Rain, Farooq Malik - The $2Bn Company Building the Infrastructure for Stablecoins and Tokenized Money

Summary

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Fintech Leaders – Rain, Farooq Malik: The $2Bn Company Building the Infrastructure for Stablecoins and Tokenized Money

Host: Miguel Armaza
Guest: Farooq Malik, Co-Founder & CEO of Rain
Date: July 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this engaging conversation, Miguel Armaza sits down with Farooq Malik, Co-Founder and CEO of Rain, a $2B company powering stablecoin and tokenized money infrastructure for the likes of Western Union, Slash, and Nuve. Rain’s solutions span card issuing, payments, digital wallets, and are built with scale and global reach in mind. The episode dives deep into Rain’s product strategy, experimentation with programmable money, regulation dynamics, risk management, international expansion, partnerships, and Malik’s philosophies on leadership and focus.

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Table of Contents

1. Aligning the Team: North Star Metrics and Company Focus
2. Building Infrastructure for Experimental & Mainstream Stablecoin Use Cases
3. Programmatic Money Movement: Customers as Co-Innovators
4. Navigating Regulation and Global Complexity
5. Weathering the Crypto Cycle & Company Growth
6. Partnerships and Scaling: Dealing with Giants
7. Talent, Team Structure & Leveraging AI
8. Memorable Quotes
9. Recommended Resources & Farooq’s Philosophy

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1. Aligning the Team: North Star Metrics and Company Focus

• Annual North Star: Rain aligns all teams—across functions and geography—on a single metric each year. In 2024, that metric is volume (Total Payment Volume, TPV), with variable pay tied to goal achievement.
  • “This year our goal is volume... these goals are meant to be sort of North Star metrics, but also meant to help align the team.” (02:59 — Farooq)
• Simplicity: The metric is binary: if the target is not met, there's no variable pay.
  • “You hit it, or you don’t hit it. If you don’t hit it, then you don’t hit it.” (04:05 — Farooq)
• Evolution: Last year’s focus was revenue, previous years were focused on client acquisition.
• Enabling Experimentation: Focusing on volume rather than revenue this year allows for experimentation and flexibility in pursuing new use cases.
  • “There’s always going to be prospective use cases which are not obvious, which may not drive revenue, but they may drive volume or utility.” (05:00 — Farooq)
• Context Preservation: A North Star metric cuts through complexity and internal siloing as the company grows.

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2. Building Infrastructure for Experimental & Mainstream Stablecoin Use Cases

• Rain as Financial Backbone: Rain started with card issuing—a highly complex payments use case—as a proving ground for its flexible infrastructure.
  • “Card issuing is the most complicated type of payment... If we can get complicated things working on the blockchain, then the easy things will become easy." (00:00, 07:54 — Farooq)
• Multi-Chain, Multi-Token: Their tech enables real-time, seamless authorizations across multiple chains/tokens, removing burdens from the user.
• Experimental Use Cases:
  • Agentic use cases (e.g., AI-driven programmatic money movement)
  • Payroll disbursements on an hourly basis
  • DeFi protocol integrations, enabling consumer card spending against real-time defi-backed loans.
  • Capital efficiency for businesses (collateral pools, multi-chain settlement).
  • “The most exciting part about doing this at all is learning what are all the cool things that you can do now that money is programmable.” (11:59 — Farooq)

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3. Programmatic Money Movement: Customers as Co-Innovators

• Customer Ingenuity: The range of Rain’s applications is often customer-driven—builders and partners propose “crazy ideas,” and Rain’s stack enables experimentation.
  • “I’m always surprised at the ingenuity of builders… That’s the exciting part about being in the part of the market where we’re at.” (12:35 — Farooq)
• Stripe-Like Collaboration: The company’s approach is akin to Stripe: work directly with engineers and product teams at customer organizations to co-create new products.

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4. Navigating Regulation and Global Complexity

• On Regulation’s Pace: Clear, iterative regulation is valued over sudden changes. There’s often a mismatch in perceived urgency between regulators (multi-year timelines) and startups (weeks/months).
  • “For us, a week is life or death... For a regulator... a year is business as usual.” (18:06 — Farooq)
• Engagement with Regulators: Malik describes constructive, thoughtful discourse with regulators open to both pros and cons of innovation.
• Risk Management:
  • Speed as Double-Edged Sword: While fast settlement is good for efficiency and innovation, it can increase risks (e.g. fraud, failure of trust mechanisms).
  • Systemic Trust: The SVB collapse and stablecoin trust are directly tied; Rain focuses on keeping trust high in the system.
• Global Footprint:
  • Regulatory Diligence: Every new market involves deep local regulatory consultation and readiness to invest further if successful.
  • Building “Default Global” Companies: Success comes from engaging locally, not just exporting software from a home base.
    • “The only way to build a global company is to build a global company.” (26:27 — Farooq)

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5. Weathering the Crypto Cycle & Company Growth

• Foundational Vision: During major downturns (e.g. post-FTX collapse), the focus on vision and product kept the company steady.
  • “From the very beginning of Rain to now, Rain has never had a down quarter. Ever.” (35:03 — Farooq)
• Customer Cohorts: Early customers (DAOs, crypto foundations) were resilient, allowing Rain to iterate without major revenue loss.
• Growth Numbers:
  • Volume grew 30x last year; double-digit M/M growth continues.
  • Employee count jumped from ~15 to ~130 in 18 months.
  • Many customers are still in deployment pipeline; revenue continues to accelerate.
• Network Effects: Many new partners (including larger traditional companies) now approach Rain proactively, a sign that programmable money adoption is inflecting.

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6. Partnerships and Scaling: Dealing with Giants

• Vision Alignment: Rain’s early relationship with Visa was anchored in shared belief in stablecoins as an opportunity rather than threat.
  • “We were a pure play believer in kind of what they believed also… that allowed us to have a very close relationship...” (44:34 — Farooq)
• Negotiating with Giants:
  • Start small, scope tightly, and be explicit about asymmetries in size and leverage.
  • Demonstrate value through execution instead of trying to secure “fair” (i.e., lucrative) terms too soon.
    • “If you can just start demonstrating that you’re able to follow through… it really helps build that trust.” (45:30 — Farooq)
• Wide Customer Spectrum:
  • Customers range from tiny startups to publicly traded giants and financial institutions.
  • Use cases span cross-border payments, payroll, brokerage, and more.

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7. Talent, Team Structure & Leveraging AI

• Distributed Teams: Rain is headquartered in NYC but maintains hubs in DC, SF, and internationally—growing organically alongside hiring and demand.
• Team Structure: Mix of centralized and local teams, evolving with learning from global expansion.
• Hiring Philosophy: Priority is to hire globally for the best talent, but with an in-person bias to support creativity and problem-solving.
  • “When you’re around each other, cross-pollination of ideas is a lot faster and triage of problems is a lot quicker.” (31:02 — Farooq)
• AI as a Force Multiplier:
  • AI has enabled Rain to do more with leaner headcount: “If we didn’t have AI, we would have probably had to go to like 500.” (50:31 — Farooq)
  • Smart, intentional AI/token spend is encouraged for high-leverage tasks.
  • “If you’re outsourcing your agency function to AI, that’s probably the recipe for your skills at your fingering over time… But it can be very powerful if used in a different way.” (52:29 — Farooq)

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8. Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Experimentation:
  “The most exciting part about doing this at all is learning what are all the cool things that you can do now that money is programmable.”
  — Farooq Malik (11:59)
• On Focus:
  “From the very beginning of Rain to now, Rain has never had a down quarter. Ever... The only kind of lasting impact of this is probably all these white hairs on my beard.” (35:03, 00:41)
• On Regulatory Engagement:
  “Our representatives and regulatory institutions are taking a thoughtful and considered approach... and regulatory apparatuses are open for business.” (16:12 — Farooq)
• On Partnering with Giants:
  “Start small, usually it’s easier to get through… Labeling that earlier is usually appreciated.” (46:09 — Farooq)
• On AI: “There’s high leverage things you can do with AI and low leverage things you can do with AI... if you’re outsourcing your agency function to AI, that’s probably the recipe for your skills at your fingering over time.” (52:29 — Farooq)
• Lighter Side: Farooq’s hobbies:
  “I currently don’t have any hobbies… the one I still do the most is I like cooking. And it is something that is very therapeutic and you know, when you mess it up, you still have to eat it.” (54:29 — Farooq)

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9. Recommended Resources & Farooq’s Philosophy

• Books:
  • Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
    • “A negotiation book… very unique take… I do think about often running a company.” (55:39)
  • The Art of War by Sun Tzu
    • “That book has taught me more about building a company than probably anything else.” (56:50)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:59 — Aligning on a North Star metric (volume)
• 07:54 — Core infrastructure & experimental stablecoin use cases
• 13:53 — “Stripe-like” customer partnerships for innovation
• 15:58 — Regulation readiness and engagement
• 19:59 — Risk in fast, programmable financial systems
• 26:27 — Challenges of global regulatory and service expansion
• 35:03 — Surviving the crypto winter and steady company growth
• 44:33 — Foundational partnership with Visa and strategies for negotiating with giants
• 50:31 — Scaling the team and leveraging AI efficiency
• 54:29 — Malik’s hobbies and personal recommendations

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Final Word

Farooq Malik’s central thesis: The future of money is not about “crypto” or “digital assets”—it’s about programmable money as infrastructure. Vision, focus on customers, and a relentless experimentation mindset are central to Rain’s rise. As regulation evolves and adoption accelerates, Rain aims to be the backbone enabling new forms of value exchange globally.

The episode is both a tactical guide for fintech founders and a thought-provoking look at how stablecoins and programmable money are escaping the crypto niche to revolutionize financial infrastructure worldwide.

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Transcript

[A]

Card issuing is the most complicated type of payment. There's thousands of edge cases. There are different merchant categories. There's different transaction types. Like, you know, laundromats behave differently than a fuel pump. There's all sorts of different edge cases around all of that. And our thinking was if we can get complicated things working on the blockchain, then the easy things will become easy for us. A week is life or death. A month is life or death. A year is definitely life or death. Two years is certain life or death. But for a regulator or for an elected representative or an industry participant, that is a lobbyist, whatever it is, a year is business as usual. From the very beginning of Rain to now, Rain has never had a down quarter.

[B]

Ever.

[A]

The only kind of lasting impact of this is probably all these white hairs on my beard. Our sort of early bet on how stablecoins are not stable coins. It's not digital crypto. It's not digital assets. It's just money. I think that thesis is going to start bearing out over the next year. I also really like Art of War by Sun Tzu. That book has taught me more about building a company than probably anything else.

[B]

Welcome to Fintech Leaders. I'm Miguel Armaza and over the last six years I've recorded nearly 400 conversations with the top leaders in fintech. I also co founded Gilgamesh ventures, a fintech VC where we've backed almost 50 companies around the world. In this show, we extract how the best builders and investors in fintech think, what they've learned, and how you can apply some of these lessons to your own work. If you enjoyed this conversation, I invite you to leave a review on Apple, Spotify or YouTube. I sat down with Farooq Malik, co founder and CEO of Rain, a $2 billion company that's building infrastructure for stablecoin powered products including card issuing payments, digital wallets, and much more for businesses like Western Union, Slash and Nuve. The company is currently in hyper growth mode. 18 months ago there were only 15 people at the firm. The last year they grew 38x and they recently raised a $250 million Series C LED by Iconic Capital. Thanks for joining Fintech Leaders. Excited to dive in. I've told you this before, but in a few of my past interviews Rain has come up. You know, I think the most recent one might have been Slash. You guys are working with them. You guys are definitely onto something. I want to start. I heard in one of your interviews that every year you align the company behind a single goal. Obviously Each team is going to have different focus, but there's a North Star and sounds like it changes or it could change yearly. What is that goal this year and why did you pick it?

[A]

Yeah, so we found that when you have an interdisciplinary team and company, it's really important to make everybody have a single principle that they can go to when they're caught between two decisions. Right. So if they're thinking about doing one thing or another thing, they should be able to think about, okay, like, which one is actually going to drive the thing that we're focusing on as a team and where everybody is sort of directed and compensated against. Right. And so this year our goal is volume. Right. And we have a target for volume growth for tpv. And we set that at the very beginning of the year. And for us, like, these goals are meant to be sort of North Star metrics, but also meant to help align the team. Because as a team grows and gets bigger, it's harder to maintain context. Like, why are we doing certain things? Why are we focusing on this initiative versus that initiative? How do we plan these initiatives? And so we found it to be helpful to just say, okay, well, we have a single objective. Everybody's compensated on that. Like, so we have variable pay that's tied to us hitting the target. If we don't hit the target, we don't get any variable pay.

[B]

Do you have tiers? No, just like one, you hit it

[A]

or you don't hit it. If you don't hit it, then you don't hit it.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And that's just how it works, right? It's like you have to make things very simple and clear. I mean, obviously we have performance based metrics as well for everybody, but we found it to be super useful to have a single metric. Everybody's hyper focused on that. We then judge ourselves against that velocity on a monthly basis or even weekly. And then we also look at every opportunity through the lens of like, how does this unlock the thing that we need to unlock this year so that not only can we continue growing as quickly as possible, but also how do we all get compensated as a team

[B]

better in a company that benefits with the growth of your of your customers because of your transaction based pricing, I assume. I would imagine that's a very important goal and that's something you've had in mind for a while. But sounds like that wasn't the North Star last year. Sounds like it was a bit different. Do you remember what it was last year?

[A]

Yeah, last year. I mean, it was revenue, right? And so we had a revenue target for the year. And it's just companies evolve over time, right? So like in the beginning you have, you know, the goal of okay, I need X number of clients and then you say, okay, I need X number of clients that are going to drive Y number of dollars in revenue. And then you need the revenue to grow at X percentage. And so every year, every kind of few months, the company is going through these gates and you have to keep moving forward and you have to reset the goals so that you're always moving into the direction of where you want the business to go. Right. And there's a variety of reasons for that. Right? So I mean for us, revenue was really important because it was a way for us to start demonstrating the utility of the product and the utility of the platform for our partners and ultimately also for ourselves and for our investors to be able to see that. Right. This year it's really about consolidating more volume so that we can continue driving the company in the right direction and start generating more tpv. Right. So, and TPV generally, right. Like it's, I mean, obviously there's some gears, right, in a payments business or any, any flow based business where there's the volume goes up, revenue goes up. But I think this year we're focusing on volume so that we can be a lot more aggressive with economics as well. Right. And so it just changes the dynamic ever so slightly. So this year it's not about revenue, it is still about revenue, but it's not about revenue. It's not explicitly about revenue. Right. So we have a lot more flexibility for some of these like experimental use cases so we can focus on those. Right. And so there's a lot of, whenever you're building at the frontier of technology in any segment, there's always going to be prospective use cases which are not obvious, which may not drive revenue, but they may drive volume or they may, may, may drive utility.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And we've seen this with like AI, there's a lot of different companies that on the free use case there's a lot of volume and then for that particular company in the paid use case, there's not a whole lot of volume, but getting the people using it is helping people understand like what can I actually turn this company or product into? And so for us it's really important to start driving volume that gets people transacting in any capacity.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And not put a revenue gate there just for the sake of having our revenue gate there.

[B]

So one of the reasons why I'm excited to talk to you is because you can educate the audience on those experimental use cases that you've just mentioned. The use case that most people understand for stablecoins is cross border payments. Right. And that's fairly well understood and it makes a lot of sense.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

There's a lot more happening, there's other products. Right. So maybe talk through your main product, which is I think the stablecoin back card, but also probably more interestingly, the experimental use cases.

[A]

Yeah. So Rain has been building the financial infrastructure for tokenized money. Like that's our ethos. That's what we've been working on from the very beginning. Now, the use cases we built on top of that infrastructure started off with card issuing first, largely because card issuing is the most complicated type of payment. There's thousands of edge cases. There are different merchant categories, there's different transaction types like laundromats behave differently than a fuel pump. There's all sorts of different edge cases around all of that. And our thinking was if we can get complicated things working on the blockchain, then the easy things will become easy. It's often been said by many people that you, if you do the hard thing first, it's easier to do everything else. Right. Obviously. But it's not intuitive to a lot of founders. It wasn't really intuitive to us.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And we, we had to very thoughtfully think about this and be like, okay, we do want to do the difficult things first. And there's a variety of reasons for that. But so card issuing has been one piece of the pie. We connect any number of stablecoins, any blockchain to any sort of payment terminal globally, and that's been a great use case. What's really exciting about that is that even on the card issuing side, there's a number of programs we power today that are not obviously a stablecoin use case. Right. So they're not specifically for spending your stable coins that you already had somehow they're actually a brand new use case that is powered by stablecoins or a traditional use case where there's capital efficiencies of using stablecoins under the hud and all of the underlying technology that's facilitating that capital efficiency is also Rain powered. Right. So like the collateral accounts, the settlement mechanism, all of the authorization technology, all of the settlement and reconciliation infrastructure on the back across multiple blockchains from capital partners or collateral pools, all of that is proprietary technology. Right. And so we've built all of that over the last several years with A focus on making sure that we continue iterating on the tech. Right? And so stablecoin card issuing, powered card issuing is one piece. We also have the underlying account infrastructure that lets us authorize transactions across multiple blockchains, all within a few hundred milliseconds, across multiple tokens with no intervention from the user at all. Right? So the user doesn't have to move a token from chain A to chain B. They don't have to swap a token from unsupported token to a supported token. All of it just works out of the box. Because our thinking wise is that this entire industry is going to get a lot more complicated before it gets simpler. Just like every other innovative cycle has ever happened in every industry. Right. And to do that you had to build a flexible solution. And then there's other interesting use cases that are now merging. Like we have a number of teams building agentic use cases using our technology stack, using our blockchain infrastructure, using our card issuing technology. In addition to all of the other technology, we have Programmatic Money Movement use cases where there's like credit card origination, receivable origination and repayment happening. There's, you know, other interesting use cases like Programmatic Money Movement for payroll, you know, helping, you know, employers disburse paychecks on an hourly basis to people that are on hourly payroll. There's a lot of really interesting things that are now emerging. And then we have a number of very public use cases, right? Some of our clients have built really cool defi protocol integrations that allow you to spend the proceeds of a defi loan. And that's all happening on the fly. So you swipe the card you're borrowing from a defi protocol against your assets on the blockchain and all of that is happening permissionlessly, without rain involved at all. Right? And so there's a lot of really cool use cases that have emerged. And we're really excited about, you know, finding out more. I think, and I've said this several times, which is the most exciting part about doing this at all is learning what are all the cool things that you can do now that money is program programmable, right? It's not intuitive, right? To think about, okay, everything is going to be this way or that way. It took a long time for people to realize that, oh, like I should be able to do a video call on my phone, right? It wasn't an obvious use case when phones became mobile, right? So that's the same thing that we think about with tokenized Mike.

[B]

How many of these use cases are customer driven versus how many? Are you realizing that there's an opportunity but the customers are not yet asking for it?

[A]

I mean, I'm always surprised at the ingenuity of builders, right? I think the level of intuition and creativity that you see in our customer base, partner base, is insane, right? Like, these are some of the most thoughtful people that I've ever met. They're building really, really exciting, cool solutions. They're thinking about things that are, that haven't been possible today and trying to figure out how to make it possible. And I think that's where being an infrastructure partner, being at the forefront of a technology movement is really rewarding because you get the opportunity to work with really smart, talented people with big companies and small companies, good ideas, massive ideas, and work with them on the earliest days where they're like, okay, I have this crazy idea, how do I plug different pieces together to make it work? And that's the exciting part about being in the part of the market where we're at.

[B]

So you're taking. Sounds like you're taking a bit of a stripe like approach in the sense that you are partnering specifically with engineers and you're working with the engineers on the other side to figure out new use cases and then let them kind of run wild.

[A]

It's always complicated, right? When you're in, like when you're offering regulated financial products, there's an element of innovation that is allowed and tolerated and there's an element of innovation that is not allowed or tolerated. And so it's always important to make sure that the guidelines are really clear. And our team has been very good at that and we are very thoughtful about, okay, where are the pieces that you can innovate on and where are the pieces where the law is still unclear? Where are the things that maybe you can do it here, but you can't do it there? And it's this complicated thing, right? And when you're working with builders that are just hyper focused on shipping product and doing some things, it there is this like weird back and forth that takes place. And I'm sure that our friends over at Stripe also have to deal with this. And they're just always going to be this like inertial cycle where it's like, you know, you want to keep pushing the boundaries, but then in a lot of these cases there is boundaries that you can't push. Right? You just have to observe the limits and you have to observe kind of the red lines and the guidelines. Otherwise, like, it's just A recipe for disaster. Right. So we are partnering with the engineering side of it. Right. But we also, we try to partner with people that are product driven in addition to being very talented engineers. Right. Because I think the type of products that our partners are building today, you really can't build just from an engineering perspective because there's a whole other element of it which is regulatory, which is legal, which is, you know, making sure that the things that you're doing or saying are permissible, like the utility that you're hoping to drive. I mean, obviously you have to make sure there's customers there, but you also have to make sure that there's regulatory appetite for you to service those customers with what you're building. And it's a really interesting dynamic that we see. And what's exciting is that I guess because it's a bit of a crucible where you can't have rampant creativity, it actually breeds really best in breed ideas because there is a lot of pressure and constraints and I think that's where ingenuity comes from.

[B]

You mentioned regulation. Extremely important topic for you and the industry. Do you think the Fed or the sec, do you think they're ready for what's coming for the future to regulate the future of money?

[A]

I think one of the things that has emerged is that regulators understand that they have not been ready. And I think that is now helping them become ready. And so we've had a number of great conversations with regulators and I mean, it's been really refreshing to see that they're very thoughtful, they're very educated, they understand the ins and outs, they understand what the opportunities are, they understand what the risks are and they understand that any level of innovation or regulation of innovation is going to have pros and cons. I think that that is all we can really ask for as builders is that our representatives are regulatory institutions are taking a thoughtful and considered approach to how regulation comes out, how it's implemented, what are the pros and cons of the things that have been, the decisions that people have made. And it's been really great to see that the regulatory apparatuses are open for business and they're open for regulation and they're open to hear what good regulations look like and potentially what negative regulations look like. And I mean, that level of regulatory engagement is really encouraging to see. And I think eventually that is going to lead into really good results.

[B]

I think ideally what needs to happen regulation wise within the next, I don't know, a short timeline.

[A]

I think it's, I mean, it's hard to say, right? I mean, from our perspective as an infrastructure player, whichever way regulations go is fine with us.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so for us it's really important that they're just clear regulation and anything that happens becomes iterative rather than start and stop.

[B]

Got it. Right.

[A]

I think where people have been concerned is like, okay, these things are fine and then overnight it's not fine. I think that type of stuff is very complicated. And the other thing that's, I think it's unique to early stage companies is that for us a week is life or death, a month is life or death, a year is definitely life or death. Two years is certain life or death. But for a regulator or for an elected representative or an industry participant that is a lobbyist, whatever it is, a year is business as usual, two years is business as usual. Two years is just the regular election cycle. And so for them, they think about things in a very different time frame. And builders and early stage companies think about things in a very different timeframe. And I think that's what drives a lot of the anxiety and kind of this like lack of understanding of how regulators are trying to move the industry forward where you know, for us, like if things happen on a one year timeline, that's almost as if it doesn't, it's not happening at all. Right. And so I think it's, it's just, it's good to calibrate how you think about these things to understand, okay, like when things are happening in a one year time frame or two year time frame, that is the system moving quickly. Right. And you just have to make sure that you are aligned with where things will end up. And you have to believe that, you know, I guess it's. Well, you don't have to believe it, but I think it's important to believe that things are going to end up where sensible people would make it go in the first place. Right? And you have to believe that there is a positive mindset to drive and continue to dominate, like the innovation economy by people here in the United States and other markets that aspire to also be innovation economies?

[B]

Regulation highly, I guess, related to risk. When you think about stablecoins and stablecoin issuances, am I correct that the biggest risk is the same risk that has always existed for the banking world, which is lost of trust, right. From the consumers. So if trust is lost, then, you know, we've seen what happened with svb, right? Is this, first of all, do you agree, how much time do you spend thinking about this? And then what Other risks are there because just like any new system, any new market comes with opportunities, but also risks. And then with time it adjusts.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. One of the biggest things that we hear people concerned about the most is speed, right? Speed in most things is good, right? I mean, I think we can all agree traveling somewhere, getting there faster is good, right? Spending less time in transit to do anything is good, right? Waiting less for your food delivery is good, right? These are all things, not having to wait until the movie comes out to binge, the entire thing is good, right? Like these are all the things that we expect as consumers and individuals in society as positive, right? The positive changes that we see in society when it comes to monetary systems, speed doesn't necessarily equal good, right? Because of the way the systems work today and because of the layer of regulations and guidelines that we have on top of each other, it makes it actually very difficult to, to navigate the various processes and procedures within a global financial institution. Right? And it's not by design, it's by inertia, right? Because they go through an audit, then they say, okay, well you know, we are going to tweak this by adding one more step here. And then generally, right? In an audit of any type, right. To remove steps is generally looked upon unfavorably. And so you end up having more steps. And when you have more steps, it just means that more people check the box in the way and you end up on the other side. And over a 10 year period you have 10 more steps. And it's not because there was a qualitative judgment about are there steps that we can remove as we add steps, which probably there are, and you just end up in this place where it's through good intentions, right? And now you end up with this thing which is very difficult to actually do the correctly, right? I remember when I was in, you know, I used to work in the private equity space internationally and you know, we had these entities that owned other entities and the money had to flow the right way for a variety reason. Like we had like loan agreements that said money had to flow some way. And it was enormously complicated to actually make sure that the money flowed the correct way, right? Because in different countries, like it would take three days or four days for the money to go from this country to entity to this country. And then it would arrive and then it would take another three, four days to go from here to there. And in the middle you'd have a holiday or somebody would go on vacation and then they would like if it was a small enough amount of money they might forget. And so the money would just like sit here for a few months and then eventually would go. And then you'd only figure this out in the audit. You're like, oh, where is the money? And, oh, we have it, but it's over there. And, and it was very complicated to do. Right. And so in that use case, being able to do that very quickly, which you can now do with stable Coinbase treasury management, you do that in five minutes. That's good. But now imagine a consumer fraud, right? So like, you have somebody that is being taken advantage of, the money is flowing from their bank account into a stablecoin or even into a different bank, and that person is withdrawing it in cash. If that happens very quickly, that's bad, right? Because now the, the, the systems in place to potentially prevent that, or the mandatory time locks in the middle to prevent, like a check from being deposited and withdrawn the same day those systems and security controls no longer work. Right. So there's natural friction here that, I mean, I think an anxiety that is emerging from the fact that, like, if you make things quicker, that exposes risk, and it exposes risks at the same institutions that are the bastions of trust today. Right, right. Like at the largest institutions in the world, we will probably see structural limitations to how quickly they can do certain things. And that's not good for anybody. It's not good for the leadership of these institutions. It's probably not good for the consumers, certainly not good for investors, these institutions. And like, that's probably where a lot of anxiety is coming from. But at the same time, if you think about how good it is to add speed to things, right? If you can make money faster, if you can move money from a buyer to a seller quicker, there's huge improvements to that. Right. If you can reduce the working capital of a small business, they can hire more people, they can stay open longer, make more money, be more successful, they can reduce prices. Right? That's all really good. And so it's weird to kind of start thinking about all these things as binary. There's always winners in some markets because of innovation. There's always losers in some markets because of innovation. And ultimately the people that start losing, I think, will eventually wake up and say, oh, actually, I'm going to benefit so much from all these innovations. And maybe it's now an opportunity to look at my procedure list that over 25 years is, you know, it started with five things that we did, and now it has 25 things just because we've added one every year. And maybe we go back to seven things or eight things or 10 things or 15 things. And there's a massive cost savings in there, Right? And the massive costing is savings can then be distributed through a dividend to shareholders. It can be used to buy back stock, it can be used to reduce prices. All of those things are really great for society.

[B]

And this complexity, I guess it's exacerbated for you as a global company, right? You're based in New York, Obviously you have a lot of US clients, but you also have international clients. Your cards are being used in dozens of countries. Maybe you can tell me how many. Let's zoom in on that. Right? First of all, how are you dealing with the complexity of issuing cards in so many different places?

[A]

It's a lot of work. It takes a lot of time and effort to kind of make sure that regulatorily, that everybody is covered and in the right place. So before we do anything, we always engage with local council and regulatory advisors to understand, okay, how does this impact what the on the ground realities are here and how do we make sure that, you know, if anybody is upset with something, like, how do they make. We make sure that they can reach us directly. Right. I think that level of engagement has helped us build really good relationships in the markets that we. We have customers in. And then on top of that, we've always tried to operate with a plan of, like, what happens when, if there's massive success here, right, if we open up, let's say, market A or B, and there's massive success there, it's plausible and reasonable for the regulators in the market to expect us to come in and establish and invest. And we're happy to do that. Right? For us, it's like we are hyper focused on regulatory engagement, hyper focused on international expansion and investment. And for us, the only way to build a global company is to build a global company. So, I mean, it seems very counterintuitive because in software and other industries like marketplaces, so many people build global companies without building global companies, right. If you look at people like Airbnb or you look at large marketplaces for various goods and services, they kind of operate as a technology hub in a single place, and their product is accessible on the Internet by typing in their URL and you can just go and list your property there, rent out your house or rent your car or whatever it is, or, you know, schedule tours that you want to give in, you know, Mexico or wherever it is. And that's been the Global paradigm, Right. But now for financial services, they're hyper regulated differently than information.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so it requires a different approach. But there's a lot to be learned from the last generation of global companies which was expand and then land, right. So like how do you go global, figure out where the demand is and then invest locally to consolidate that supply.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So like supply the services in the way that everybody expects to receive them. So that's a big part of our strategy.

[B]

So for the founders listening who are actually building default global companies, maybe share, how have you structured the, the, the teams, right. Have you structure, maybe product engineering, go to market what needs, what can be centralized, what needs to be localized?

[A]

Yeah, I think we're still learning that stuff. We're still learning, right. It's how do we continue growing, maintaining leverage while building and make, and maintaining a global business. It's, it's, it's an iterative process. There's no right way, I'd think there's no wrong way. They're just the way. And every company is going to make similar but different mistakes along their path. You know, I'm constantly trying to reach out to folks that have built very successful international businesses to understand, okay, what were the challenges that you experienced and how did you overcome those things? And we try to do as much learning as we can to avoid making the same mistakes. Right. I think there's a lot of really great companies that have built massive global businesses that have gone through a lot of the trials and tribulations that we've, we're going through or will go through. There's, I mean for the founders listening, there's a lot of companies that have kind of done similar things to what you're going to do. And it's really important to just reach out to people and say, hey, you know, I'd love to understand how you dealt with this one thing. Right? Don't make it like, just don't say, hey, you know, let me grab a coffee and then tell them at coffee that do that. Just, it's just easiest to just go to people and say, hey, I saw that you've done X, Y and Z. I'm a big fan. I would love to help you. I would appreciate if you could help me think about how you did this one thing. And people generally are really helpful. I think most people appreciate the level of pain and suffering it takes to do various things, right, like start something new, hire your first person, build the first product, get the first customer. All of these things are hard, right. And I think Every founder I've met is very humble about how difficult and complicated all this stuff is and is happy to help.

[B]

So the company is based in New York. Right. And do you have teams around the world?

[A]

Yeah, so we. So we have a primary hub here in New York City. We also have hubs around the us we have an office in Washington dc, another in SF and are in the process of opening other hubs. It's mostly just happened by coincidence where we've just hired some of the best people available for the particular roles we've had and then just hubs have emerged. So we're opening hubs in other markets as well. And some of it is driven by sort of regulatory investment or investment alongside regulatory licensing. Others are just because we've put open job postings and just happened to have a bunch of people apply from a single place and then now we're kind of establishing offices there. We believe in being able to hire the best people available globally, but we do believe in being a people first, like in person, first company. Right. So like what we found to be super helpful is that just when you're around each other, there's cross pollination of ideas is a lot faster and the triage of problems a lot quicker. Right. And so that's why even when we go into different markets or hire people that are remote, we still have, you know, several remote folks. And they're great, amazing parts of the team. We also try to make sure that everybody gets together or everybody has budget to kind of visit each hub or meet their team and meet others and just kind of build those relationships which are super valuable as you grow.

[B]

And you didn't start in New York pre reign. You were somewhere south. Was it in Texas?

[A]

Yes, I was in San Antonio, Texas and then my co founder Charles was in New York. He just moved from the Bay. And so I actually moved up here for a few months to start working together. And so that's how we started working on it.

[B]

Right. A few months have turned into a few years.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I mean it's been. There's a lot of things have happened in the middle, but. Yes.

[B]

Did you ever consider moving to the Bay?

[A]

Yeah, we did. I think a big part of it was Charles had just moved from the Bay and you know, and he grew up here. And so I was like, you know, why not, why not just stay here? And also like, it didn't really feel like we had to be in the Bay to do this. In a weird way, like the stablecoin center of gravity was very Much in New York or Brooklyn based I guess when we were starting things out. And then I think it's moved more to the Bay, I think. But still I think most stablecoin businesses it's default global. So you have to have this global mindset. I think San Francisco is a great place to build a business and for a founder like me that didn't have any sort of connectivity to venture or investors or founders or any of that stuff, having gone to San Francisco even for a small period of time was super valuable just to kind of meet people and just start getting to know people. Right. And then ultimately in many of the people I've met as part of sort of just exploring startup ideas, some of those people now work at Rain, Some of those people are investors in Rain, but they knew what it was. Right. Like, I mean I didn't know anybody before this that knew what angel investing was or any of that stuff.

[B]

Let's talk a bit about the timing of when you started. When did you close your first institutional round of capital?

[A]

Yeah, so we closed our first institutional round of capital in January 2022 2.

[B]

So that was just a few months before FTX exploded.

[A]

Yeah, about like nine months before.

[B]

And, and so who's counting? Yeah, exactly. And, and so my point here is you're only nine months, but at least you have money in the bank. A lot of public trust is lost in your space. What was the mood inside the company and how did it affect your focus?

[A]

One of the things really helped us was being very vision driven of what the goal that we had in mind was. Obviously there was the public facing goal of what we were sharing with others, but there was the deep seated belief of what we wanted to accomplish as a company and as an endeavor. Right. And that has always been about this change that is going to be inevitable about moving from regular money or electronic money to digital money. And our thinking at the time was like we have to start building something that puts us in any proximity to this change that will take place that continues giving us some advantage either by being early, by being right, by being having customers, having revenue, whatever it is, having credibility, any way to stay relevant until that emerges, this trend emerges more widely. Right. And that was kind of what we, the bet we were making at the time. Now how that manifested was as like a credit card product for DAOs or decentralized teams or companies that didn't have like a traditional incorporation structure so they weren't able to access traditional financial services products. Right. Because they were just set up in a Weird way where like partner banks didn't know how to do it. And so that's where we found the niche early market. And we had really supportive partners and clients that really helped iterate and build and provide massive feedback and be very direct with us when things didn't work, why they didn't work and tell us like how they expected it to work and all that stuff. And it was really helpful to have that. And then when the FTX stuff happened and there was an erosion of trust in the industry and then it just quickly flipped from a supportive stance about the broader market to a very anti market stance by every pretty much economic market participant. For us it still was fine because our initial customer cohort, they were largely fine because they had already raised a bunch of money, they already had capital. Like we serviced a lot of the large crypto foundations at the time and they'd already done ICOs and things like that. And some of them had, you know, billions of dollars and you know, they were going to be fine. Right. We didn't have any of that money obviously, but like we had some line of sight to like, okay, like we can continue iterating into building and just keep focusing on building what we're here to build and not really worrying about a the market is bad, how long the market is getting bad for, will it ever get better? I mean, we just tried to not think about that as much as possible and for us it largely worked. Right. So from the very beginning of Rain to now, Rain has never had a down quarter ever. And it's not because things have been great, like things have been good and bad and worse. It's just that we had this focus on how we want to continue executing and really had this focus on continuing to execute and focus on the future of where the company is headed and hyper focus on our customers, where things were working and then tried to do more stuff with them, find more people like them, build a radically good relationship with early evangelists and continue having them support us and drive more value to our way. And that engagement really and hyper focus on customers really helped us kind of make it through that tough time. And to do so in a way where, you know, it wasn't a lot of revenue, but it was whatever it was very modest revenue, but like it was moving in the right direction. Was it moving in the right direction at the speed that we would have liked? No, but it was better than many other companies at the time. And it was, we were very grateful to have had that opportunity. And then when things got you know, I think the challenges were, is that we did have like the ups and downs emotionally of like, is this going to last forever? This bad, bad time? Will there be additional capital available down the line? And like, ultimately, I think tightening our belt helped us think more critically about like, hey, what are the other things that we need to do as a business? What are the other use cases for our technology? How do we continue sort of iterating in a way that we continue growing and earning the right to be dominant players in this market and just spent a lot of time from a resource constrained perspective thinking about that, which also helped us sort of continue developing product, find adjacent opportunities to kind of invest in and spend some time in. And I think the only thing that really, the only kind of lasting impact of this is probably all these white hairs on my beard.

[B]

It really reminds me of this interview that Jeff Bezos did of how I don't know the exact figures, but their stock price went just completely to hell in, you know, in the dot com bust. And he would keep telling the team and just keep focus because he would look at the numbers weekly and monthly, they would be going up. It was like, yes, the stock price has gone to shit, but like the actual business is growing, you know, and you've had, you say you haven't had a down month. I'm assuming that's in terms of growth across all metrics.

[A]

We've had down months. We've never had down quarter.

[B]

No down quarter. Okay, maybe share a bit about your numbers today, the kind of growth that you're seeing. Volumes. Anything you can share to, to illustrate to the audience kind of the, the scale that you're reaching.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, so I'll give you an example.

[B]

Right?

[A]

So last year we grew volume 30x right from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. And it wasn't from a tiny base either. Like, so it was like real. Yeah. And this year that velocity is continuing to grow, right? So we're still growing double digits month over month and the bases, I mean, getting bigger, but it's still, the growth is there and we're still kind of sitting on, you know, I think probably what, 60, 70, 60 to 70% of our customers are live. The remainder, I mean, we're still signing customers faster than we're launching them. And so there's a lot of growth in the tank. I think we're still hyper focused on like, you know, what are the cool things that really large opportunities will drive, Right. One of the exciting things that we've seen over time, over the, especially in the last, like, you know, since the passing of the genius act, is that people that you wouldn't expect to be interested in this technology or what's going on in the space, certainly not right now, are not only showing up, raising their hand, saying, we actually have been thinking about this for a while. This is what we want to do. Can you help us do it? And that's really exciting. I think obviously a lot of our partners have grown massively. Slash is growing super fast. They're a great team. We're very fortunate to work with and support really, really excellent teams and founders. And that's why we're able to benefit. We're just a second order beneficiary of this massive execution being done by really tremendous teams. And the exciting part about us, for us right now is like, okay, there's all these massive opportunities that are now merging. A lot of them are in the super early phase of like exploration. Some of them are really baked, some of them are fully baked and some of them are full steam ahead. And that's the exciting stuff.

[B]

Right?

[A]

So like, I think what comes out between now and the end of the year or this time next year, I think you will see that this entire space will hyper accelerate. And I think our sort of early bet on how stable coins are not stable coins. It's not digital crypto, it's not digital assets, it's just money. I think that thesis is going to start bearing out over the next year.

[B]

Can you share a bit of maybe GMV numbers or anything like that? You guys keep it under the hood.

[A]

We keep that under the hood.

[B]

Okay, okay, fair enough, Fair enough.

[A]

Wouldn't be fair to tell the company how far they are from the target

[B]

and the types of customers that you have. First of all, you have partnerships and you have a very strong Visa partnership. I understand. So maybe let's talk a bit about the partnerships. Right? That's crucial for your business. What have you learned about partnering with much larger institutions as a startup? I think that's an interesting topic for founders.

[A]

All of it is driven by vision, alignment. I think when we had the opportunity to meet the Visa team, especially the crypto team and other organizations within Visa, what really resonated with us is that they were hyper focused on what stablecoins, digital assets, tokenized money, what that means for their business. Right. And they weren't thinking about it as a threat, they were thinking about it as an opportunity. Like what is the opportunity that we get here? What are the things that we can do here that are different than what we've been doing. And I think that really helped us cement that partnership, which was finding a partner that was hyper focused in the same way we were right. And like hyper vigilant about like the opportunity, the risks, the technical lift. And we really found kind of a peer in them which was hyper focused on like where we saw the world going.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I think that we were able to build that partnership in a way that was really unique because I think we were a pure play believer in kind of what they believed also. Right. Obviously there's other players that they work with and they've worked with before. Those relationships are multifaceted. Right. Our relationship with them when we started out was very much hyper focused on stablecoin adoption and where the industry was going. And it allowed us to have a very close relationship with their product team, their crypto team, their treasury settlement team to start building technology and solutions to then drive seven day stablecoin settlement, multi chain token settlement, multi token settlement. All of these things have been initiatives that we've been able to collaborate with them on and continue collaborating with them.

[B]

How do you ensure you negotiate a fair deal between a half a trillion dollar company and a tiny startup?

[A]

We actually never focused on that. We just thought, hey, if we can continue growing and eventually it's not just, hey, trust me, we're going to do big things. If you can just start demonstrating that you're able to follow through and what you're committing yourself to, it really helps build that trust.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And at the early stage, it can be tempting to say, okay, I'm going to do this deal and I'm going to do this deal early and whatever you give me, I'll take. But a lot of times it's really valuable for both sides to start evaluating each other and start working together and then start figuring out, okay, what does a commercial partnership look like?

[B]

Right.

[A]

Sometimes you don't have that opportunity. Right. Sometimes you have to sign an agreement of some sort. What has worked for us is to just scope things narrowly and say, hey, we're small, you're big. And labeling that earlier is usually appreciated where people are like, okay, well these guys understand that there's a lot of responsibility on them and they understand that these are the obligations that they have and they're thoughtful and considerate about not trying to lock a set. Right? Because most of the time, in terms like most large companies, in any commercial agreement, they'll be like, well, we have the right to walk away whenever we want. We're not going to pay you a whole lot because you're going to benefit. All this stuff, right? It's public PR stuff that we're going to give you and that's kind of take it or leave it. But if you start the other way where it's like, hey, these are services we're going to provide to you, you can walk away whenever you want and we understand that there's risk and this is why we're offering it to you this way. Usually that's more appreciated rather than this like clawback mentality when they're trying to cram you down. If you just start small, usually it's easier to get through.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And tell us a bit about the types of customers you have. Obviously it sounds like you have a few new banks, right? But there's a lot more beyond that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I mean we have customers of every size pretty much. We have very, very small teams that have just raised like a pre seed round. We have some of the market leaders in their industries, publicly traded companies using our stuff. We're partnering with financial institutions that are leveraging our technology infrastructure to offer products and services. So there's really, I mean our customer base is across the gamut, right. So everybody from, you know, folks like Western Union, which are publicly traded and sort of market leaders, all the way down to four people sitting in various weworks around the world building agentic payment infrastructure and everybody in between. So we have series B, series C, large companies, hyper growth companies like Slash and WAP and companies like Western Union.

[B]

And you have US companies, you have default global companies and you have companies exclusively focused in different markets. Right. And then outside of the US what's roughly the breakdown between your US activity versus international?

[A]

It's an interesting question because the largest destination for money, for dollars, believe it or not, is the United States. So when people spend dollars, they expect to buy things that are denominated in dollars that are offered by American businesses. So that's probably something that a lot of people wouldn't expect. Right. The largest volume that we see in our systems is money that's ending up in the United States. Right. It may not start in the US but it's ending up in the United States and it's going largely to American merchants. We also see a lot of like cross border business that's taking place where it's like businesses that are in countries like Bolivia that may want to be importing something from somebody in Asia. Right. Like auto parts or windshield windscreens or whatever it is. Or T shirts. And for them to send a swift transfer from their local financial institution to Indonesia is actually very difficult. But to pay a vendor with a payment card in Indonesia, that's pretty easy. Right. And so there's a lot of really interesting use cases that are emerging. We also have a number of like ultra high net worth use cases where we're partnering with our clients, are partnering with registered investment advisors or broker dealers to offer solutions. There's really no, it's very hard to kind of classify that into different buckets because the variety of ways that you can slice and dice all this stuff is so large.

[B]

You have scaled your employee base pretty quickly. Sounds like 18 months ago you were 15 at the company. How many today?

[A]

About 130.

[B]

130. So in the age of LLMs and AI and agentic work, how does that change how you've grown the company?

[A]

Look, I think if we didn't have AI, we would have probably had to go to like 500. I mean it's been, there's obviously a lot of growing pains. We're very fortunate that we've brought on really talented people that are hyper mission lined and motivated and are some of the best at what they do.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so everything has kind of improved. Like obviously 15 was very undersized. I think 130 is still undersized for the opportunity, but hyper focused on like continuing to get leverage on each individual role. Right. So like every person we add, how do we get them to output? You know, one or two or three, four people output. Right. And we're making massive investments in getting technology into the people's hands so that they can continue getting leverage on their roles. And we're hoping that that kind of starts showing up as we continue scaling. Right. Which is how do we continue growing and how do we continue scaling and servicing our customers and making sure that as we get bigger, as our customers get bigger, as volume increases, number of users increases, our customer satisfaction continues increasing, while headcount ideally stays static or goes up less proportionally than every other metric, I guess related.

[B]

How does your token spend look like these days and how is it distributed across engineering, customer service and other teams?

[A]

Yeah. So token spend for us, we're still below the enterprise limit, so it doesn't look so bad. But I think for us we're hyper focused on what's the team doing. Right. I think token spend alone is probably not a useful metric to judge people on. It's about what are the functions that they're doing that the tokens are being spent on.

[B]

Right.

[A]

There's a lot of times I have a bunch of friends and I have siblings as well. And sometimes I see people, younger people, pretty much everybody that's just copying pasting emails into AI and being like, oh, can you make this better? That's really bad use of token spending. But if you're saying, hey, you're texting your Claude bot and saying, hey, man, I need to, to add, make a light version of this website and then just setting it off on its own, that's probably good use of token spending. So there's high leverage things you can do with AI and low leverage things you can do with AI. There's also things where if you get used to doing sort of, if you're outsourcing your agency function to AI, that's probably the recipe for your skills at your fingering over time. So there's a lot of things to watch out for because it, it is the easy button on a variety of things. Right. And I think that can be, it's, it's very tempting. It can also be very dangerous, but it's also very promising and, and it can be very powerful if used in a different way. Right. So it's like it's this weird situation to be in right now.

[B]

And now with the growing spread of models, you don't want to give, you know, a Ph.D. a task that you would give the undergrad intern. Right.

[A]

So, yeah, but there are smart people figuring these problems out and I'm sure that some enterprising person will launch a, a business where you'll just tell it or it'll figure out, oh, this is an intern job and it'll give it to intern agent. And then the PhD job you get to a PhD agent.

[B]

Yeah, we actually just invested in a company that's going to work in this.

[A]

That's great. Well, let me know.

[B]

Good. So, so for a gu. Before I let you go, maybe tell us a bit about, you know, some of your hobbies. What do you, what do you like to do outside of rain?

[A]

That's a great question. So I currently don't have any hobbies. I used to have hobbies. I don't have time for hobbies right now, unfortunately. I think the. Probably the one I still do the most is I like cooking. And it is something that is like very therapeutic and you know, when you mess it up, you still have to eat it. So it's like, it's, it's so you, you have the, you get the fruits of your labor and sometimes the bitter Fruits of your labor, but it can be a lot of fun. So I think that that's kind of where I'm spending more of my time on the hobby side. But beyond that, like, I play chess. I still. I like playing chess online. I've found myself going from the five minute game to the three minute game. And I just started playing the first two minute game. And so I don't know. I don't know how much time I have to do this stuff, but I'm trying to stay active. But I think I might go back to the three minute.

[B]

All these books have either been recommended by a guest or written by a guest. Do you have any book recommendations? Any books that you go back to often?

[A]

I think, I mean, this might be a little cliche, but I really liked the book Never Split the Difference. Oh, yeah, it's like a negotiation book. Yeah. It was actually really interesting for me because I never had learned negotiation or sales or any of that stuff in like my professional career. But these things have all been super helpful just generally to know and like, if you're a founder, starting off like, it's something that, like, I do think about often stuff in that book is stuff, I think, but often running a company, because a lot of times most things in an early city, founder feels like a prisoner's dilemma. And it's like this hostage taking that's happening with your ideas or your customers or whatever it is or your revenue. And you have to kind of get to the other side and you can't kill the victim. You have to figure out how do you get to the other side thoughtfully without like compromising too much on sort of your principles and like, you know what your product is or what your vision is. And I think that's. That's probably a book that I recommend more than often than not. I also really like Art of War by Sun Tzu, of course.

[B]

Classic.

[A]

I think that book is that. That book has taught me more about building a company than probably anything else.

[B]

That's awesome. Yeah. I think Art Levy from Brex also recommended Never Split the Difference. And he was dealing with some huge partnerships. Right.

[A]

Yeah, of course.

[B]

And said he found it very helpful for.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

It's.

[A]

I mean, it's a very unique take on negotiations. And I think that I. I would put Art of War first and maybe. And it's. It. It's smaller, so it'll fit here.

[B]

All right. It's a. It's a growing list. Good. Well, far. Thank you for doing this and thank you for stopping by. Our.

[A]

Our for sure.

[B]

You know, it's not brand new, but our. Our new studio.

[A]

Yeah, it's fantastic.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

[A]

Thank you so much.

[B]

Thanks for tuning in and I hope you enjoyed this great episode with Farooq Malik from Rain. If you want more interviews, please make sure to subscribe, follow and leave a review on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your shows. It helps and means a lot. And if you have any suggestions or thoughts about the show, just drop me a line on LinkedIn. See you next time.