Charley Ma Profile Banner
Charley Ma Profile
Charley Ma

@CharleyMa

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co-founder, managing partner @exponentcap Former first biz / head of growth @usealloy , @tryramp , @Plaid .

Joined January 2009
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 months
Excited to finally share what @MahdiRazaMR and I have been building for the past few years! We’re thrilled to debut @exponentcap and announce that we’ve closed $75M for fund 2. TLDR - we write lead / co-lead checks from pre-seed to early A, NYC based, thematic generalists
@TechCrunch
TechCrunch
4 months
Exponent Founders Capital, led by Plaid and Robinhood alums, raises $75M to invest in early-stage startups
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
1 year
Still convinced OKRs are the ultimate google psyops to slow down startups…
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Me: “Can I tweet something like, just closed the most competitive termsheet of my life?” Ana: “That’s dumb” Me: “Cool I tweeted it.”
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
The vast majority of convos I have with “pedigreed” business peeps that ask me how they can break into an early stage startup as a non- technical hire usually distills down to My A: do sales. Aka go be an sdr, and then an AE, carry quota. Response: oh something more strategic
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
Can someone ask how much secondary Domm took off the table vs how much his employees made off their equity in the end? If you’re going to give him a platform to try and justify how he burned through that much capital, might as well ask how much he got too.
@HarryStebbings
Harry Stebbings
2 years
20VC Exclusive Tomorrow with @domm What happened @fast Was burn really $10M per month? What is it like having Stripe invested? Mob or no mob? 😉 Could/should the board have done more? This and so much more… Stay tuned… 🚀
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
When I flew out to sf over 5 years ago for my final interview at Plaid, almost all the “experts” I talked to told me not to join. “The market is too small, the founders don’t have the right experience, the team is all randos, the company is way too small, etc etc”
@Plaid
Plaid
4 years
We’re incredibly excited to share that Plaid is joining @Visa ! Together, we’re looking forward to expanding our products for developers and connecting consumers with the fintech services that are making money easier for everyone. More details here.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
Can we all agree to not combine equity fundraise $'s and debt $'s as total fundraising headlines? Ex raising $5M in equity and $100M of debt does not make it a $105M round...
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
NYC Chinatown supermarkets have everything you need (including cleaning wipes+water), masks everywhere, and they’re practically empty right now 🙁so defacto social distancing. Meanwhile Whole Foods has crazy lines filled with random people soooo...racism is dumb.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
Honestly the attacks on wealth via equity and billionaires feels weird...like this isn’t reason why my family moved from China? 🧐
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
In other professional news - Friday the 17th was my last day at Plaid! Here are some of my thoughts... (1/95) Just kidding - more to come soon but once again hiring for early sales/business people, engineers, and more for an early stage fintech company in NYC!
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
👀👀 @AngelList rolled out paying via USDC over Eth network
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
I did some googling but couldn’t find a good solution - whenever I try to “open in app” on IPhone, feels like 80% of the time I’m directed to the App Store, not the app itself. How do I fix this???
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
In other news, made the move out from NYC to...Hoboken, NJ! Can confirm it's pretty much just as cold as it is in NYC right now. Also, today is my first day at @usealloy where I'm going to be focused on all things fintech :). As always - we're hiring!!
@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Contenders for the 2020 fintech stack: BaaS -> Unit, Moov, Bond, Rize Issuing-> Privacy, Stripe, Apto Brokerage -> Drivewealth, Alpaca, Embedded KYC/KYB + AML -> Alloy ACH risk -> Nivelo, Orum Credit cards -> Deserve, Cardless (Guild), Railsbank
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
In other news…I joined @tryramp leading up all things growth and I couldn’t be more excited to publicly share what we’ve been up to! is the first corporate card that helps companies reduce their burn by actively identifying areas of overspending (1/8)
@tryramp
Ramp
4 years
Ramp is built around a commitment to your company’s financial health. We asked ourselves: What’s better? Saving money or chasing points?
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 months
okay sofi...
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Contenders for the 2020 fintech stack: BaaS -> Unit, Moov, Bond, Rize Issuing-> Privacy, Stripe, Apto Brokerage -> Drivewealth, Alpaca, Embedded KYC/KYB + AML -> Alloy ACH risk -> Nivelo, Orum Credit cards -> Deserve, Cardless (Guild), Railsbank
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Hi fintech twitter- who are your fav compliance + risk people? Collecting thoughts around kyc, fraud, and risk problems across financial services and want to aggregate + open source this!
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Stripe's Connect + Identity + Treasury + Capital - stripe really going after full stack fintech infrastructure huh...
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
1 year
Very excited for everyone in VC to be liquidity ratio experts now too today.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
This story is wild - Citi accidentally wired out $900M vs the $7.8M they intended to send out and the courts are ruling that the lenders get to keep it - all because the checkboxes in the software they use to send out wires make no sense.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
1 month
Working with nyc commercial landlords is a unique world of logistics hell - but finally got keys today! 👀
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
I was wrong about everything becoming a fintech company, have corrected it to everything becoming stories.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
5 years
Consumer fintech acquisition methods + examples: SEO - The Points Guy Referral- Venmo Waitlist fomo - Robinhood B2B2C - Upstart, Carta Content - Nerdwallet Direct Mail - Lending Club Physical (Billboards/Subways/Bus) - Brex TV - Chime Sponsor - SoFi Bank branches? what else?
@a16z
a16z
5 years
More than half of US smartphone users download 0 new apps per month, which means customer acquisition is tougher than ever. Here are 5 overlooked ways new companies—esp. fintech co's—can acquire new users. (Hint: It's not Google ads.): from @illscience
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
$10B is the new $1B - time to update the “unicorn” definition?
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
Feels weird that getting a unicorn valuation feels "expected" these days for a high growth company. When I first got into startup things, joining a company that got to a billion dollar valuation was the dream as it typically was a reflection of revenue growth + margins...
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
My reaction: -___- okay I give up, learn sql or something.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
Have talked to multiple companies now that are building their payment processing stack with a crypto on-ramp + stablecoin vs going w/ a more traditional payment processor. APIs on top of a blockchain seen as much scaleable and lower maintenance than APIs on top of FTP ACH/cobl…
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Went deep on gen z vs millennial memes yesterday, too real lol.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
My girlfriend and I live in the UES and the neighborhood has been clapping and cheering for coronavirus essential workers every night at 7pm - NYC is still the best.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
The most annoying insurance upsell I've seen in a while??
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Honestly very excited for Plaid to build that volcano now.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
If I were to come up with “intro to fintech” curriculum for someone interested in fintech, what would be some required course titles you’d want to see in there?
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
“Why are you taking pictures of billboards in the airport?” “Gotta tweet something about fintech being everywhere.”
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Introducing... The📍Ground Floor Job Board📍 Early eng + biz roles are often the hardest to find as there's often a high noise to signal ratio (e.g. "everyone is crushing it"). I'm curating a mix of roles at early stage startups I'd want to work at :)
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
7 months
Big props to @sequoia for setting the bar high for an NYC office 👌
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
The ultimate employe recruiting perk - a rational 409a & thus strike price for options w/ obvious upside. (great article on how @retool approached their $20M series C with a smaller fundraise + valuation vs what the 'market' would pay).
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
This NFT phase remind me of the ICO phase - will be interesting to see what it looks like 4-6 months from now…
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
👋 Twitter - I’m hiring for the early sales team @tryramp and while I’ve gotten a ton of dms, it’s pretty much all male. Who are some of the best female sales people y’all know that are in nyc or want to be in nyc? You also get to join @SashaPilch8 who cofounded @NYCFintechWomen !
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
5 years
Is everyone on tech Twitter but myself an angel investor in something? Where does everyone find the time and money, particularly startup peeps that haven’t gone through a liquidity event? I keep coming across people that say these opps naturally appear...but also I got bills?
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
My gf’s response when I opened the mail yesterday: “oh great, another fintech hat.” @fintechtoday_
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
My Uber driver is randomly trying to convince me to buy Neo on Robinhood - “You don’t Robinhood? Why not?” Have we reached peak fintech??
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Now back to your regular everything is fintech programming
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
1/ For my first official post on @fintechtoday_ , I thought it would be fun to look back on 2020 in fintech. So much happened that I ended up breaking it out into two parts, so here are some highlights for Jan -> Jun A🧵...
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Requesting more follows so I can write about how Twitter is fintech plz
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
Is anyone building a fintech venture studio where several ideas are incubated internally and matched with founders? Know of some funds starting to do this but curious if there are some obvious examples
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Everyone trying to own fintech on clubhouse huh...
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
Yo but why did they make my neck so long???
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Feels like we're seeing the beginning of the next wave of infrastructure to create the new fintech stack. The 2010 fintech stack featured companies like Plaid, Quovo, Synapse, Dwolla, Marqeta, Galileo, I2C, Apex, etc
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Putting together a 2020 fintech recap of notable news, exits, early stage investing themes and crowdsourcing things that I shouldn't miss - fintech twitter what's at the top of your lists?
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
Money2020 in a graph
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
I present my shiny charizards of fintech cards.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 months
Say whatever you want, but @rabois sets the bar for a lead investor. You only get this kind of founder response from S-tier founders if you’re in the details with them and the counsel given is actually impactful to the company’s trajectory. Respect 🫡
@alexrkonrad
Alex Konrad
4 months
@rabois @vkhosla I also pinged a bunch of @rabois ' portfolio founders on short notice to see what they had to say. A bunch responded, including OpenAI CEO @sama , who hopped on the phone: "He's one of the few that early-stage founders actively seek out."
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
AKA I finally learned what my girlfriend was working on these last few months and couldn't tell me!!
@AmexBusiness
American Express Business
4 years
Today, American Express announced that we have entered into an agreement to acquire @KabbageInc , a leading fintech provider of innovative cash flow management solutions. Learn more about our plans and what it means for U.S. small businesses: #AmexBusiness
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
1 year
Thoma Bravo $8b for Coupa is an 8.7x multiple on management projections of next twelve month revenue, with new ACV booking decelerating (negative bookings in Q3) and revenue growth + rule of 40 also declining dramatically. 2023: expect a lot more LBO's of tech companies...
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Ahh time to be truly value add *forwards to all my bnpl companies - hey did you see this?*
@jack
jack
3 years
Afterpay + Square!
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
“Let’s go to Cape Town and meet some great South African founders.” -proceeds to hang out with each other even they’re we’re all in the US- @pitdesi @seema_amble @ryansandler_
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
gm
@usealloy
Alloy
3 years
We are thrilled to announce our $100M Series C! @lightspeedvp 's @jmover led the round with participation from existing investors @CanapiVentures , @BessemerVP , @AvidVc , and @felicis . We're excited for this next chapter!
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
Woooow
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
No better feeling than entering a sub zero degree NYC subway car after sweating it out on the platform.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Doing a quick round up of US based fintech companies w/ their own corp VC investments - so far have: Stripe Brex Affirm SoFi Square who else should I highlight?
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
It's a bit funny seeing bank execs complain about vc-backed companies and how much of an "advantage" they have due to that funding. JPMChase made $36B in profit in 2019 but most of their digital products still look like they were made 10 years ago...
@Hugh_Son
Hugh Son
3 years
NEW: Full story on what led Jamie Dimon to curse on a recorded earnings call. He also specifically accuses @Plaid of unfair competition. #fintech 😯
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Smash that like button and hit subscribe
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
Dear fintech twitter - what are you go to primers on financial services infrastructure? i.e. things like program managers vs issuers, BaaS, etc I've been starting off with Payments Systems in the US and then the Anatomy of the Swipe as primer reads...what else should I add?
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
@thogge Yeah it’s crazy to me that you can graduate from a top tier mba program never having taken a course on sales
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Cash app is what every neobank should look like.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Wow way to just draw out my entire investing thesis @packyM
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@packyM
Packy McCormick
3 years
Stripe x Shopify deepening their partnership led me down a deep rabbit hole on APIs, strategy in an API-first world, API-first business models, Factorio, and Twilio. It's APIs all the way down.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
One of my favorite things we did at @Plaid was Plaiderdays, a bi-annual week long hack week where everyone at the company worked on anything as long as it benefited the company, all for the Golden Plaidypus. What are other companies that do this and what were the awards called?
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
I still don't quite get Clubhouse but I'll keep buying Agora in the meantime...
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
25 days
jeb!
@JebBush
Jeb Bush
25 days
Ramp announces Series D-2 capital raise
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
JPMorgan's strategy + corp dev team has certainly been busy...
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
Their value add of free guac is pretty strong to be honest.
@danprimack
Dan Primack
2 years
Chipotle launches a $50 million venture capital fund
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
Did anything happen in fintech land today?
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Also I'm amused at Venmo trying to do cash app fridays but for millennials on Instagram. Gotta respect the amount of hurdles that team had to go through at Paypal to get that live...
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
1 year
To all the Plaids affected by today's news - hit me up! We have a Plalumni slack group and everyone in the community wants to help with roles + new opportunities. The Plaid ecosystem is an amazing talent ecosystem and we'll do everything we can to support each other 💪💪.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Websites that autoplay video with audio on deserve to go to a special place in hell.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
9 months
Whoever at rippling came up with the “add a new role as recruiter” to hijack the LinkedIn news feed for a product announcement… well done
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
I'm much more bullish on embedded fintech in B2B vs B2c as it's also much easier to use alternative data in B2B vs B2C (helloooo FCRA)
@mengxilu
Mengxi Lu
4 years
Uber is deprioritizing the Uber Money effort to focus on core business. More opportunities for B2B players in the "embedded finance" space to help larger cos enable these fintech capabilities and monetize on large distribution and proprietary data
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Here's an exclusive look at @Plaid 's series D deck:
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
okay at this point @CashApp is just too good - continuing to set the bar for marketing and branding, not just in fintech but for any product...
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
1 month
Some next level @ycombinator energy today - 3 floors of founders! Congrats to all the w24 batch on getting to demo day 🙌
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
I'm hiring for my first team member at @usealloy ! I'm looking for a broad generalist to work on high priority initiatives across GTM, product, operations, etc as it relates how Alloy works with fintech companies.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
5 years
This past Monday was my 4 year anniversary at @Plaid ! For some reason I get a lot of questions in interviews, coffee chats, etc as to what keeps me at Plaid since apparently staying for 4 years at one company is a big deal in the tech world because startups are weird like that..
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Neopets as NFTs, why is this not a thing yet.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
Holy cow how does anyone invest in German startups??? The process + structures that founders have to set up to structure external investment is crazy.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
Excited to see this in 2024!
@TechCrunch
TechCrunch
4 years
Leaked pics reveal Google smart debit card to rival Apple’s by @joshconstine
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
Brex: "No one has done billboards like us." Shen Yun: "Hold my beer."
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
Well in other news, FDIC approved Square's de novo industrial bank app!
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
Going to move all of my money into private companies because those don't go down right?
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
9 months
I often get asked what's the secret sauce to Ramp and I've now (over)simplified it to: Everyone individual at Ramp, and this started on day 0, has a customer + product obsession which allows the company to hit PMF on their products as fast as humanly possible. And they 🚢, FAST.
@eglyman
Eric Glyman
9 months
Today, we’re thrilled to announce our $300M Series D at $5.8B post. The round was led by @ThriveCapital & Sands Capital, along with @GeneralCatalyst @FoundersFund and more. @tryramp has never been in a stronger position to help our customers succeed. 🧵
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
But the more time I spent with @zachperret and @williamhockey in person, the more I thought - I think they’re just going to will this into existence and I will regret not joining them. Have never looked back since and I’ve met so many amazing people as a result.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Go team @tryramp ! Locking down GS as the balance sheet providers also hints at the quality of companies being onboarded too :)
@TechCrunch
TechCrunch
3 years
Ramp secures $150M debt line from Goldman Sachs as the corporate spend market grows by @alex
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
Weird fintech things - I always do enjoy going through a well communicated ACH + Plaid experience out in the wild - this time from @wise
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
2 years
Couldn’t resist buying these old credit card ads at a street fair this weekend…
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
4 years
The past 5 years at Plaid have honestly been the most stimulating, stressful, interesting, challenging, (insert way more adjectives here...) work experience of my career so far...And there’s still so much more to be done in building the future of financial services. Go team! 🙃
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
Doing an marqeta s-1 deep dive for this weeks post on @fintechtoday_ - what should I make sure I don’t miss on?
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
3 years
My Sunday so far: Trying to buy a fat penguin so I can write about KYC onboarding for crypto.
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
6 years
At PayPal this morning for #CodeCommerce . Some fun stats: - 74% of online retail carts abandoned during checkout - Equates to $200bn left on table due to friction - Coming soon this year, PayPal to support paying with banking reward points
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@CharleyMa
Charley Ma
10 months
First time I've seen Stripe's customer facing Link bank payment checkout experience on an ecommerce site! some quick thoughts... 1. took me a while to figure out that it was Stripe 2. when I inspected some of the API calls it was actually calling out to finicity!!
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