Mike Cavanaugh, Managing Partner at Regiment Alpha, shares his story on lessons learned in the open outcry commodity trading pits, his multiple entrepreneurial ventures amidst a life in fintech, having things thrown at him for saying ‘blockchain’, advising and helping to raise investment for fintech startups…and the joys of barefoot water skiing behind the Cheddar Curtain!
MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.
Regiment Alpha is an early-stage venture fund investing in seed-to-Series A startups in four specific areas of fintech: Payments, WealthTech, RegTech, and Capital Markets Tech. The team is based in the Mid-West US but are open to investing as a lead anywhere in the US and as a “follow” globally.
HIGHLIGHTS:
On starting his career in the open outcry trading pits at the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT): “I started trading in the late nineties and got introduced to the trading world at an interesting inflection point where technology was really starting to heavily integrate into the exchanges. Being a 24-year-old kid that was backed by a prominent trader, you don't think when it's happening that it's ever going to go away.”
On his approach with digital assets: “We started telling people to start looking at infrastructure and don’t put all your money in the coin itself. Think of the coin, think of your typical financial services infrastructure, and then identify the points within that ecosystem that are going to be needed and start investing in those companies.”
On what he looks for in companies: “There's never been any edge outside of information. Legal, informational edge is the only edge that exists. Everything else is BS. You can't time the market, you can't use leverage for your long-term benefit as there are two sides to leverage. The only edge is informational edge - you having information legally before somebody else and being able to act on that. So, knowing that and seeing those different points, that's where we're looking for - we're looking for edge.”
On the big lesson learned with startups: “I think that's the number one rule - it's really about people. Great people build great teams, great teams build great cultures and great cultures build great companies.”
Episode title inspired by Jump Around by House of Pain, especially when played at Camp Randall Stadium at halftime of a University of Wisconsin Badgers football game (Mike’s alma mater).
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