, the SCC’s decision hints at the significance of the hurdles that still must be cleared before the proposed Capital Markets Regulatory Authority (CMRA) can become a reality in Canada. Although the SCC has found that the proposed CMRA model is constitutional, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is a good idea. “It’s up to the provinces to determine whether participation is in their best interests,” the ...
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NCFA Canada | Oct 19, 2018

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Transcription of Interview

Manseeb Khan: Today I have an absolutely incredible guest. I got Saroop Bharwani from Senso.ai. Saroop Thank you so much for sitting in today.

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me onboard.

Manseeb Khan: No absolutely. So, for the audience for a minute could you just tell us a little bit about yourself and the inside track of Senso.ai.

Saroop Bharwani: Sounds good. We're dated intelligence platform for the retail banking industry. Essentially what we've done is we've aggregated market wide data such as credit data, real estate data location and geospatial data. And we basically predict When every Canadian consumer is about to switch a credit product such as a mortgage or a credit card from one financial institution to another this really helps sales and marketing teams at retail banks get in front of their customers sooner to be to be able to provide better offers better experiences helping them save money while keeping their wallet share increasing over time and outside their book as well. And we've been successful today to networking with a number of financial institutions in the Canadian market and not only helping them identify sales. Internal sales opportunities within their portfolios but also help consumers save money while increasing their bottom line at the same time. It's been super exciting for us the Toronto startup ecosystem has been tremendously helpful in launching and getting to the stage that we're at. And now we are planning a U.S. expansion

Manseeb Khan: That's also incredible can't wait for the U.S. expansion. So, your story is a little bit more unique than any of the other startup founders out there. You actually turned your former employer to your customer. Could you share a little bit more of that story because I think that story is super fascinating on what you did there.

Saroop Bharwani: You know it feels like a long time ago. My first customer. One of the big prime banks in Canada. I actually used to contract for about three years ago and I've been around the block. And usually when I get into a situation where I work for a financial institution whether it be a full time, or a contract position I have built relationships all throughout the organization. But I also I've always stayed in touch with the Toronto startup ecosystem. I've witnessed the Toronto startup system grow to where it is right now since the early 2000s back in the day when it was just a few people in a room demoing our products to all of these crazy hype events today and all the great hype around tech. I've always managed to stay close to the great people and startup community. One thing I realized when I was at the tail end of my contract at this particular financial institution was I wanted to get back into the startup game and I had a particular idea of what space I wanted to play in, but I just needed to hone in a bit. And so, on my lunches and after work was the last six months that I was on that particular project. I met with anyone and everyone I could on that knew something about the space that I wanted to launch a startup in. And you know 10 meetings turned to 50 and that turned to 100. And by that time, I had sort of honed down on a very particular insight that I'm not about a lot of other people have been thinking about at the time and that's when I knew I was ready to jump ship. I had met my co-founder through those 100 meetings and I called many of my team members that I've worked with over the years in the retail banking space and that's literally how Senso I was born I jumped ship and we got started to building and that because I maintained great relationships at all the financial institutions I worked with I essentially went back to the one that I previously left and pitched them the idea and they loved it. And essentially the rest is history. They took us on board and instead of being a contractor/ full time employee I ended up being a vendor.

Manseeb Khan: That's also incredible. The whole within 50 meetings or so you find your co-founder at 75. I might be messing up the numbers, but I wasn't 75. You actually meet your mentor which was when you broke it down that way. I was like wow that makes a lot of sense. That makes total sense of like 75 meetings and you feel good. You know exactly what you want to do, you know exactly what you what your vision is, and you can definitely find a mentor to help guide that.

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah. And the other side of it is just managing risk. You know people just want to kind of jump into the startup world really not knowing that. It is not as glamorous as you see in the media. Right. You got to go through you know a couple of years of, you know painful sort of figuring out what you're doing and that's just the beginning. So that uncertainty only realized after jumping ship and I was very thoughtful of the fact that in order to mitigate that risk I needed to build a certain amount of runway to survive for a set period of time in my case was 18 months and get my family on board. You know my wife ticklers has been a great supporter along the way.  It's important to have that co-founder of life as some I call it, I might be the only one in that sense. So, to jump right into this AI is an absolute behemoth of a topic right. When you think of AI conjure up images between IBM the big blue player and the I guess its kind of like the world's biggest chess game right. You have like players like IBM of Amazon Facebook have all these big guys coming into it right. So, I guess for the purpose of the show what it means to you. What are the key problems the AI will solve in FinTech over the next few years. And what does this mean for incumbents, businesses, And  just a general.

So look put it this way. Mean having come from a banking background. Where me and my team and built these types of predictive models for a number of years. these types of models the machine money models in particular have been around for a long period of time. In the past five years, we've really hit a tipping point and this convergence of bigger data sets more sophisticated algorithms and more computational power which have enabled this new wave of technology that's really created this hype and a lot of it is hype. But the concepts of these algorithms have been around for like 40, 50 years. We just haven't been able to make use of them until very recently due to the convergence that I just spoke about. Now when I think about AI in general is I do think that the most difficult part for me and many people that I see especially wanting to get into AI is just seen through the noise of who's actually simply doing what was always done in the past versus cutting edge actual AI. I would say right. when it comes to any of this to break it down what all of this is just lines through a bunch of dots and simply put it is just using statistics and a lot of great data and computation power to come up with these results that get better over time. You know we've hit that tipping point where a lot of this stuff is useful for enabling computer vision and these other sensory tasks that we see all this magic happening. For me it's exciting to see that we've hit that tipping point. But it's no different from the path that people who have worked with machine learning for many years. It's that same path we're going down and is getting more exciting because new doors are opening up through the convergence of many of these many of these things that I've spoken about. But to me I always question who's actually doing this stuff versus all the hype out there. And from a marketing perspective and it's hard to differentiate that. And while I would say it's super exciting and breakthrough it's also hard to understand you know what is going on the market from who is actually doing cutting edge stuff it was not.

Manseeb Khan: It is all hype right. This whole fintech space this whole boom is all hype. So, it should be interesting to see who panders out and who actually sticks through it and who the real players are in the next 10,15,25 years. Running an AI focused company. What does it mean to you? From all the mentors and all the meetings, you've had. How did that change from day one of starting an AI focused company to know that you've actually been through the next 36, ran through TechStars and just had so much more acceleration.

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah. So, I mean whether it was using machine learning and AI to solve the problem or not. One thing we knew from the very beginning is. We knew intimately what the problem was that we wanted to solve. And that's what we really focused on. It just so happened that we got access to it very early on a dataset that enabled us to prove this worked in a very controlled environment. I think that the support of the AI community in Toronto was perfectly timed for us in that the doors that were open for us in terms of resources in terms of getting data sets in terms of accessibility to customers who were open to testing this out. So, all happened at a perfect time for us. But when it comes to being an AI company I would say it all comes down to the data set you're working with. And if that data set is pure enough to produce the outcomes that you're looking for or that provide business value to solve that problem or it achieve that task you're in a good spot. But I would say that my recommendation to anyone wanting to start an AI company is if you want to start in an AI first company understand what data you have access to because if you don't have access to data you're not going to be able to do much at the get go. And that's where I would really think about approach and what type of business you want to become. Because you don't want to get into an AI business because of the hype of AI and putting that in a flashy deck. You want to get into it to solve real problems and achieve real tasks that drive business value. And then if AI happens to be a mechanism to enable that that's great and that's what we realized very early on and we were just supported by the right advisers and people to be able to bring it to fruition and get to where we are today.

Manseeb Khan: I mean you want to make sure that your models make sense and you have enough data to back it up right because the main reason big business are going into AI it's because I have so much data to pull from and that's why Facebook and Amazon are going. And even IBM are going into the because years and years of data pools they can just are pulling from and to start testing and learning and building models.

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah, I mean that both those companies have been data driven from the ground up. So, they have an inherent advantage in taking advantage of the most cutting-edge technology. I would say the many of the enterprise firms out there haven't invested the dollars into really streamlining their data to be able to enable a lot of these things and a lot of the things we do on a daily basis is ensuring that data purify to be able to enable the outcomes that we want to achieve. And look some of the customers that we have and partners that we have invested very early on into their data and they're in a position similar to you know the big four you know Amazon, Google, Facebook, Amazon to be able to really deliver value outside of this. And I see this on a day to day basis kind of companies that are doing this well and companies that are not. And that is very interesting to see my insight is the reason why this taken so long for many of these enterprises to do this is for the very reason that the data is really all over the place and it needs to be brought together and streamlined into sort of an automated process to enable the models to learn vs decay.

Manseeb Khan: So, I guess what are the immediate and future opportunities when it comes to AI and as a community what does the foundation of AI look like?

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah. So, the immediate opportunities I think are. The cutting-edge opportunities I think are happening in things like computer vision, language processing. Even the some of the things we do with more sophisticated and algorithms in financial services are proving to deliver better results than some of the models that we built from within financial institutions. I think what I'm excited about is once you purified the data and aggregated the data in a way where you can produce better results using these new algorithms. it's far more  accurate than if you just kind of threw a bunch of sparse data into an old school decision tree and that's been going on for a while. So, I think we hit that tipping point to me the  enablement about actually doing that is the most difficult thing. And again, like a model may work really well. you know the first couple of times but if you don't have that automation and that sort of pipeline. I think that your models are ultimately going to decay and they're not going to be able to keep up with many of the changes that occur in the market whether they be economic or behavioral or whatever the case may be. We see that on a day to day basis when we test some of the more sophisticated models and pipelines we are with some of the other ones that we B test against which are currently being used by many of these companies out there to enable their predictive analytics engines. So, I think that's immediate future. I think that if it comes down to the mediums we're going to be interacting with today we interact with our mobile phones. But I think tomorrow they could be completely different devices Thalmic labs is launching their new smart glasses and I think that you know once the development community starts building on top of those platforms. It's going to start opening up opportunities for entrepreneurs to build new experiences using AI, using computer vision and all these great things. And I think that's scary because a lot of the stuff you see going on here in terms of research the exciting research that's happening is also the scariest in the sense that you know being able to mimic someone doing something that isn't actually them. I think that opens up a lot of privacy questions that we're going to have to face in this in this century. And I think that privacy the way it is today ultimately isn't the way it's going to be in the next century. And I think it's going to open up some really interesting debate. some sort of solution is going to be necessary in order to resolve the privacy concerns. And that's a whole different discussion that I'm happy to get into in more detail if you'd like.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah no absolutely so I guess it's a we've talked in a couple past episodes of the whole digital identity thing right and how companies are pushing people are pushing for this whole digital identity that you deserve to own your identity and use like your digital identity right. You decide to share and not share whatever information businesses might need. And now that now let's head out guys can kind of mimic that. That puts that whole sovereign identity thing into question because that gets a little scary.

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah. Absolutely and I think that that's when people hear you know Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking talk about A.I. taken over the world. Everybody pictures like Terminator robots and things like that. But I think that in the immediate future. It is really these breaches of privacy that you have no control over that are ultimately going to really bring up big questions and make people forget about. Everything else that existed before because nothing else will matter. When certain countries are mimicking other political leaders just say something about another country that isn't actually them right. And I think that it is scary when I think about children and bullying in schools and on social media. You don't get the ability to mimic someone doing something that they're not actually doing. That being so accessible to us today that is something that's going to bring up a lot of questions and I'm on the camp that data. Your data should be in your hands. And that is a concept that is very great today and I think that that's going to be one of the biggest things we're going to have to solve for in the 21st century.

Manseeb Khan: It's going to be a slippery slope of  how we take the human experience and put it digitally. And what do we decide to like to input it and not input when it comes to building these AI's right because ideally, we want them to be as agnostic as possible,  but we still want them to have human traits of them because there are amazing things about humans with are also very devastating things about human. So that's going to be a weird balance that we're going to be that that's happening the next coming years when it comes to building out these

Saroop Bharwani: It's going to be disruptive  without necessarily our control because you know it's in the hands of developers and entrepreneurs who are really enabling these experiences for good or for not good. Right. Like you know there's both sides of the equation. We've seen this in cybersecurity for years. There’re people who are protecting and there are people who are attacking right. And that that is not going to be a different concept when it comes to the use of AI in these sorts of public settings.

Manseeb Khan: No I absolutely agree with you so I mean you've already touched a little bit of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking so I'm going to jump into this question a couple of weeks ago you saw Elon Musk go on Joe Rogan and one of the questions that Joe asked you on was his fear of a AI and Elon's been saying for years he's been warning the public it's warning people about the dangers of AI and how we're moving a little too fast when it comes to AI. we've got to be pretty much pulling the reins like slowly analyze everything making sure we're doing this for the right reasons and not jumping because like you've mentioned a couple of times not because of the hype right. Even Stephen Hawking. I'm going to quote the development of a full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. It could even take off on its own and redesign itself as an ever-increasing rate. Humans are limited by slow biological evolution cannot even compete and will be superseded. So that's in and of itself we are seeing all these entrepreneurs all these amazing visionaries saying that like if we don't. Take a very close look at what we're doing with AI and not believing the hype. They could very much if eviscerate  the human race and just completely take over because they are revolving within microseconds. So, my question is. What are you what are you at Senso.ai doing priority wise to make sure none of these fears come to reality and. Hoping that other startups like yourself are doing to make sure these fears don't come into reality?

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah. So. You know in answer to an end to your question it's really, we run our models and  our pipeline in a very controlled setting. And we're constantly monitoring the biases which exist in the you know historical data is only good as the humans that put it at it or the process that input it. Right. But there are ways to rebalance these models to be able to reduce bias. And I think that is a responsibility that every AI company needs to take like we heard about you know Amazon recently brought lunch to recruit recruitment tool which was like bias  I think that was a bit premature for Amazon to launch that because they had to think about their historical data and how to rebalance that data to ensure that. And I'm not talking about statistical bias I'm talking about just general human like bias rate like the bias you would have towards a gender or race. Right. And those are things we see every day when. We use our data. And that's where the rebalancing of the data is very important and there are techniques to do that. And I think it's the responsibility of every AI company or company that's using any sort of predictive analytics to make decisions which impact humans. That's a responsibility they take on. You don't from a more broader perspective in terms of what Musk and Hawking are talking about. I question whether it's even we're even in a position to control. Right. And you know while it is scary  I think all of us have some sort of an addiction towards social media. You know in putting information in the internet searching on google where those are tools that we have we rely on these days to get information to see what's going on with your friends to just have that instant gratification. Right. And you know as generations passed and the younger generation Z and even younger than that they don't even question sharing their data. It's inherent in the way that they were raised, and they grew up because they grew up with this technology. can that input of information stock because if it doesn't. Ultimately the training of these models and these algorithms is not going to stop. And they are going to get more sophisticated over time. And I think that that exponential increase in inputs that we're feeding in to these systems is essentially what Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking are talking about and I feel that as humans were bad predictors in how soon or how soon things are going to happen and you know whether it's sooner than later or later than sooner. I think it's an inevitability that it's going to happen. I think all we can do is be responsible prepare and reduce these biases that exists in our models so that we assure that it's more of an oddment in symbiotic relationship versus ones where you know the AI's goals are different from our own.

Manseeb Khan: No, I absolutely agree with you on that. I guess if we're not if we're not careful of social media everything else it's going have a way bigger pull towards us for not even our generation but for the future generations if we are not careful.

Saroop Bharwani: Every like, every post, every tap. Everything is training right. It's training their models. When you look up the Easter bunny on google and it presents you with a bunch of pictures of Easter bunnies you clicking on that image of the right Easter bunny. You know is training their models even more. Right. Think about that that's happening with every single interaction and where the direction that Amazon. And Google and all these companies are going you know eventually and maybe it's the case right now we know but maybe there are algorithms and their models are much more sophisticated than we think. They may just be controlling it in a way where they are taking a responsible approach but that is questionable. Then you get into the whole conversation of regulators actually treating them like the oil companies. Back in the early 19s hundreds. Are they too big? Do they have too much data? Do they have too much oil to stand on their own or do we need to break them apart.

Manseeb Khan: So, speaking of regulation we're seeing a huge push. Of regulation when it comes to the crypto and blockchain space but we're not really seeing that much. Regulatory push when it comes to machine learning. I guess my question to you would be what some of the regulations are you'd like to see put in place. And I guess what the role of government is. Because you're seeing a role in government. Starting to form when it comes to block chain and crypto we want the exact same thing when it comes to AI?

Saroop Bharwani: I think that the Government's got to really think about how to put the right rules in place to be able to ensure that models being released are not biased towards one human outcome or the other and are making the right ethical decisions. But at the same time without hindering innovation and I think those are the two tradeoffs. That is tricky right because I'm a big proponent of faster innovation and I love this whole concept of entrepreneurs. You know being able to actually create the next Facebook or Uber or whatever the case may be out of their bedrooms. But at the same time based on  Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking's and their concerns and  my feelings towards that too and what's to come.  I do think it is a dangerous path that we go down without some sort of rules being in place. And I think that that moment is going to be more evident. And it's going to get the attention of regulators at a certain point in the future. And I don't think we're too far away from that. So, I know you didn't specifically answer your question but for me it's more of a tradeoff. Innovation versus making sure that these models are built in a responsible way.

Manseeb Khan: Right. So, it's finding that happy medium of still having regulators be the government or be it some other body making sure that everything's OK everything's on the up and up So new players can actually have some kind of structure to work with. But at the same time not hindering innovation because. That's the whole reason why you're seeing such a huge hype behind AI, blockchain and any crypto because it's very agnostic it's very decentral right?

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah. And I wouldn't even say that it has to be regulators to put these rules in. You want Musk as a guy that what matters into his own hands right. I don't know. It's going to be regulators like is government going to be able to move fast enough and implement regulations based on the real facts. Right. And ultimately that's the biggest question for me right. And that well we'll see. I think in the very near future what the outcomes going to be of that.

Manseeb Khan: How we started the whole episode is that you got very lucky when Canada was just getting on the AI boom right. So, Canada's emerged as a global leader in AI. How did it happen? And I guess what it means for innovators and investors entering the space and is it too late to get into the game or is this just the beginning.

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah so, I mean when we got into it the AI Buzz wasn't I When I decide to do this we really mean think about AI. It was a consideration that we were going to use predictive analytics and machine learning really. I mean I think about eight months into it really this whole AI boom started, and we were fortunate enough to be very well timed and being supported by the community very early on when they were still figuring it out. Now it's at a stage where  I think it's fairly it's grown. But I think it's still got a long way to go. The community still figuring things out and that's going to take a while. I encourage anyone who sees it sees a problem a big problem that they could potentially solve as being prime candidates towards starting their own companies. And I think they'll do great again as long as they're focused on the problem and ensure they have the right tools the team necessary to execute. That opportunity is always going to be there. I think from the challenge right now is for entrepreneurs and innovators has higher levels of competition. And that's something that we're going to continue to see. And from an investor standpoint again I think there's a lot of noise over companies that are doing truly innovative stuff and have a good go to market plan versus companies that are just putting A.I. in their deck because it's hype right. They may be great companies not doing anything related to this stuff, but they may be putting it in there that basically to get investors’ attention. And I think that that's come to a point where it will work against you if you just say you're doing AI without having some sort of a fundamental proof that your technology is based on some sort of. Cutting edge technology that's been accessible to us over the last that say three to five years.

Manseeb Khan: What's going to change that would be the education factor towards the right like you're saying Hey you're seeing a lot of startups even throw ICO and even just tokenize their whole business even though they may or may not even actually need one. It's the lack of education. I think in the next three to five years they are amazing companies like you and some of the other ones in space educating people teaching people that like hey this is what AI is, this is what AI means to us. And the more informed the general public just innovators and investors are when it comes to that space. It's just going to start weeding out all the B, C, D players.

Saroop Bharwani: It is yeah people are just going to become as you said more educated on this and I think that the great thing about these podcasts that you're doing is it enables people to become more in the know when it comes to .What is actually real versus what's not, what's worth investing time and money into versus not. And look I'm very sympathetic towards all entrepreneurs and I encourage even first-time entrepreneurs to go for it and really think through and mitigate your risk in starting this and you'll be supported by the community. But ultimately you know entrepreneurs usually have to go through a road of paying their dues in order to realize what this game is all about. But everybody's got to go down that path. Right. but I think that as people get more educated through podcasts like this and through the community. It's going to be easier to differentiate. Between ones that are real and not.

Manseeb Khan: There's no shortcuts when it comes entrepreneurship even though podcast and blog posts and videos on YouTube are definitely going to greatly help who still have to pay your dues. Still go through many obstacles fail, try again, fail try again right. there's no there's no shortcuts. And again these B.S. CD players are going to learn that sadly the hard way. But again, that's life. Man, versus machine. I know we touch this we touch a little bit of what is this going to look for the generations to come. So, man versus machine. Who's winning. And I guess what the future look will like for our kids. Right we're already seeing this rise of you seeing babies just being drawn towards tablets and I don't know if you see the cute little video of this baby who had a tablet and that the mom took away the tablet and then She was just on the table. And then it was a glass table. And she was to swipe, and she couldn’t it and she was like she's looking at the parents like whoa what happened like they give her books you can swipe on the book like she's losing her mind I guess is that is that the future for kids like is it only going to go downhill from here. Like what's your opinion on that ?

Saroop Bharwani: Yeah, I mean look I don't know. It's downhill. I'm more I'm an optimist when it comes to technology enabling us to do better. That's right I also see the other side of it. And look I look at it from the perspective of my dad you know like having a young daughter at home. Really. I see her older cousins. And all the people that are around are the kids that are around her really being attracted towards technology. And I think generation after generation it's just becoming more and more natural for these kids to resonate towards technology and I think it's inevitable. The path that we're going to go down I don't see anything stopping it. Maybe regulation can come in. But technology has always found a way to break through. It may pause it for a little bit or it may slow it down but it's inevitable that one day something incredible is going to happen. And it's also scary too right. So, I think our kids are going to grow up in a very different world. And we grew up and I remember when I was a kid and it wasn't about sitting at home you know playing videogames or anything like that it was playing outside and not coming home until dinner time right. Like I was I was like literally my summer vacation. You know it was. It was never in front of screens or anything like that. Kids today are very different in that technology is part of their lives from the minute, from the minute they're born. And you know I think that that's something that we need to accept. And I think that based on our discussion the last question on educating entrepreneurs and venture capitalists on what startups are real or not. We also have to educate our children. From a very early stage about things like what are the costs and consequences about sharing your data. Don't just freely share your data. Think about the fact that when you share your data someone needs to give you something in return and you have control over that data. Understand that everything that you post or everything that you display publicly is accessible to a man or a machine that could use that data for good or for evil. Right. And these things could have consequences to you as you get older. And I think that it should be a part of our education system and teaching our kids to be very conscious about the way they look at interacting with machines. On the other side of it I think that machines. Being a part of our lives, we wouldn't be where we are today, and we wouldn't be able to do all of these things these virtual podcasts or anything like that without the augmentation of machines. And I think it's incredible the fact that anyone can create this out of their bedroom or their garage. And I'm excited for that. I'm excited to teach my kids to be entrepreneurs and to use technology to create, and to make and to build for their entire lives. Because when you think about the future of work I see it more like being an entrepreneur versus working in a cubicle for 30 years and a large corporation. And that is the future that I find exciting and I think if our kids are educated they'll grow up in a way we'll harness this technology and use it for good in a controlled way where they'll protect themselves at the same time.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah, I think having the talk of just understanding the both the positives and the consequences of technology and the new waves of technology I think that's a very important talk for parents’ teachers. Like any anybody with like younger siblings or younger kids and making them understand like Hey the terms and conditions that everybody skips over is very important to  actually understand having these free services and you freely sharing information that there might be consequences and repercussions in the future and just understand that like right like everything on the internet forever and you have to be cognizant of like even though you're a kid you have to be still be cognizant of what you say and what you don't say.

Saroop Bharwani: Absolutely. And look I hope our education system is thinking about embedding these sorts of learnings consistent learnings throughout the process from a very early stage. Look I think that in the future even now that the talk with your kids about screens and machines is as important as the birds and the bees.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah no absolutely agree with you. And it might not even be school systems it just might be another educational entity. You're seeing a rise of online courses  everything. I learned business wise and marketing wise I learned online what I learned through YouTube and like Udemy and all these other courses compared college, so you might be seeing a shift when it comes to kids as well of like. If they want to learn how and what the  Decentral AI looks like boom, there's 15 YouTube videos I'll just give you step by step walk through of what that looks like.

Saroop Bharwani: On that on that note right. I think you know one of the other fundamental shifts that's going on right now is that if you're not a lifelong learner. ultimately, you're going to fall behind because things are changing at an exponential pace. It's not about getting a university degree anymore and working at the same job for like 30 to 40 years. your graduation from a university is just the beginning of your learning path for the rest of your life. And I think that society needs. To go more towards that than anything else and that is essentially why entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs because their inherent value ultimately is going to increase along the way at a much faster pace than if you're in an environment that doesn't enable that type of forced learning. Based on the situations that you're put in front of that you really got to dig yourself out of. And that's what entrepreneurship is great for and all about despite how hard it is. Your inherent value increases at a much faster pace. Yup no I totally .

Manseeb Khan: There's a really great Muhammad Ali quote when he said that if I think the exact same way that I thought 30 at 50 then I wasted 20 years of my life.

Saroop Bharwani: I know that one all too well. I know it's great quote. And that's exactly what I'm talking about.

Manseeb Khan: Saroop, thank you so much for sitting down with me today. I cannot wait to have you on the show again.

Saroop Bharwani: Awesome pleasure. Thanks so much for doing this.

End of Podcast

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Dragons’ Den star’s startup secures another US$50-million in financing

December 18, 2018

Globe and Mail | Sean Silcoff | Dec 18, 2018 Dragons' Den star Michele Romanow and her partner Andrew D’Souza have secured another US$50-million to grow their latest startup, Clearbanc, just weeks after announcing they had raised US$70-million to bankroll the financing provider for e-commerce firms. Now, they are looking to secure hundreds of millions of dollars more to meet a surge in demand from online sellers looking for cheap alternatives to finance their growth. “We see this as a pretty exciting next step,” said Ms. Romanow, president and co-founder of Clear Finance Technology Corp., which operates as Clearbanc. “I don’t think we expected this to come this quickly.” Clearbanc fronts e-commerce entrepreneurs with money to pay for their online advertising in exchange for a small percentage of revenues that spending generates, until they repay the amount in full, plus a 6-per-cent premium. Customers do not have to provide personal guarantees, give up equity or submit to credit checks. Instead, they provide Clearbanc with access to business data from their online payment processors, their online advertising accounts and bank accounts. Clearbanc’s software then crunches the data and assesses their unit economics in minutes, spitting out an automated financing offer based ...
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Can You Use Bitcoin to Pay for Travel?

December 18, 2018

Million Mile Secrets | August 21, 2018 When most people think of buying tickets for a flight, or making other travel-related purchases, they might reach into their wallet for their credit card. But did you know you might be able to pay with a form of digital cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin? Bitcoin is a type of digital cryptocurrency that serves the same function as traditional currency, like US dollars. The main difference is that Bitcoin is not tied to any central bank, and is not regulated by a government body, thus offering a degree of anonymity to users. The process for paying with Bitcoin is very similar to paying with a credit or debit card. If you’re purchasing online, you’ll simply select Bitcoin as your method of payment. You’ll then be redirected to a site like Coinbase, where you’ll follow the instructions to complete payment. We’ll go through which travel sites accept Bitcoin, best practices when dealing with cryptocurrency, and some pros and cons of using digital currency to help you decide if it’s the right method of payment for you! Where Can You Use Bitcoin for Travel Purchases? Although Bitcoin has not yet gone back to its 2017 levels (at ...
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Humans on the Blockchain: Why Crypto Is the Best Defense Against AI Overlords

December 18, 2018

Coindesk | Santiago Siri | Dec 18, 2018 As governance becomes more and more prevalent in discussions around consensus protocols, it is clear that Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision of “one-CPU-one-vote” shaped the entire crypto industry into thinking governance centered around machines, not people. But if artificial intelligence (AI) is indeed a threat to humanity as Elon Musk and Sam Altman frequently warn, why are we risking giving AI the political power of distributed networks? Guaranteeing a fundamental right to privacy bent early blockchain design toward anonymity. While that approach helps fight financial corruption (political corruption is exploiting the internet in ways that can also be fought back with decentralized computation), the menace of AI is less abstract than it seems. The fact that social algorithms thrive on memes helps explain today’s political reality. See:  Lifehacks for When a Robot Wants Your Job However, AI is leading us to even deeper questions and challenges. The most salient fact from contemporaneous politics is the growing shadow of doubt cast over the democratic process in the U.S.: did foreign influence win the most expensive election on the planet? Since the Peace of Westphalia in the 17th Century, nation-states have been a political construction ...
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What fintech can learn from Robinhood’s ‘epic fail’ of launching checking accounts

December 17, 2018

CNBC | Kate Rooney | Dec 17, 2018 Robinhood's attempt to launch a disruptive, first-of-its-kind product offers some lessons for fintech companies trying to break the mold in a highly regulated industry. The start-up announced it would launch checking and savings accounts with an eye-popping, industry leading interest rate. Just a day later, they said they were re-naming and re-launching after regulators and Wall Street sounded the alarm. Robinhood did not contact a key industry watchdog ahead of its launch, a move that wasn’t legally required but could have saved them from "an epic fail" and “getting egg on their face,” according to UBS analyst Brennan Hawken. “Next time they’ll aim before they shoot,” SIPC president Stephen Harbeck said. On Thursday, the popular stock-trading start-up rolled out what executives said was the biggest announcement in the company's history: Checking and savings products with a 3 percent interest rate, and zero fees. But just a day later, the start-up un-winded its ambitious plan. There were a number of questions about the product — but mostly on the regulatory side. The accounts being offered by Robinhood were insured by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, or SIPC. Those protections are a far cry ...
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The Security Token Field – The Next Step After the ICO Annihilation?

December 14, 2018

Forbes | Gerald Fenech | Dec 12, 2018 The crypto space, though promising in a myriad of different ways still has many obstacles to overcome. Bad actors are slowly being weeded out but at an excruciating pace. Ideally, the crypto space would have so much competition, innovation and use cases that the best ideas and best innovators would naturally stand tall. Though 2018 has been a trying year for everyone in the space, 2019 is looking positive as many promising projects are rearing to go. These neophytes, though not experienced are seeking to close the gaps within the crypto space that have lingered since the beginning, namely; security, accountability and transparency and above all, practical implications for the technology. Countries like Gibraltar, Malta, and Switzerland seeking to build legislative frameworks for these new businesses to operate and thrive in, and give them a home. However, it is a difficult balance; on the one hand to regulate, securitize and make everything compliant, whilst also not stifling budding, inherent innovation. Although everyone recognizes that DLT has huge potential, the time has now come for the space to mature, become regulated and for things be done right. Now is the time to forget the ...
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Experts predict the five big fintech trends of 2019

December 10, 2018

Bloomberg | Julie Verhage and Jennifer Surane | Dec 10, 2018 In 2018, a number of financial technology startups came into their own. Free trading platform Robinhood Markets Inc., for example, added new services and billions to its valuation. And Stripe Inc. was valued by investors at a price higher than the market caps of 249 of the companies on the S&P 500 Index. But the industry is also maturing and consolidating, and larger industry players, hoping not to be left behind by the new era of digital finance, are stepping up their hunt for acquisitions. What should we be on the lookout for in 2019? According to the fintech pros surveyed by Bloomberg—more deals, swirling IPO rumors and a continued steady stream of checks from venture capitalists. Here’s a wrap from industry experts. (Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and length.) See:  OSC Seeks Applications for Fintech Advisory Committee IPOs looming Up to this point, financial technology startups have been hesitant to enter the public markets. And who can blame them? Most fintech companies that have gone public in recent years have seen their share prices tumble, and ample venture capital funding has buffered balance sheets. Still, a major IPO ...
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Coinsquare acquires BlockEQ to expand its cryptocurrency offerings

December 10, 2018

Coinsquare release | Dec 6, 2018 The acquisition was closed for $12 million CAD and brings the leading cryptocurrency wallet on the Stellar platform into the Coinsquare ecosystem TORONTO, Dec. 6, 2018 /CNW/ - Today Coinsquare, Canada's premier cryptocurrency trading platform for trading Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies, announced it has acquired BlockEQ, the leading cryptocurrency wallet on the Stellar network. Coinsquare purchased BlockEQ for $12 million CAD and will leverage BlockEQ's technology to help Coinsquare and its users connect further with the world of cryptocurrencies. See:  House Finance Committee Urges Canadian Government to Regulate Cryptocurrencies "We have enormous respect for what the BlockEQ team brings to Coinsquare," said Cole Diamond, CEO of Coinsquare. "They are one of Canada's best tech teams, and the product they've built is immensely valuable. That combination in partnership with Coinsquare's technology and team means that we have the opportunity to build amazing things for the cryptocurrency community in Canada and far beyond." BlockEQ, which was co-founded by Jonathan Lister, Megha Bambra and Satraj Bambra, is a cryptocurrency wallet that empowers users to buy, trade, and hold cryptocurrencies in a secure manner. It allows for the tokenization of crypto assets in order to allow them ...
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OSC Seeks Applications for Fintech Advisory Committee

December 10, 2018

OSC Release | Dec 6, 2018 TORONTO – The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) is seeking applications for membership on its Fintech Advisory Committee (FAC). The FAC advises OSC LaunchPad staff on developments in the fintech space and the challenges faced by start-ups in the securities industry.  OSC LaunchPad is a dedicated team that engages with fintech businesses, provides guidance and flexibility in navigating securities regulatory requirements, and works to keep regulation in step with digital innovation. The FAC will meet quarterly, with additional meetings as required. The FAC is chaired by Pat Chaukos, Deputy Director, OSC LaunchPad, and will consist of up to 15 members. Membership terms will be for one year.  Members will be selected based on whether they have direct experience in one or more of the following: Digital platforms (e.g., crowdfunding portals, crypto-asset trading platforms, online advisers); Crypto-assets or distributed ledger technologies (e.g., blockchain); Data science or artificial intelligence (AI); Venture capital, financial services, securities, legal or accounting experience with a focus on the fintech or technology sector; Fintech or technology entrepreneurship; Compliance or regulatory technology (RegTech) solutions; or Cryptography or cybersecurity. See:  OSC outlines key areas of focus for 2018-2019 Interested parties should submit a résumé indicating their ...
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Bitcoin ETF Seekers Met With SEC Monday In Latest Pitch for Approval

December 4, 2018

Coindesk | Nikhilesh De | Nov 30, 2018 Members of VanEck, SolidX and the Cboe BZX Exchange met with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) staff earlier this week to present a new argument on why the bitcoin market is ready for an exchange-traded fund (ETF). In the latest push to convince the regulator to approve a rule change which would open the door for the country’s first bitcoin ETF, the three firms met with the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, Division of Trading and Markets, Division of Economic and Risk Analysis and Office of General Counsel. Notably, Monday’s effort differed from previous presentations, which took more of a regulatory focus. See:  OSC approves Canada’s first blockchain ETF Instead, the proponents’ argument centered around the idea that the bitcoin market is mature enough to support an ETF, and at present looks similar to markets for other assets which already have such products. The presentation gave several examples of assets that already have ETFs, including crude oil, silver and gold. The presentation specifically tied the idea of futures markets with spot markets, noting that for money substitutes such as gold and silver, this connection between the two can be proven with empirical ...
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Not yet a done deal

December 4, 2018

Investment Executive | By James Langton | Nov 23, 2018 Many hurdles remain for the CMRA before it becomes a reality Canada’s regulatory landscape faces a transformation as politics, shifting priorities and new legal realities push the investment industry’s overseers in new directions. Most obviously, the prospect of a fundamental reshaping of the regulatory framework in Canada now is, at least, a possibility – given the Supreme Court of Canada’s (SCC) long-awaited decision on Nov. 9, which reversed a lower court’s ruling in Quebec, that declared that a proposed federal/provincial model for a co-operative capital markets regulator is constitutional. But while this decision knocks down a basic legal obstacle for the new model for overseeing the securities industry, that doesn’t mean that the adoption of a co-operative regulator is imminent – or even inevitable. Indeed, the SCC’s decision hints at the significance of the hurdles that still must be cleared before the proposed Capital Markets Regulatory Authority (CMRA) can become a reality in Canada. Although the SCC has found that the proposed CMRA model is constitutional, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is a good idea. “It’s up to the provinces to determine whether participation is in their best interests,” the ...
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