Ayo

About me: currently building the future of healthcare at Carbon Health.

Previously, I built the future of banking at Cash App, including the Cash Card and Square's instrument issuing infrastructure from scratch.

Before Cash App, I founded Hipmob (YCombinator W12 - acquired by Conversocial.com). In a previous life, I traded bonds and foreign exchange at Bank of America.

I also build lots of apps for fun, including Mailform, SplitCSV, and Faxrocket and others.

I've angel invested in over 80 companies like Mercury, Sure, Biobot, Faire, and others. I also lead the Square Angels syndicate; a group of current and former Square and Cash App alumni investing together, and the YC Alumni syndicate; a group of YC Alumni investing in each other after YC.

Other things I love: cooking, salt, olive oil, anime, sci fi, afrobeat and fantasy.

My email is ayo [at] kunle.app, and I'm on twitter at @ay_o. Over time I'll add more things.

• Essays
  • February 2020 - The default card issuing platform will be permissionless
  • March 2020 - Vertical Neobanks
  • April 2020 - Focus
  • May 2020 - The emergence of API routing layers in financial services
  • June 2020 - Wave Hunting (or the value of problem selection)
  • August 2020 - Sustainably differentiated lending businesses
  • December 2020 - Financial Reconciliation for financial services companies managing ledgers
  • February 2021 - How to dismantle TurboTax
  • March 2021 - Why COVID Passports are taking so long
  • August 2021 - Common problems with bank partners
  • September 2021 - Underexplored tactics for driving card adoption
  • February 2022 - Children of Durbin
  • May 2022 - Time to Money
  • July 2022 - Crypto Primitives
  • August 2022 - Networked Notebooks and engineering serendipity
  • December 2022 - Bank Portability
  • January 2023 - Price Transparency
  • March 2023 - JPMorgan Chase doesn't care about your deposits
  • May 2023 - Emergent use cases for transparency in coverage data
  • June 2023 - Subtle Differentiation (or why there are no 10x products in financial services)
  • June 2023 - The competitors you should fear aren't copying you.
  • August 2023 - The opportunity in electric vehicle charging orchestration
  • September 2023 - How to build sustainably differentiated technology enabled healthcare services
  • January 2024: What if ACH had attachments?
  • February 2024: Voice as a platform in healthcare
  • February 2024: Fintech can save the American banking system. Regulators can help.
  • April 2024: Revisiting - Common problems with banking partners
  • April 2024: Receipts API as a service
  • May 2024: Stablecoins are helping create a new buyer of last resort for US Treasurys
  • May 2024: AI eats OpEx
• Podcasts
  • In Depth - by First Round Capital: Finding Startup Ideas and Building in Heavily-Regulated Spaces
  • Black PMs - Fighting Covid and Pushing Healthcare Forward
  • Global ID - Understanding the future of fintech
  • Inside Round - by Matrix Partners: Product Lessons from Cash App and Carbon Health
  • Village Global: Why Healthtech today is like Fintech 5 years ago
  • CQ Roll Call: Product Market Fit
  • Lenny's Newsletter: Frameworks for product differentiation
• LinkedIn
• AngelList
• Investing & Advising
• Projects
• NFTs!!
• Substack

To get notified when I publish a new essay, please subscribe here.