Overheard in Vegas

Murmurings from Fintech Meetup and HumanX

It is amazing to me, how many meetings — even in a meeting I had today … where someone says, ‘What do you see in valuations today?’ As if there’s a generic answer for what variables every company in the world should be valued on.” 

— Jade Mandel, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs Growth Equity

So it’s very hard if you’re running a VC-backed startup to plan … [without] more consistency and clarity in policies. [That’s] the number one thing we hear.”

— Marc Bhargava, Managing Director, General Catalyst

I do think a lot of the crypto assets are more regulatory arbitrage … People talk about the tokenization of private companies or stocks: That’s a very solvable problem with existing technology, we just have the IPO process, and you have to go through certain things to be able to sell to a public audience.”

— Brian Barnes, Founder & CEO, M1

“I would argue that even when it comes to meme coins, that most people at least nowadays know that there’s no value behind it, that it’s all just a pump game that, you know, you maybe shouldn’t take part of. But if anybody wants to have that fun, you know, knock yourself out, it’s a free country.”

— Leif Abraham, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Public

“Oh, no thanks.” 

— Fintech Meetup staffer offered a half-eaten sandwich by a conferencegoer