Stephen: This is your host Stephen Sargeant, another Around The Coin podcast, and we're talking a lot about digital asset inoperability. I said the word, it sounded great. We don't have to do another take, at least on that word. But we're talking about that with the CEO and co-founder of Mesh Connect, Bam Azizi. He's been a, you know, native of Silicon Valley, 15 years, working on several different entrepreneurial ventures.

Where he now creates Mesh Connect, which helps you with a seamless process in crypto. Whether it's deposits, payments, you know, verification, as well as on ramping with crypto exchanges and sending your funds around. This is an interesting topic for anyone that is touching crypto payments. Or if you're just a tech entrepreneur and want to know how he raised over 40 billion dollars, this is a really great episode.

He has such unique perspectives on how the crypto industry and what is holding it back. From Mass Adoption, we even get into a little bit of the regulatory compliance issues and the, you know, the challenges of being a non custodial non custodial partner here in the U. S. where they're creating their business.

Really great conversation. Let me know what you think at the end, but make sure you listen right to the end because Bam has some interesting insights on what they're about to release in the crypto industry.

Stephen: This is your host, Steven Sargeant, the Around The Coin podcast. We are going to get deep into Web3 today. We have Bam Azizi, the CEO and co-founder of The Mesh. Do you pronounce it like Mesh Network, or do you like just call it, keep it like share, like Mesh?

Bam: First of all, thank you for having me. The name is Mesh Connect, but you can call it Mesh as well.

Stephen: Awesome. And we want to go deep into, you know, how you got to the point of where you are with Mesh Connect. Although you had a PhD in, you know, computer science, you spent a fair amount of your early time doing research when it came to robotics. It seems like in the healthcare, you want to kind of talk to us about your, you know, early on in school, what your plans were going to be and how you got from like robotics all the way to deep inside the computer science within Web3.

Bam: Sure, happy to give you a quick background. Yeah, I, my, I was working on computer vision and AI for robotics. It was It was even cool back then, but it was not as cool as today to work on AI. So once I finished my PhD I couldn't find a job to be honest, even though it was, it was a very, very emerging kind of topic.

And everyone was talking about robots, but AI was not nowhere near where we are now, like 10, 15 years ago. And so, and, and always my mission in life was to build something and use my knowledge and expertise to build something that can help like 10 more people, not like changing the word. And I thought like I can leverage that and my computer science background and programming background to do something good.

So. And then I looked at my life. I felt like, okay, the most hated things in my life is passwords. And I know everyone hates passwords. No one loves it. So we created this company called No Password. And and then our mission was basically allowing people to to log in to different services without, like, using their passwords.

This is, Way before Touch ID and Face ID. So it was, it was a hard mission, but we were quite successful. We raised less than a million in the heart of Silicon Valley as a first time founder, and then we're cashflow positive. And then the company got acquired by Logman. I spent there like around a year and a half in, in Logmin.

I was managing the, the team at LastPass on the product and engineering side. And then after that basically Logmin itself got acquired and I got out and I started, started Mesh. Yeah.

Stephen: super interesting. Back then you talked about being in San Francisco, you know, Silicon Valley. What was the vibe back then? Give us the year and what was kind of the hot topics at the time and what were people interested? Passwords don't seem as sexy, but in Silicon Valley, like a startup is a startup and there's so many different ideas.

So talk to me about that, you know, those conversations.

Bam: I've been through different things in Silicon Valley. So when I was starting No Password, the hot, the big hot things was wearable. If you remember, like we had like watches and wristbands, like, Fitbit and like all these startups, like they were like super sexy. Everyone was like chasing them. And they were saying like the future is wearable.

You can wear your computer and stuff like that. And then after that, when we started NoPassword, we were like focused on enterprise security. Big data was a big thing back then. So people were talking about processing data, how to sell like softwares to enterprises who helps them to with the big data problem.

And then after that FinTech become a thing like Plaid and Stripe, like these companies kind of. And then, then we had crypto waves and then now we have AI. So, it's, it's fun to look back. But I remember one of my obsession was like getting like Silicon Valley, the movie, like getting on top of the final stage of tech disrupt.

But we finally got selected for Mesh but we did not succeed when I was at no password, but it was fun on there.

Stephen: That's hilarious. What were the conversations like? Like, when did you first, I'm assuming you're, you know, computer science background, you're in Silicon Valley, you probably hear about Bitcoin, cryptocurrency a lot sooner than the average founder, even the average tech founder, when was your, were you first introduced to like Bitcoin, cryptocurrency?

And what was your initial thoughts, especially when you're working in like the password space? Did you see this as like, Oh, this solves a lot of challenges that we're facing in traditional tech?

Bam: Yeah, so we were seeing a lot of blockchain based identity platform back then. The way I looked at, so my background is, is security and believe it or not, the main thing that we are like basically using in security is something called PKI or Public Key Infrastructure for Encryption. That is the core of blockchain.

So, it's very, very, like, close to what I was building at No Password, and I was always interested to learn. about about blockchain itself. And I felt like this is a cool technology that can democratize access to certain things that was not possible prior to that. So, and then one of the cool things that built on top of blockchain was it happened to be a cryptocurrency called Bitcoin or, or other cryptocurrencies that, that we have like.

We're like Generation 1 and Generation 2, which is Ethereum, Solana, and Generation 3 that you're talking about, like, everything about smart contracts and all the new technologies that Webtrees are using, right? So those are all like one of the use cases of blockchain, but blockchain can be used for AI, can be used for identity, can be used for tokenization, can be used for like reward programs.

Like there are a lot of use cases. And I compare that to the cloud movement. So if you remember in 2000s that decade, people were talking about debating like I should build or buy. Computing power. Same thing will happen in blockchain. So should you build your own blockchain or just use these technologies that are out there, or should you even build any sort of architecture, decentralized or centralized, or just rely on blockchains?

I say it's, it's free. It's, it's it's amazing. It's, there is no centralized authority and you can just build your cool things on top of it without paying anyone. Like from my perspective, that's pretty cool.

So That's was my, my, my kind of, entrance to, to Crypto World. But my story, like all of us have that fun story of like interacting with Bitcoin for the first time.

So I tried to buy Bitcoin in 2013. And then I did some research and I was just getting all these messages. online that like, this is dangerous, they're using Bitcoin for money laundering, for drug dealing and stuff like that. And I said, I want to stay in this country. So I stayed away from Bitcoin. And then first time I bought it, I think it was 2017, I bought Bitcoin.

Stephen: that's awesome. And then you start Mesh Connect in 2020, like three months into the pandemic. Was this an idea that you were already thinking about? And then the pandemic maybe accelerated your efforts or were you like, Hey, this is a perfect time. I had the idea, wasn't a hundred percent sure if we're going to get into it.

But now that everyone's going digital, I have the, you know, the security aspect of it. This is a perfect time to launch Mesh Connect.

Bam: Yeah. So I think and I wish that there was that genius to say, like, this is crypto to future, let's just dive into that. It was not like that. I went through a lot of evolution. So initially I wanted to leverage AI to help day to day player basically people to be able to become a great investors.

So we created this. This application called the Front App that it could connect your crypto accounts and your stock accounts and we would like basically run some, some magic behind the scene and tell you your, your score and then how you can improve your investment and stuff like that. But But early on, we had like crypto as part of like one of the assets on the platform.

And then it was, we had a lot of users and like billions, billions of dollars in connected assets on the platform. It was very successful. It was very hard to monetize. And then I gathered my team and said, like, look, we have to monetize this platform. It's not 2021. There is no magic wand that you can just move and then you get a bunch of monies from, from VCs.

So we have to think about monetization. And then, and we looked at our team DNA and we felt like, okay, we are coming from cyber security background. We understand PKI very well. We understand integrations and authentication very well, and we have built 300 integrations already. Because what we have built was not off the shelf.

Everything was proprietary. We didn't use Plaid or other services to build our service or application. So we said, okay, let's launch it on product on and see what happens. And we launched it ranked up three that day, closed first five customers day one, and they feel like, okay, this, this, this is, there is something there.

And we continued and we never looked back. And, and so. We had both equities and crypto, but crypto worked very, very well for us because our technology is very, very interactive means you can connect your account and work, like basically do something with those accounts, either trade or transfer, deposit, or pay.

So you cannot pay for your coffee with your Apple stock, right? You cannot transfer your Apple stock from one person to another. People don't do that. Like it's just not the consumer behavior. But on the other side of it, crypto is very, very interactive, right? So you do a lot of things with your crypto assets.

It's not just an investment, it's a currency too. So that's how kind of we pivoted to crypto and evolved around that. And then we just never looked back. And now you're a crypto company.

Stephen: I love it. What were those first conversations? Like, do you know why, did you know why at the time those customers were like, yeah, this is a deal right away. Or did you kind of find out later? Like, Oh, this is the, what they were looking for. And this is the gap we filled. Like, how did you, I think it's always funny when people talk about product market fit, usually it hits like lightning and they're like, Oh, of course.

Like we, of course we knew that this would sell off the shelves. And some people were like, Hey, people were buying it. We had no idea. We didn't find out until months, years later.

Bam: Yeah, in the hindsight, I can say our background mattered, so we knew what we were building. The application we built was just a demo if you will, or a POC of like, this technology works. And that kind of resonated with people. But I, first of all, I don't like to say that I was the genius behind all of that.

It's just evolved around that idea. And I don't believe anyone can, you know, Just find product market fit and like one day you wake up, it's like, okay, let's do this. And there is a market. You have to test it. You have to listen to your customers. You have to tweak your vision a little bit and then basically eventually making it happen.

Right. And, and it requires a lot of work and a lot of brainstorming, a lot of craftsmanship and and also talking to customers and leaders and thought leaders to make that a reality. And it took us 2 to 3 years to get there once we kind of pivoted to B2B.

Stephen: What's that gap that you feel that you feel that, you know, these customers were running towards you, even after you pivoted, like, what's the one gap that you say you feel the best or maybe the void that you feel the other companies or other, you know, vendors weren't filling at the time?

Bam: Yeah, I think our mission has not changed. Like our distribution channel went from B2C to B2B. Our, our vision from day one was bringing financial freedom for everyone and making financial freedom a reality for everyone in the world. We happen to work in crypto because crypto is a global language and that has not changed.

We've just pivoted that distribution channel from B2C to B2B. So this way we are serving our end users is through distributions of other businesses. So B2B to C, right? So, the gap that we are filling is is very, very interesting. So the example I give is the banking industry. So if you look at banking industry, we had like.

Local banks, and then we had regional banks, then we had basically national banks. And then these banks started kind of talking to each other and building a network. So they can transfer, you can transfer assets from one place to another. Like that's why we have ACH and wire transfer. And then we started building Swift, right?

So, One, like you can send money from one country to another. So all these centralized, central banks can talk to each other. And and, and US dollar become kind of the, the word currency. And everyone was kind of using that as a staple currency. So the same thing is happening in in crypto industry.

In the last 15 years, the whole industry. was busy building the best in class custodial services, the best in class chains, best in class basically smart contracts. But all of them are kind of separated islands. And the gap here is there is no connectivity or there is no connectivity fabric or layer that can connect all of these islands.

And that is what Mesh is trying to achieve. So, if you believe that crypto is the future of finance or at least playing an important role, In future of finance, then Mesh is going to be the next big thing because you need connectivity. You cannot just build your own island with a mode around it, right? So you need to start talking with each other and working with each other and Mesh can make that and facilitate that.

Stephen: That's so interesting. You guys have a suite of products. I'm looking here at Mesh Deposit, Pay, Ramp. Many would think that these are similar products to crypto exchange, right? Can you describe how you either integrate with exchanges or, you know, what differentiates you from a crypto exchange that people, you know, can make deposits to, some of them have some, I'd say pretty basic payment options.

But they're known as like the on and off ramps in the crypto age.

Bam: One of the things that happens to almost every founder is they try to do too many things all at the same time. So we decided to be very, very focused at, at Mesh. We knew what is our DNA, what is our expertise, what are like the sweetest spot that we can build based on those expertises. So even though we have multiple products.

Our engine is Crypto Transfer or Crypto Connection. So, we have three major products Mesh Deposit, Mesh Ramp, and Mesh Pay. And if you just open the hood, under the hood is the same engine. So if something goes wrong with any of these products, we just tweak the engine. And it will fix this across the products.

So, and anything that's outside of that core, we won't touch it. And to your second question about what is our difference, if you're a complementary service to exchanges and wallets, they are our partners, they are our customers, we're not competing with them. And the difference is very simple.

There are custodians, there are banks, we are like, you can call us like Visa or MasterCard, we are a network connecting all these banks to each other. So you're not offering bank services. So even our Rampant Deposit product is basically based on the services those banks are providing. So we're building on top of them and then for them as well.

So that's, that's the main difference.

Stephen: Is there an industry problem? Like I used to work at an exchange. I wasn't too much in the technical and like, you know, withdrawals more from an AML and compliance, anti money laundering compliance side. Is there issues if you're, you know, banking at Kraken or have CryptoKraken and you need to send to Binance or to Coinbase is there issues or what's the existing state that you had to make that process, I'm assuming more seamless as a complimentary service?

Why was this so clunky to begin with?

Bam: Yeah, I mean, like, compliance is an interesting concept that we are a software layer. We are non custodial, we never touch the assets, even for a millisecond. We're just making things embedded impossible for, for our customers and their end users. So the way you should look at Mesh is the same way that you connect your bank account.

It can connect now your crypto accounts and then do things with that crypto account. It can connect your Coinbase and then transfer assets from Coinbase to your Metamask wallet without switching between applications, without copying and pasting wallet addresses. When was the last time you copy and paste your bank account?

Just connect to your bank account, right? So the same thing will happen on the crypto side. And then the compliance piece is important because we can help people to be more compliant. We can help customers to be more secure. Instead of like, just allowing users to copy and pasting wallet address, they lose funds because of choosing the wrong network, they lose funds because they copy the wrong wallet address, and, and all of us have been there that you do everything, you double check, triple check everything, you click on the send button, and then you don't know what happens.

Like, you will receive the fund when you receive the fund. Which is which is not the best way to, or best user experience in 2024, to be honest. So, Mesh is trying to solve that problem and, and, and it makes it more secure and more compliant at the same time.

Stephen: And that's a huge problem now. Like the cop, everyone's like copy and pasting. That sounds so easy, except for illicit actors understand that, you know, many people are lazy. They're just going to go to their last transaction and copy and paste a crypto address. Not realizing that a lot of these illicit actors are sending them small amounts of crypto to a similar, you know, to, from a similar address and then they use that same address when they're copying and pasting, basically sending the funds to these criminal activities.

Have you seen a spike of what's called address poisoning? I don't feel like it was that relevant in 2020, but we're seeing some very prominent figures in crypto lose funds and they're regularly very secure with their crypto, lose funds, and then almost thinks like, what does that, you know, what chances the average user have if you have these crypto OGs that build massive amounts of wealth that get hit with, you know, copying and pasting an address.

Bam: Including US government that they lo the DEA agency lost fund by sending $50 million to the wrong address. Address poisoning is a real sophisticated attack used by a lot of government, government based hackers like North Korean hackers, that basically they show you the last four digit, the same four digit, and then you will send it to the wrong address or to the wrong network, and then they will receive it, and then you cannot really, there is no.

service center that it can call and reverse that. So once the transaction is done, it's done. And no matter how good you are, I don't think users as like, they're acting always as a weak links in security. So we should not like, no matter how much you spend and invest in education, that is going to be the problem.

Same problem that we had with passwords, to be honest, like you cannot ask users and educate them to pick the right passwords. You need to solve that in a different way. It's our responsibility as a tech people. To make it easier for end users and not like blaming them to not checking stuff or not being diligent enough, right?

So it should be so easy for them that even if they want to make a mistake, they shouldn't be able to. And so address poisoning is one of the attacks. There are multiple different type of attacks that basically attacking newcomers to crypto. For instance, did you know that even if you save your address?

For certain tokens in, in any centralized exchanges, it changes periodically. So you might think like, okay, last year I sent to this address, this is my Ethereum network address. But if you send it again, it will, some, someone else will receive it or the exchange will receive it, or it gets lost that worst case scenario.

So your addresses are changing as well. Like that makes it even, even worse. Worse for you because all these addresses are commingled and you need to like double check and triple check every time there's a transaction.

Stephen: I didn't, I've never heard of that. That's, and that might be, you know, as so many more crypto addresses are, you know, being put into the system, that does make a little bit more sense. I'm curious, do you feel that this is the reason why more users aren't getting into crypto on web three? I know for me, you know, the first time I bought an NFT and you don't see the NFT, you know, you don't see the transaction complete for, you know, three, four, five minutes, you You don't have even the most experienced users always has that like, you know, deep suspicion, like did something happen?

Why is this

Bam: Yeah, what's happening, right?

Stephen: That can't be the way we transact in the world on every day. Imagine, you know, buying coffee and that's the way you're transacting with or purchasing a house or any kind of main, you know, or car. Do you feel like nobody talks about that much? Do you, but do you think that's the main reason why we haven't seen the mass adoption?

Because it's not a seamless process to just. You know, it was hard enough for them to use an exchange and deposit funds on the exchange. But now they're like, Hey, MetaMask, like I don't have to send it here. And then I'm reading articles on Google. Those Google articles are from illicit actors and I'm sending the addresses to their, to their, you know, address bank.

What are your thoughts on that?

Bam: Yeah, I think you're spot on, right? So, Everyone in crypto is talking about user experience, right? But we don't do much about it. Everyone is building their own, like, isolated ecosystem. And I think we need to take a step back and think about that from user's standpoint and perspective. We need to offer something that is as seamless and as streamlined as Web2 experience.

Like, the reason I did not buy crypto in 2013 was because it was not easy to buy crypto. There was no Coinbase. There was no Metamask back then. So you had to kind of build your own cold wallet and then you might lose your keys. Like it was just, we got much, much better, but we have way to go to get to the place that we can onboard the next billions of users on the platform.

So your example is also spot on. So the, the North star for all the crypto people is you should go to the coffee shop and pay for your coffee. With crypto. That means like crypto is so easy to use that you can even do it, like use it for your day to day basis. So, and, and just, I will walk you through that experience.

You just walk to, walk into Starbucks. They accept crypto for some reasons, and they give you a QR code. You scan that QR code and then you have to wait in line for 10 minutes for that transaction to clear so you can get your copy. Even if you do everything right and you know what you're doing, you're just scanning the QR code, you're pasting it in the right address.

Still, it takes like 10 minutes for you to get the coffee versus you just show up and then swipe your card or your Apple Pay, and then you get your coffee next minute, right? So that's the gap and Mesh is exactly solving that problem. So, just imagine that your, your Coinbase account and your Revolut account is connected to your Apple Pay through Mesh, and then you just swipe your Apple Pay or, or your phone, and then basically you pay for things.

And because. Mesh can read your account, can verify that the money has left your account. So the Starbucks doesn't need to wait to receive the fund because they know the money is coming. So that is streamlines that process. Another part of

Stephen: You see the other side of it. You see the source of wealth, the source of funds, you see the transaction that they're making it from. So then there doesn't have to be that confirmation because you can kind of see just similar to a, you know, a debit card transaction. If they don't have the funds, the transaction wouldn't go through.

Bam: Right, and do you remember micro deposits? So you had to micro deposit to prove that you own that account. So they tell you like transfer 42 cents and 22 cents. So we know that this is actually your account because you can read this information. So, and then that's how you were used to connect your bank account.

And then Plaid came to the picture and then streamlined that process. Same thing is happening with Mesh Verify. So you can verify the ownership of the accounts. So you don't need to do the micro deposits. So basically what you're saying to the end users is connect your accounts and forget the rest.

Like we will take care of the rest. You don't need to be worried about address poisoning, copying and pasting wallet address or thinking even twice about like where your money is. We give you full visibility where your money is, where your fund is, what's the process. And we, on top of that, we make everything faster and more streamlined.

Stephen: Are you, do people spend their crypto? You know, there's this kind of, you know, crypto went down, but you know, everyone was hodling, nobody got rid of it. You know, a good percentage didn't get rid of it. I've only seen people use crypto myself to buy books from Andres Antonopoulos, which will probably be the most expensive books in history that I've ever paid for.

But I don't see outside of like my close, unique crypto community that go to the conferences, the diehards, I don't see somebody pulling up and using crypto to purchase anything. What are your thoughts about this? Is it, is this you know, is this total addressable market way bigger than we can think, or do you see like, Oh, it's going to happen.

It may not happen right now, but when, you know, more users have crypto, this is going to be very similar to Venmo. And you'll have that kind of market share by the time that does, you know, we hit that inflection point.

Bam: 100%. I think the experience is not quite there yet. That's why you're not seeing it on an everyday basis. I believe three things will play an important role for crypto payment to become adopted by the mainstream. One is the compliance piece. So banks and, and institutions and regulators should feel comfortable with crypto.

They are getting there, so it might take a couple of years. Second part is the the connectivity piece that Mesh is trying to solve. And there are other companies solving it for self custody wallets and, and bridges and chains and stuff like that. We are more focused on the centralized side as well.

And the third piece is, the stablecoins, right? So, like, you can, like, it's hard to sell your Bitcoin and then buy or, like, basically sell, get some cash, and then pay for things and it makes it very hard for merchants to accept Bitcoin because then they have to take some sort of a risk. The same way you're not paying with your gold coins, you should not use your Bitcoin to pay for things.

You should use your stable coins to pay for things. And I think we'll see that in the US at some point, but right now that's a very, very typical process in countries that they don't have stable currencies. So they own stable coins and they spend stable coins on a day to day basis. We just don't see it because U.S. dollar is so stable that you don't see the eagerness or need to buy USDC or USDT. But across the globe, like for billions of users, that is something that they need right away.

Stephen: I don't think people realize like Nigeria, you can't just go to the bank and pull out U. S. dollars. Like I don't think people realize that like they may have the money there, but good luck trying to get access to U. S. dollars. It's not like, oh, it'll take 10 minutes. It may take a month or two for you to get access to that capital.

And then you can only send out so much out of the country. So, you know, it's so extremely difficult to run any kind of operation where you have to pay people abroad. And your use case is stable coins. They need that easy to access. Platform that you're providing because it has to look like banking, especially when a lot of them probably don't have access to traditional banking.

Bam: that's correct. Yeah, exactly. You're spot on in terms of like countries that they have hyperinflation like Venezuela, Nigeria, like some Latin American countries. Yeah, exactly. I see that as a problem. And then the other big use case for crypto is basically international remittances. So you can send money quicker and cheaper from one place to another.

And that's, that's. Only possible because of stablecoins. Without stablecoins, you cannot really do that.

Stephen: You mentioned the Starbucks payment use case. That's a great one. Is there another huge use case where customers are using the Mesh Connect on a regular basis? And then is there anything unique where you're like, Oh, like I'm surprised more customers from this industry or this niche aren't using Mesh and you know, you, or you can see a trend internally where you're getting more inbound, you know, questions about your platform from a certain industry, like maybe, you know, internet gambling or, you know, online crypto casinos.

Bam: Yeah, so there are a lot of use cases that the merchant does want to, they don't want to touch fiat, they want to get crypto so gaming industry could be an example of that. The bigger one is the payout use case. So if you are hiring someone on Upwork or some like other like freelance or marketplace and you want to pay them.

And they weren't going to get paid in crypto, so they have to copy and paste wallet address and get paid in crypto. But they can also connect their wallet, they can connect their exchange account and then get paid and we can verify the payment has been cleared. They cannot claim that, like, I did not receive the payment.

So, the payout use case is also another big use case. We had MeshDeposit and MeshRamp as first two products that we were focused on. And then someone in Latin America. Leverage Mesh to get paid in crypto for basically the MeshPay use case. They invented MeshPay, like our customers invented Mesh Pay.

Stephen: Love that.

Bam: And then we just saw it like, wow, this is cool. Like you can pay with crypto for this merchant and they put like a PayPal type logo like MeshPay, and then it could, and we had no intention to sell.

Stephen: oh, the fool with the lawyer is like, we need to copyright that.

Bam: Yeah, but that was interesting. Like when you give the tool to the people, they just go and discover new, creative, innovative use cases for your tools. That's fascinating.

Stephen: I love that. I love, you know, when the customers decide how they're going to use your product and service, you know, further than you could have ever thought. You're still patching, like, that description of the payment at Starbucks and there's no risk to the merchant. You're using API keys, I'm assuming.

Is there risk to you? Like, what happens Like, how do you know that the person, that transaction is completed? Let's say, you know, the funds were, went into their crypto exchange account, but they're illicit funds and the exchange, you know, will block any withdrawals. So you can see that they have the amount, but they technically can't withdraw from the exchange because of, you know, maybe compliance issues.

How do you process that transaction on behalf of that person? Like, where's the risk in whether it's the API or something I just described in it for Mesh?

Bam: Yeah, we are not non custodial. We never touch the asset. We don't sit in the flow of the transfer in a traditional or conventional way that basically companies did. So you're just a conduit, right? So we just tell. The merchant that this money has been transferred and here's the verification from the exchange and exchange basically is taking the risk and some of the risk is basically on, on the, on the merchant side as well.

And if it's online transaction, typically people wait. More, if you're in the store, you want to kind of get it done quick so that would be different, different scenarios. But long story short, using Mesh, you get less risk and you get more security and you get a better user experience. It doesn't solve the entire, like, risk for you but the risk would be much, much more calculated in that sense.

Stephen: You're dealing with finances, so there's always going to be some level of risk, otherwise we wouldn't have so many regulatory requirements if there wasn't, right?

Bam: I think regulation helps a lot in terms of, like, understanding, okay, like, you have right now the whole field is gray zone. We need to have some guidance, like, what is red, what is green, what is gray. And I believe that we get there and it helps Mesh to help our customers better because they don't need to interpret like what regulators are saying.

We can do all of that and build that into our, our products so they can just use that freely without being worried about like what is compliant, what is not.

Stephen: Speaking of regulations, completely understand that you're non custodial and don't fall under the same regulatory requirements as crypto exchanges. But we are seeing, you know, U. S. law enforcement and others around the world going after developers, you know, Telegram's founder was, you know, arrested. So, there are some enforcement actions that you know, the regulators are taking on, you know, developers as well as DeFi protocols.

How do you look at that space when it comes to regulations? Are you like, Thinking that you're eventually going to be regulated. Are you hoping that there, as you just said, that there's clear guidance regarding regulation, so you can just comply and move forward? Like, where do you sit kind of on the regulatory perspective, internally conversations with your legal and compliance department?

Bam: Yeah, so we always look at compliance as a tailwind not as a, not as a headwind. So it helps us to grow faster because more regulations. To a level means peace of mind for larger players and institutions and banks. So they get adopted to crypto and we'll see more use cases for Mesh. We, we love to understand what's going on in the mind of regulators because that helps us to kind of implement the best services for our customers.

And and, and and I think we are all, all of us are adults, we can get bad news and we can get good news, but I don't like having no news, right? So right now you're in no news state, like what's happening, what is good,

Stephen: United States of America. No, no guy, no guidance, but lots of enforcement.

Bam: Exactly. So that hopefully that will change. And that change will help everyone, including Mesh.

Stephen: But you do have MeshVerify. Was that brought on by, you know, in the EU they have these new set of comprehensive digital asset you know, it's called the the digital asset requirements and, you know, MiCA is the name of it. What are your thoughts on that? Was that where kind of MeshVerify was like, Hey, we can really stand up something here because now we do have clear guidance on what the requirements are, we can at least provide a solution for some of our clients from that aspect.

Bam: Yeah. So, you're talking about the recent mandate that was announced on July 4th by European banking authorities, or as known as EBA. So it's just an expansion of travel rule for digital currencies. And that means that the, the exchanges and banks, they need to know what is the source of the fund and what is the destination of the fund.

It's very simple. But simply ask, but it's hard to implement because of the fragmentation on the crypto side. And so every single exchange in Europe, they have to comply with this by the end of this year, which is very, very short timeline. But Mesh is helping top players in Europe to kind of be compliant and it's an opportunity for us, and I believe that U.S. and other regions will follow suit and we will like expanding our operation across the globe, including U. S. to offer that to our customers as well. But overall, this is a great example to show how regulation and how clarity and regulation can help companies to adopt a better type of, to offer better type of services to their end users and how Mesh can play a role there.

Stephen: You had mentioned MetaMask earlier. What is that partnership? You just announced a huge partnership with MetaMask. What does that partnership entail? Cause I know you have a lot of exchanges, maybe decentralized protocols that are part of your network. What does that partnership with MetaMask do for them and for you as Mesh Connect?

Bam: Yeah, so I love MetaMask for many different reasons. They are the largest self custody wallet out there. They are very tech forward and they're like a thought leader in the space. We work closely with the product team there to basically build best in class connectivity options for their end users.

We started with portfolio aggregations. If you go to portfolio. metamask. io, you can connect your exchange accounts to your Metamask and like see a holistic basically view of your portfolio there. And then on the other side, they are using basically a rolling out mesh deposit and mesh ramp to all of their end users as well.

And, and it was important for us to. As a startup, you always want to work with players, but in traditional finance, you like, even if you have the best service available, you cannot just go and sell it to top, top five banks. It's just, it takes so much time. I was so surprised by the speed of a team at Metamask and how fast they can work, how innovative they are.

They were the best partner for us to kind of build this together. And they will be the first one getting the benefit of it because they were sharing the same vision.

Stephen: Now, you mentioned stablecoins being one of those things that could unlock, you know, mass adoption within the crypto space. It seems that, you know, last week you posted about the fast growth of PayPal's USD stablecoin and highlighted the strategic investment into Mesh. Talk about, you know, why is PayPal betting on Mesh and why do you think PayPal's a great partner with other stablecoin issuers that have a little bit more of a market cap.

Maybe even talk about the journey, why do you think PayPal's been able to surpass Some stable coins which have been in market for quite a few years now and why you think this is the best strategic partner for you at this time. I

Bam: Yeah, PayPal was another great partner that we had early on thanks to kind of their visionary skills that they understand what is the next big thing. And if, if you were PayPal and you dominated the payment industry and you have hundreds of millions of users and you're seeing the stable coins are thriving, and that's a great and the best use case for stable coins is payment.

You want to kind of be in the forefront of it. And I'm glad that they're they're growing super fast. They just passed $1 billion in, in in TLV. So, and they were like top 10 or top five stablecoins..

Stephen: I think the top five, I think they just surpassed

Bam: Yeah, they're, they're, they're growing super fast. When they invested in Mesh via PiUSD the, the joke was like, I increased the increased the volume for PayPal for 5%. So...

Stephen: At least that's you're putting on your sales deck, right?

Bam: Yes, it was, it was, it was a much smaller ecosystem and then they connected to basically integrated with Solana and then now like they're killing it. But I think it kind of in the hindsight, it makes sense, right? So pay, payment. Plus stablecoins and PayPal is at the forefront of payments, so they should be at the forefront of stablecoins as well.

I think that was a, that was a great vision that PayPal crypto team, especially Jose and Steve, they had that, and then they built it, they built everything around that. So, and then for us, it was interesting as well, right? So we use PayPal. Paypal product, which is PyUSD, and we used Mesh to connect those accounts and transfer that.

So it was a symbolic kind of type of transfer, but I was very happy to see that like Mesh is playing a role in terms of like making Investment by stablecoin a reality?

Stephen: Do you think that they're using Mesh Network or Mesh Connect, sorry, to create that same ecosystem and network effect that Circle has built with some of the bigger ecosystems? Like, instead of them trying to do that themselves, they can now tap into you and you already have a lot of this framework so they can get the same impact that Circle has, probably with a lot less internal work and leveraging the fact that you know you're closer to maybe a lot of the customers and the partners then other Stablecoin Issuers.

Bam: Yeah, I think that's the questions for PayPal team I don't want to answer on behalf of them. But, but yeah, of course I will like, I would love to play a role in terms of like making Pi USD Like top three players on the stablecoin side. But I think PayPal should bet on their own ecosystem. They have hundreds of millions of users.

That's so valuable not every company on the planet has that basically power and they should leverage that toward like adopting PiUSD. Mesh can be a great connectivity layer for people to convert their other stablecoins or other, you know Assets that they have, like Bitcoin or Dogecoin or any altcoins that they have, 2Pi USD to pay for things.

We can help there and you're kind of agnostic to different stablecoins. But we can help definitely PayPal to offer that experience to their end users.

Stephen: That's makes sense. Pre-recorded we talked a little bit about Sillicon Valley, you know, San Francisco. you just opened up a head office after 4 years in San Francisco. You know, why did you just sign now to open up a permanent office? Crypto is so digital, nomad, attractive you know everyone's Texting from Ibiza or doing work in Portugal. Why decide to open up a permanent spot for Mesh Connect?

Bam: So I was doing remote before it wass cool. It was just, I started when I started NoPassword. And then we sold it after five, six years. I went to because LogMeIn had an office and Budapest or in Hungary in Europe. So I went to Europe and saw my team members for the first time. So I've been working for five, six years and it was just a surreal experience that like, these are like real people.

They are not bots, like, but we never had a chance to meet them in person. And it felt like, okay, there is like, if I could do that pre pandemic, I can do that post pandemic too. And then you start building the team and then you will have claustrophobia. Basically people in certain areas. And then they want to kind of work with each other more closely.

They have like newborn kids. They want to kind of escape that like for, for.

Stephen: Parents are like, Yeah, yeah, the pandemic was fun. It's nice to be home with

Bam: in bigger, larger town that you have a smaller kind of place. It's hard to kind of focus on work. And part of our work is. Also brainstorming, not internally, but also externally with our customers and prospects. We invite them to the office, we go to the whiteboard, we draw different flows.

It's just more productive in some areas that you cannot do it with Zoom or other like online platforms. So, and then for me, it was important that this It doesn't come from me, it should come from team members that we want an office, you go as a CEO, make that happen for us. And that was the case after five years.

Basically we had this like around, we have 15 people in Northern California. So they wanted to kind of have a head office so that we can do offsite there. We can invite people from, from New York as well. We can see our partners and that's how kind of we got to this office space. And it's a cool place. We would love to have you there as well.

Stephen: That's awesome. You know me, I'll take you up on that invitation. Tell people, maybe some people have built, especially listeners to this podcast, are very tech founders. So a lot of them know Silicon Valley, but as you said, as maybe the kids get older, they may go to different parts of the United States or other places around the world.

San Francisco has like a, I wouldn't say a bad rap, but it's, you know, being shown in the media as dirty, you know, thief driven. You can't even leave your, you have to leave your car doors unlocked and open so the thieves don't break your window. What are your thoughts about, you know, the San Francisco that you see every day?

Bam: Take it with a grain of salt, right? So you don't want to believe everything you see in the media. There are different places in San Francisco in, in the area that we are, like it's an emerging neighborhood called Dogpatch that we have a lot of startups, a lot of restaurants and bars. I don't see any homelessness problem in that neighborhood.

There are some neighborhoods that. That's like, I don't want to hide the fact that there are some situations there, but you can always find your place. But the big, good thing about San Francisco is, Nowhere on the planet you can find the ecosystem of founders helping each other, accelerators helping founders, and finding the basically level of engagement between investors and founders.

You cannot find it anywhere else. Like, it's a, it's a different, different level and different planet from my perspective. I've been in Europe, I've been in Middle East, I've been in East Coast and West Coast in different places. San Francisco is unique in that sense. Like, I mean, like I expanded to Silicon Valley, like from, from top of the Golden Gate to all the way to like Southern part of San Jose.

Stephen: That's amazing. Any advice for founders? You've raised over 40 million for your organization. You know, the, the word on the street right now is, you know, money's expensive or the term agreements are not what people are, the term sheets aren't what people are hoping for. A lot of companies decide just to keep on bootstrapping it until the ecosystem for investment gets better.

What are your thoughts on how you were able to manage, you know, get investors like PayPal Ventures and others to invest in your idea and your, your concepts?

Bam: Yeah. So first of all, I, one of the syndrome in Silicon Valley that you just see headlines and you feel like it's easy to raise money, but you don't see the whole like journey of that person. And there are some, like a percentage of people that they get lucky because they see the right person or their potential.

Building an AI tool that become hot all of a sudden, and then they get like billions of dollars in funding, but those are like very rare situation. That's why they're on the headline because it doesn't happen. So don't believe, don't believe that it would be like that for you. It was not like that for me.

So we had like for my first company, again, we talked to 200 investors. We barely was getting any sort of yes, we were getting like 50k here, 100k there, 200k there to pay the payroll and then be able to build and become cashflow positive. I think for founders, number one if you're a first time founder, there are a lot of resources that you can go and consume that's free.

There are a lot of accelerators that you can apply. You don't have to go through this. The hard way that I went through, you can get a lot of help from people, and then slowly you build your network, and then the fundraising becomes easier and easier and easier. It took me 15 years to get to this place, and even after I sold my company, it took me a year to raise the first dollar.

And I invested half a million in my own money and in Mesh to be able to convince people, like, I'm just all in on this idea. Even for me, it was hard to raise the first dime after the exit. And then it becomes easier. And then when you have revenue, you have customers, when you have more like solid vision of product, it's an easier task to do and to get to a place that like, you don't even show up in fundraising, like post series, C series, D, like all the finance people.

Just do that because it's all like about metrics. It's not about a little bit of a vision, but mostly in metrics of financials. So that is, that is my advice for founders that like, don't get discouraged by not getting funding, get help as early as possible. Apply for different accelerators, talk to your friends and families about your ideas and, and try to refine your ideas.

Practice a lot in terms of like being able to tell your story in like 10, 15 minutes to a random person and get them excited. So, and then start like building the product. Don't just stock and get a stock in the idea stage. Just start building and then like one page demo, like one, one minute demo video.

It's better than a hundred slides. Like, if you can show how you can solve a real problem, that is better than any slides or any deck or any story you can tell. So that is the most important advice I have for founders.

Stephen: I love that advice. You don't hear people talking about mastering the demo anymore, right? When that's usually the thing that is a first impression for a lot of people, you know, when the demo's not working that well or not that great. Everyone's like, yeah, like, if you couldn't even master the demo, you're gonna have a hard time, like, bringing this to scale.

You're part of, you know, San Francisco communities the financial club. Alex Palin was actually on our podcast before talking about the amazing work he's doing with Ted events. You're part of the financial club, you're a writer and contributor to the financial columnists. When you're around all these other amazing founders and investors, is there anything that you're like, Oh, I want to invest in personally, or maybe through a fund?

Is there any ideas that have caught your attention over the last few years where you want to cut a check for and get in part of the action?

Bam: First off, like many others, I love Alex. He's great at networking. He built this amazing network of people that Kind of gather and then share thoughts and talk to each other. Founders can find investors. Investors can find new innovative ideas to fund prospects and companies that can get connected to different type of companies that they didn't know that they exist.

So, and, and, and And fundraising and building a startup is all about networking, and he's going to building the platform. And there are many other platforms that other founders can use. I, we personally, all of our marketing, so you don't see any Mesh hats on Google or Facebook or LinkedIn. Everything we do is in person marketing.

We go to different events, we talk to different people, decision makers, and then basically tell them about the value of Mesh. And and I think being part of. Being in San Francisco makes it much, much easier. You can come and visit and stay here for a couple of months and see it yourself. Or you can go to closer cities to you.

Like if you're in the East coast, New York is a great hop. If you're in Texas, you can go to Austin. It's a great hop for startups. If you're in LA, you can go to Santa Monica and then kind of build your own network there. But in San Francisco, I think. We have too many opportunities, like there are a lot of events happening almost every day.

And and I love being part of that.

Stephen: Damn, man, you gotta take advantage of LinkedIn. I gotta teach you some tips and tricks. You gotta get your LinkedIn game up, man. It's a beautiful place. Just kidding. I love that. What are your thoughts? Now we're talking so much about the United States you know, this increased focus on cryptocurrency and Bitcoin.

By The Presidential Candidates. There's obviously a lot of marketing and, you know, posturing by them. What are your thoughts about that? And how is that going to play a part in, you know, similar networks that you're building? Or how can you leverage maybe the money that might come into the system for the government to be a little bit more innovative in the U.S.?

Bam: Yeah, I think crypto is, has become a bipartisan issue, no matter like how much each side is just trying to politicize it in their own favor. I, I believe that it is irrelevant. Crypto is a global language. It was banned by the second largest economy, China, but it still exists. So there is no one single power that can basically change the course for crypto.

I think government should focus on regulation and making crypto a safer place for everyone. And I think everyone is like, all the citizens are expecting that from their government to do the necessary work on that end versus just. Politicizing it in their favor for their political ambition. I think that is, that is my vision, but no matter what, what they do, crypto is going to exist and, and continue growing and growing fast because it has real use case.

It solves a lot of problems that traditional finance cannot solve. Does that replace stratify? I don't believe so. It would be, we'll have a hybrid. Or that it will have both like traditional, conventional banks and also crypto use cases in tandem. And I think government's task is basically making crypto as safe as currencies.

Stephen: I love it. And I, you know, before we let you go, you did write an op ed for The Financial Columnist. Talking about compliance by design and how, you know, the future of compliance in crypto usually those, you know, people don't talk about the future of compliance and crypto in the same sentence, they usually talk about regulation in crypto and the future of crypto.

Tell me what's your concept around compliance by design and how does that impact the cryptocurrency and digital assets space?

Bam: Yeah, so like any other tech that we have today you need, you should not, you should take users and customers and adopters out of the picture when it comes to certain things. So you're not in charge of building security for your laptop. You're not in charge of building like the best design as a as a, as a software developer.

You just use off the shelf, like iPhone designs and you create a very, very consistent design for your end users by just leveraging Apple's design, right? So Apple did a great job in terms of like building those core things so you don't have to think about it as a developer, as an end user. And so on and so forth.

We will have the same thing on, on the on the crypto and compliance side. So if you want to adopt crypto, if you want to adopt. If you want to use Crypt as an end user, you should not think, even think about compliance because it should be already built in by players offering those services. And, and like either your mesh customers or not, like anyone who are using as a service provider, they should build that in so the customers can get it as part of the package versus just get that functionality from you and then go and shop around for the compliance piece and then go and shop around for the security piece.

So that's, that is the. The thought on the compliance by design. So, and then, and we thought about it from day one, both in the security aspect of it and on the compliance aspect of it. So that's how we were able to engage with larger customers like Coinbase and Metamask and all the other big names.

Because we were ready for enterprises to adopt this, because those are all the questions that they will ask you. We will share more content on, on LinkedIn that is not related to Mesh. It's just about the crypto industry. So you can follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter. Just search Mesh Connect or Mesh Connect API.

It will show up. And then I would love to, we would love to share more thoughts about where crypto is heading as an industry.

Stephen: That's amazing. And you have some, you know, great articles already and great blogs. But you did mention there that interoperability is the key to compliance. That is something I've never heard before. So maybe just like as a closing statement or maybe as a teaser for some of your future articles and blogs that you're going to share on LinkedIn.

You know, why is interoperability the key to compliance?

Bam: Interop is important for many different aspects for security, for user experience and compliance is no exception. Just think about basically the KYC aspect of it. So imagine that you connect, you open an account in Coinbase. Now you sign up with your Coinbase, your Metamask account.

Coinbase already KYC'd you, and then they can share some information to make the experience easier for, for you to get on board in a third party platform. Right. So, and it doesn't happen if you don't have enough Information on the regulation side and, and, and we can think about like, what are the best practices, but if you don't have clear guidelines, it's hard to build.

At the end of the day, some sort of a functionality that you can build in many different ways, but because of this compliance, you need some guidelines from, from regulators. And that is kind of lacking, but but I am big believer of Interoperation, interoperability, because no matter what type of use case you're going after, if you want to offer a cohesive experience to your end users, you need to interact with each other.

You cannot just say like, this is my ecosystem. I'm just closing it down and offer the services to my end users. And that's, and call it a day. You should be able to interact with each other. So if the user goes from place A to place B, they should get similar type of services in a much, much faster pace.

And compliance is no exception.

Stephen: And we need the speed and security. That's really the thing that's holding back both traditional and the crypto world, is that how can we do speed and security at the same time? And you know, the tradfis have done a great job of security. Crypto's done a great job of speed, but we need to find something in the middle or at least leverage both of those things to have unique platforms like Mesh Connect.

Anything that Mesh Connect's working on, announcements, obviously you can't probably tell it's the announcement, but anything we should be looking forward to other than your amazing LinkedIn presence.

Bam: Yeah, so no major announcement as of today, we are going to Token2049, we will have a panel about stablecoin and payment, which we believe is one of the key use cases or one of the killer use cases of crypto. Token2049 is the largest conference in the crypto industry. It happens in Singapore and also in Dubai.

This one is in Singapore. We'll have great guests. We're going to announce that either today or on Monday, so stay tuned. So it's, it's, it's going to be a fun event and we try to kind of live stream it as well for all of our LinkedIn followers.

Stephen: Awesome. That's amazing. That's amazing. Bam, thank you so much. This was a great conversation. Got through all the different aspects of use cases, of interoperability, just having a connected platform for ease of use, right? This could be, do you feel like your Mesh Connect is one of the first really design elements that the crypto industry needs?

Like more looking like Web2 versus trying to, you know, redefine user experience in Web3? Absolutely.

Bam: No, that's, that's right. Yeah. I think I believe that Web 2 and Web 3 is they need to get as close as possible, mesh is playing an important role to kind of bridge that gap. And that's you, you got it right.

Stephen: I love it, and that's what users are looking for, especially users like me, like, not a newbie, but by far not confident enough to send a certain amount of money, you know, in one transaction either than I would with a wire transfer. Bam, thank you so much. People can find you on LinkedIn. We'll make sure to tag all of that in the show notes.

Have fun at Token 2049 and make sure to stay dry because I know, you know, Dubai got quite wet at the last large blockchain conference. So hopefully you stay dry

Bam: Yeah. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Stephen: Awesome.