Episode #36 - Mikaal Abdulla, SoFi (formerly 8 Securities)
Mikaal is the SVP, International at SoFi, a finance company based in San Francisco that offers a range of lending and wealth management services to Millennials, after 8 Securities, which he founded and was the Chief Executive Officer of, got acquired in April. This was SoFi's first international acquisition.
Launched in 2012 in Hong Kong with zero-commission securities trading as the proposition (so this was even one year before Robinhood, commonly seen as the North Star of zero-fee trading, started), 8 Securities shortly afterwards launched an operation in Japan. Mikaal shares his experience of working across two cultures, and what he sees as the differences in working style, product development and market acceptance.
There is plenty of good advice for FinTech founders looking at either jurisdiction, and of course we are also discussing what the future will bring with SoFi's international expansion (spoiler alert: it might just resemble some of Mikaal's prior experience heading E-Trade's business outside of the US).
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