Raisin is a Berlin-based fintech that runs a pan-European and US savings and investment marketplace, letting retail customers shop competitive interest rates across hundreds of partner banks from a single account, while giving banks an on-demand channel to gather deposits. Beyond its consumer marketplace, Raisin licenses white-label 'savings-as-a-service' technology to financial institutions and offers ETF, pension and investment products. The company surpassed one million customers, turned profitable in 2022 after a decade of operation, and intermediates tens of billions of euros in deposits across more than 30 markets.
Tony Cueva Bravo is a Venture Partner at Hustle Fund, angel investor, and the founder of Emerging Fintech - a weekly newsletter and podcast covering frontier fintech across Latin America, Asia, and Africa. A Peruvian-born engineer who earned his MS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Tony has lived and worked across three continents, driven 50% MoM growth at Rebill (the Stripe of LatAm), won dual startup competitions in Peru and Chile, and built a reputation as one of the sharpest fintech voices in emerging markets. He invests at the pre-seed stage and serves as a fractional operator for early-stage founders who need a thought partner to unlock growth bottlenecks.
William Hockey co-founded Plaid - the invisible rails that power Venmo, Coinbase, and thousands of fintech apps - then quietly bought a bank. As co-founder and co-CEO of Column, he built the only nationally chartered bank designed for developers, processing 40% of Bay Area fintech money movement with a 110-person team generating $200M in revenue and $100M+ in free cash flow. No outside investors, no VC dilution, just a former farm kid from Central California who learned that the best way to fix broken financial infrastructure is to own it.
Zach Perret is the co-founder and CEO of Plaid, the financial infrastructure company that quietly powers the apps half of America uses every day. He and co-founder William Hockey built Plaid from a hackathon project in 2013 into a $8B+ company connecting over 500 million bank accounts to thousands of financial apps - including Venmo, Robinhood, and Coinbase. After famously walking away from a $5.3B Visa acquisition in 2021 (called a 'blessing in disguise'), Perret rebuilt Plaid as an independent company, reaching $546M ARR and profitability before raising a $575M Series E in 2025. A symphony conductor's son from North Carolina, he runs Plaid like he leads: with timing, rhythm, and an eye on what everyone else is missing.
Shahzad Shahid is the Group CEO of TPS Worldwide, a Pakistan-headquartered global payments technology company serving 100+ clients across 30+ countries. Starting as a software engineer at TPS in 1999, he rose through roles in regional business development, global marketing, and the C-suite to become CEO in 2014. Under his leadership, TPS has expanded into Saudi Arabia and across the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, underpinned key Pakistani financial infrastructure projects like 1LINK and NIFT ePay, and partnered with sustainability-focused fintechs. He is also a former Chairman of P@SHA (Pakistan Software Houses Association) and an active voice on digital economic policy.