#19 - From Lawyers to CEO
Conversations with Ben Samaroo (CEO of WonderFi) and Stepan Simkin (CEO of Squads)
Hi everyone - happy Monday! I had the chance to sit down with two founders/CEOs, Ben Samaroo (WonderFi) and Stepan Simkin (Squads). Both Ben and Stepan are former lawyers who are building impressive businesses in the crypto space.
These wide-ranging conversations offer insight into creating a crypto-focused business, the skills a legal career provides entrepreneurs, and much more.
Ben Samaroo
Ben Samaroo (@BenSamaroo) is CEO/Co-Founder at WonderFi Technologies Inc, one of the largest players in the Canadian crypto space. Ben began building WonderFi with the mission of lowering barriers to entry to crypto and decentralized finance in support of a more equitable financial system.
Previously, Ben was an executive and regulatory consultant with broad experience in managing corporate finance, risk and compliance on behalf of Fintech companies. He previously served as Regulatory Consultant and Advisor at Netcoins, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer for First Coin Capital, a Vancouver-based company that was acquired by Galaxy Digital. Prior, he was a lawyer at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, where advised public and private companies on M&A and capital raises.
In this episode, we discuss DeFi, taking risks, and building one of Canada's largest crypto companies.
Stepan Simkin
Stepan Simkin (@SimkinStepan) is the co-founder and CEO of Squads (https://squads.so/) and a former attorney at the international law firm Clifford Chance LLP.
Squads raised millions to build DAO tooling for the Solana ecosystem. Squads' goal is to simplify the DAO framework and make it accessible to the majority of users who are familiar with web3 or are just discovering it. By combining the core DAO primitives under one platform and building it on a fast and scalable layer 1 blockchain like Solana, they hope that Squads will become a social hub for web3 coordination. Their focus is on a clean and simplified UI/UX combined with scalability and predictable fees to democratize the DAO framework.
In this episode, we cover Stepan's transition from lawyer to CEO, solving problems DAOs face, buying NFTs and Squads.
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