A Message From BrianI love working in the Financial Services (Fintech) industry. Multi-faceted challenges like balancing intuitive design, user-experience, and removing unnecessary friction, with scalability, redundancy, and is both art and science. Consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and regulators each have their own considerations that must be met, where privacy and security are paramount. Every type of company worldwide fundamentally needs the ability to accept payment for goods or services rendered, yet the way people pay is very intimate and very local.The Fintech ecosystem is as diverse as the markets it serves, and I feel that healthy debate takes place in a respectful manner with underlying respect for each other as colleagues and humans. That said, I’ve witnessed fintech companies follow the broader tech sector, leaning into much more liberal and progressive ideologies. There were meetings and conferences where I was uninvited due to vaccination status, even when government agencies and cities had lifted restrictions. Conferences and gatherings where it was mandatory to include pronouns or registration was impossible. Being asked to celebrate and support social issues with my money and voice that did not align with my principles and values.When I stepped away from operational duties at BasisTheory as Co-Founder and COO, I knew that the next opportunity must align completely with my moral compass. There are many amazing companies with great products where I could add value, but many of these companies also espouse DEI and ESG policies that I cannot support. I wanted to be proud of and scale the technology and the products I launched AND the core ethos of the company.Enter PublicSquare. I had been following the company for some time, and my interaction started with a cold-outreach to the leadership team. This led to a series of meetings and a short consulting agreement, where I saw the whole team in action, and witnessed how they walked-the-walk, not just talked-the-talk. The team lives by the company's values every day, and makes hard decisions with long-term vision in mind, while also creating shareholder value.I am so proud to join PublicSquare as the President of the newly created fintech & payments division. In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more detail about our vision and the tactical steps we are taking to create a payments infrastructure for the parallel economy. As for now…If you are a company in the payments / fintech space that is values-aligned, reach out! I’d love to talk with you.If you are a passionate payment’s engineer or product manager, and never thought you could work for a tech-forward fintech that supports and protects conservative values, I’d love to talk with you.If you are a merchant or platform that would like to work with a payments company that holds fast to the same values that you do, and won’t cancel you for holding to those values, I’d love to talk with you.We have much work to do, but I am so optimistic about our future. Let’s build better families, communities, and companies together.God bless!Brian
You're viewing a simplified version of this blog post. Enable JavaScript for the full interactive experience.
