Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Evgen Verzun, CEO of Kaizen Finance (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You work through incubators and accelerators.

Evgen Verzun: Yes. They come to us through the network. Somehow, they reach investors, right? These investors already have a successful experience with Kaizen. Investors refer us. Investors use us as crisis managers. It’s like, “We have a great project, but they have a huge problem.” We jump in and solve it. It’s tough, but we can do it very fast. It’s small pieces of the puzzle that we can put together.

Sramana Mitra: How many such customers do you have?

Evgen Verzun: More than a hundred companies have been launched. It’s difficult to give you an exact number because, for some companies, we can stay for a very long time. For some, it’s just a short stint.

Sramana Mitra: How many of these hundred companies actually are becoming sustainable businesses?

Evgen Verzun: It’s a matter of time. How many businesses in your city are more than a hundred years old? Not much, right?

Sramana Mitra: Startups tend to be vulnerable. There’s a huge mortality rate. You can probe. Some companies do gain ground.

Evgen Verzun: Of the companies that use our service, only three don’t exist anymore because of various reasons. The rest are pretty successful. Of course, success is subjective.

Sramana Mitra: There are different kinds of success. Crypto is going through a huge upheaval now.

Evgen Verzun: The whole world will go through it.

Sramana Mitra: Where are you from?

Evgen Verzun: I’m from Ukraine.

Sramana Mitra: Are you based in the US now?

Evgen Verzun: We are distributed. We have team members worldwide. We have a great development team in Ukraine. We have people in Poland, Bulgaria, Dubai, Singapore, and California.

Sramana Mitra: I work with some people in Ukraine as well in my team. I am so impressed with how professional they are in the middle of this crazy situation. They are great workers.

Evgen Verzun: It’s tough.

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to ask you some crypto startup trend questions. What are the applications where you’re seeing the most startups? I’m not talking about the backend. I’m talking more about the front end. You have worked with a hundred startups. In that portfolio, what kinds of applications have you seen?

Evgen Verzun: It’s constantly changing. Every day, there is something new. It was Bitcoin a few years ago. Then there’s Ethereum. Then it’s a boom of different chains. Then you can do any financial service from deposits to loans. As soon as this appeared, this trend was very short. There was then a new trend of gamification. Then there’s the metaverse. There’s a lot of hype.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, there’s a lot of hype.

Evgen Verzun: Startups try to ride the wave.

Sramana Mitra: Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Evgen Verzun, CEO of Kaizen Finance
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