11 Videos from Breaking the Bank: Zach Perret from Plaid, Josh Reeves from Gusto, Jackie Reses from Lead Bank & More
Listen to our live talks from the Breaking the Bank summit in San Francisco
We just wrapped up our financial technology summit Breaking the Bank in San Francisco.
We had lively discussions with some of Silicon Valley’s top fintech executives, including Zach Abrams from Bridge, Eric Glyman from Ramp, and the CEOs of fast-growing startups including Highnote, Kraken, and Column.
It’s clear from our many presenters on stage that stablecoins are white-hot. What remains less certain is not if, but exactly how generative AI will shake up the fintech sector.
Here are all 11 of the talks from this week’s summit. You can also check them out on our YouTube channel.
We enjoyed having This Week in Fintech join us at the event, and they recorded a special episode live from the summit. Give it a listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Lead Bank’s Chair & CEO Jackie Reses
As the leader of a regional bank with fintech savvy, Reses cautioned fintech founders from thinking that a friendlier regulatory approach from the Trump administration means they can throw caution to the wind.
She emphasized how fintechs and their customers need to be more diligent than ever about understanding their partners and their counter-parties, and the possible risks.
Zach Abrams, Founder of Bridge
Abrams kicked off a robust discussion of the buzz around stablecoins that carried on throughout the day. After selling Bridge to Stripe last year, he was excited about the GENIUS Act setting the stage for stablecoins to be more integrated into the financial system.
Abrams pointed to cross-border payments as the key application for the moment, and envisions the tokens as “a building block in the financial stack” that can readily facilitate global operations.
A Keynote Presentation from BCV’s Matt Harris
BCV’s Harris gave a provocative presentation on how AI is unlocking the tools for founders to build service businesses. Agentic AI is the ticket for automating the $66 trillion global services market, Harris said, and fintech will play a huge role.
Accounting businesses are just one category that’s ripe for disruption, he added. Founders can use agents to do work for a whole suite of corporate officers, such as CFOs or general counsels.
Harris presented alongside BCV’s Ron Miasnik.
Column CEO William Hockey
Hockey preached the importance of fintech innovation as the key to maintaining the supremacy of the US dollar in global financial markets.
Fintechs building on top of traditional banking is the key. “They can move at a velocity to distribute software much faster” than a regulated entity, he said.
Rogo CEO & Co-founder Gabriel Stengel with Digits CEO & Co-founder Jeff Seibert
In one of our spiciest talks of the day, Stengel and Seibert debated the limits of AI in delivering services by themselves. Stengel, whose startup Rogo is building AI agents for financial services, noted that his customers don’t need 100% accuracy: if the tools can do the work of a junior banking analyst, whose reports would be reviewed by a more senior person anyway, then that’s good enough.
Seibert cautioned that while Digits works with accountants, their real target is Quickbooks, not the accounting services themselves. “As we talk with business owners, they do not want AI accounting, i.e., the AI does 100%.”
AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli
Kohli outlined some of the challenges fintech founders were facing as AI startups rake in the majority of venture capital dollars. “I just think the opportunities are way larger over there,” Kohli said.
Software as a service companies aren’t poised for a comeback anytime soon, he noted.
The venture industry itself is also going through a shift, per AngelList data. The fastest-growing funds are either very small or very large while mid-sized funds are being squeezed out.
Highnote CEO & Co-founder John MacIlwaine, Brex COO Camilla Matias, and Tala CEO & founder Shivani Siroya
All three panelists emphasized that new digital payment rails, including stablecoins, were opening up a huge market opportunity for reaching overseas consumers and small business owners.
MacIlwaine described how digital currencies and stablecoins could help his customers transfer money from abroad without the limitations and high costs of existing wire-transfer services.
Brex uses more than 60 currencies and is present in more than 100 countries, noted Matias. Siroya also made some news on the panel, announcing that Tala reached $300 million in annualized recurring revenue, and that the company has seen 60% growth year over year in Mexico.
Kraken Co-CEO Arjun Sethi
Sethi applauded the Trump administration’s friendlier approach to cryptocurrency regulation, after being a target of the SEC under Biden. “The SEC has gone from worst enemy to best friend overnight,” he noted.
Now, he wants to turn Kraken into a bridge between the traditional financial marketplace and the crypto ecosystem.
Ramp CEO & Co-founder Eric Glyman
Glyman laid out all the ways Ramp is utilizing AI to help businesses save time and money, from expense and receipt management to cross-border transactions.
As a utility for many thousands of small businesses and startups, Ramp has good data on just how much AI spend is upending the market. Across industries, 40% of all businesses—and two-thirds of large companies—were now paying for AI subscriptions, he said. “It’s absolutely exploding.”
Gusto CEO & Co-founder Josh Reeves
Reeves described how he built a startup in a relatively niche services category — payroll for small businesses — into a large-scale juggernaut.
AI has enabled Gusto to provide services for small businesses that were previously only available to large enterprises, Reeves said, such as a conversational voice interface that lets customers complete tasks like shift-scheduling.
Plaid CEO & Co-founder Zach Perret
Perret didn’t spend much time lamenting Visa’s failed acquisition of Plaid.
“We went through an IPO-like moment when we sold to Visa, an IPO-like moment when we unsold to Visa, and then we raised a big funding round on the back of it — it was a blessing in disguise that we could part ways with Visa when the exclusivity lapsed,” Perret said.
Plaid has been leaning hard into building tools to fight financial fraud, and generative AI is both a help and a hinderance in these efforts, Perret noted.