Julian: Hey everyone. Thankyou so much for joining the podcast today, we have Kalpesh Kapadia CEO andfounder of deserve deserve is a credit card as a service. Everything you needto easily launch and a modern credit card program for your business. Kalpesh.Thank you so much for joining this show. I'm really excited to dive into yourbackground your company.

Julian: So just to jump rightin what were you doing before you started deserve?  

Julian: Well, thanks Julianfor having me on your podcast. So I came here about 27, 28 years ago as astudent mm-hmm . I did my master's in engineering and MBA in finance. I camefrom India and then I started working on wall street from 1998 to 2000.

Julian: 13. Yeah. I wasworking in various capacities on, on wall street from research analysts,covering tech sector to an investor in the technology and software sector.Mm-hmm you know, so that was my background.

Julian: Yeah, what that's,that's super interesting in, in, in working with wall street, you said youworked with both analyzing you know, tech, the tech sector, as well as youknow, investing in certain businesses.

Julian: What did you learnalong the way? Like what, what were some key things that you saw as an analystthat maybe, you know, had, have kind of, is there anything that you predictedthat, you know, came into fruition today?

Kalpesh: Yeah, so I mean I usedto follow. Companies in the wireless sector, in digital media sector.

Kalpesh: Yeah. In softwaresector and generally in consumer consumer sector, right. Mm-hmm and all themega trends from all the way from 3g to iPhone, to you know, cloud all thetrends that I used to follow and recommend stocks or buy stocks in companies.Like I was an early investor in. In apple, in Qualcomm, in social media companies,even when they're private, like LinkedIn and Facebook.

Kalpesh: Oh, wow. So I kind ofunderstood sort of the power of web 2.0 the power of mobile and, and digitalmm-hmm . And so that's, that's where I took away  

Julian: from that. Yeah. Did,did you ever expect social and like LinkedIn and all the other kinda socialplatforms to be as big as they are today? Or is that, is that any at all?

Julian: Any. No, I  

Kalpesh: think, I think theseare all sort of platforms for work platforms for socializing. Right? Mm-hmm sosort of the web two platforms for, for content were a big thing. Yeah. And youknow, they're still continuing to be, you know, every five years there is a newplatform that, you know, comes and.

Kalpesh: Dominates if you will,right now sort, the Zeist is dominated by TikTok. Right. Right. You know, andfive years ago it was Snapchat and 10 years ago it was Facebook and, you know,yeah. LinkedIn has always been this steady add. Sort of work related platform.Yeah.  

Julian: Yeah. Is there any, isthere any upcoming platforms that, that you think might, you know, start thenext wave and influence the next generation?

Julian: Or do you feel like, Ifeel like TikTok is hard to replicate now because of the fast content? I couldn't,for me, at least I'm, I'm an. But it's hard to identify any new technology.That's kind of gonna disrupt either professionally with LinkedIn or TikTok andalthough other social channels and umbrella that umbrella underneath thingslike that.

Julian: But is there anythingout there in the market that you think is gonna be next?  

Kalpesh: I think the web threeis an interesting phenomenon, right? And the mentors that is, is also aninteresting universe that is sort of you know, I remember maybe 15 years agothere was second life mm-hmm that people wanna be a Roger Feder in the eveningand have an avatar.

Kalpesh: You know, we arecoming full circle, maybe. Premature for its time or way ahead of his time.Mm-hmm second life for us. And, you know, it was like IBM had a store in secondlife at the time now, you know, 15 years later it's metaverse right. So, yeah.Yeah. It seems, I think it's, you know, these sort of these variables and, andaugmented reality as opposed to virtual reality, I think is, is a big theme.

Kalpesh: That's  

Julian: gonna. Yeah. Yeah. Itseems like everything's kind of lining up to kind of restart web web two orrestart web one and then go into web two now with web three, kind of developingand it's, it's fascinating how there are so many ways that companies aregetting into web three. In all, in all the spaces, especially with NFT anddocumentation in terms of, you know, attaching something to a non fungibletoken so that it can be authentic, you know throughout and throughout.

Julian: But I'm, I'm always sofascinated on whether or. You know, it's gonna be a place for business to, tohappen. And I think, I think the answer's yes. You know, me and my cofounder,we're talking about, it'd be amazing for us to sit, you know, put on someglasses and feel as though we were sitting in a conference room together andbeing within a certain space.

Julian: What, what do, do you,do you have any other kind of predictive implications on, on what web three isgonna be?  

Kalpesh: I think that this allsort of Taking a glass to your head is, is not the right fault factor to enjoy.I think it's more natural form factors are gonna be the ones that cause you canget, you know, all sorts of headaches and you know mental issues, physical issues,not being in front of a screen all day long, right?

Kalpesh: Yeah. Yeah. So AR andsort of feeling natural in terms. 3d communication. Mm-hmm , you know, AR willbe more natural to, to feel if you will, if you wanna be in the metaverse. Imean, if you look at the graphics also that you have in metaverse is notnothing compared to video games, right. You have amazing real, real life typegraphics.

Kalpesh: So a lot of thesethings will have to, I think, one of. Course that I love from jobs was that, youknow, you don't wanna be hitting the market before it's ready, you know? Right.A Palm pilot was like a big product in the nineties. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone, Iknew had a Palm pilot and it was probably 10 years ahead.

Kalpesh: Cause the resolution.And not caught up the memory, the storage mm-hmm the multi touch and theniPhone was launched 10 years later. Yeah. And it became a huge success. Right.So you don't want to hit the market too early. And I believe some of thesethings are probably three years, five years too early.

Kalpesh: Really.  

Julian: Well, are you aoption? Are you a Neurolink guy? Are you a ? Are, are you yeah, yeah,  

Kalpesh: yeah. I do believe inthat. So yeah.  

Julian: Yeah. Now it's, it'sfunny to hear, it's kind of, you know hold back like the fear and skepticismfor, you know, technology like that, but it seems as though humans and, andtechnology are integrating in, in so many different ways that it.

Julian: That it, it has nodirection, but to go in that way where it's gonna be completely integrated inour day to day lives like that let's switch

Kalpesh: the interface, right.It's Alan mentions, you know, singularity is near and now singularity is here,you know, in five years. Yeah. Is the interface, the I right from brain to yourfingertips, to, you know, how quickly you can type how quickly you can youknow, Versus you know, absorb information.

Kalpesh: So it's the interfaceissue. It's the IO issue. Yeah.  

Julian: Yeah. . Yeah, no, thatit's, it's so fascinating with, you know, where, where things are gonna go and,and how they're gonna be integrated that it's gonna be obviously Neurolink is,is, you know, in its conception and, and maybe, you know, too early as well.

Julian: But but yeah, it seemsto be all heading in, in that direction. But switching gears here to talk alittle bit more about deserve, because you know, that that's why we brought youon to, to, you know, go dive into the startup a little bit more. What inspiredyou to start deserve you know, at its concept,

Kalpesh: Yeah.

Kalpesh: So the founding, theGenesis of the company were in my own personal experience. Mm-hmm as a studentand, and many of my family members and friends and people who are near and dearto my heart, mm-hmm have experienced. So it was you know so what I call a, afounder product fit. So I had come, come here as a student and I had troublegetting access to financial products.

Kalpesh: Yeah. Including loansand credit cards, because you lack. When you arrive with two key elements,mm-hmm which are required by us financial system. One is your, your socialsecurity number and other is your credit score. Yeah. And we thought that thiswas unfair people who come here from 10,000 miles away to make their livesbetter.

Kalpesh: Yeah. Just becausethey lack these two numbers, mm-hmm , you know, they should not bedisadvantaged or underserved if. Yeah. And that was sort of the founding of thecompany. We, we, we built the algorithm and workflow management forunderwriting credit without the use of social security number and creditscores.

Kalpesh: Mm-hmm , which peoplethought was not possible, you know, when we started and we built from there. Soif you look at the top four software companies in the world today, yeah. TheCEOs of those companies, Microsoft, Google. IBM and Adobe, they all came hereas a student from India. Mm-hmm mm-hmm and imagine acquiring these customersearly on in their life cycle, in their journey.

Kalpesh: Yeah. Yeah. And, andthe lifetime value would be tremendous for these customers. Right. So this iswhat we were pitching to the banks and everyone thought it was a no brainer,but people didn't want to be the first to do it. Right. Yeah. so, you know,you, you have the arrows on your back when you're a pioneer, right.

Kalpesh: So we decided. We'regonna, we are gonna launch a credit card and we are gonna give credit card tothis deserving, but underserved population. Yeah. And that's how we, we, westarted the company. Yeah. And over time, we've sort of evolved that problem toinclude, you know, as a software stack, we kept building and going one layerbelow in terms of the layers of the cake, if you will.

Kalpesh: And now we are at thelayer, which is very close to the base layer, which is your visa and master.Yeah.  

Julian: Yeah. What soeverything from there. Yeah. So, so and maybe, maybe I misunderstood this, butso deserve, kind of focuses more on the underserved community that, you know,comes from that's how we started.

Kalpesh: That's how we started.Okay. Okay. Not where we are, where we are today is we D R a modern, the mostmodern credit. As a service platform. Yeah. You know, more modern than evenapple card today. Wow. So we can, you know, apple card is only available oniPhone. Yeah. And apple card is only available on MasterCard.

Kalpesh: Yeah. We are availableon. Visa and MasterCard and both on iPhone and Android.  

Julian: Wow. Is, is you know,what kind of causes a business? I, one thing when I was looking into deserve,what, what, why would a business need a credit card and what are the uses thatyou know, kind of help accelerate its, its accessibility to, to differentfunds.

Kalpesh: So I think this is a Bto B to C. So think of it as a large brand that wants to se if you look atcredit card as the best FinTech product, mm-hmm mm-hmm that was ever invented.Yeah. It served three distinct purposes. It, it, it, it is used as a form ofpayment and as a form of payment, mm-hmm, , it is better than debit card andbetter than cash and debit cards.

Kalpesh: Money goes straightout of your. And your car is floating around in the ether where, you know, yourbank account is exposed, if you will. Mm-hmm so it's not very secure. It, itdoesn't have inbound fraud protection. Mm-hmm unlike credit card. So if you wereto buy a ticket from an airline and use your credit card or debit card, ratheryou know during COVID like five different airlines went.

Kalpesh: Yeah around the world.And if you bought a ticket through your debit card, good luck getting a refund.Yeah, right. If you use your credit card, you just say, Hey, you know, I'm notpaying this. I didn't get the ticket or I couldn't fly on this airline. Right.So the bank will find it on you, the second use.

Kalpesh: And then it, it allowsyou to build credit history, debit. Carlstone the second use case is probablymore powerful use case is your divorce. Mm-hmm when you attach a credit card toa. The propensity of spending goes up by up to 30%. So think of it as if youare going to Costco and use your Costco credit card, you're more likely to you.

Kalpesh: You're likely to spend30% more mm-hmm then you would use other cards. Mm-hmm mm-hmm same thing forapple, same thing for Amazon. So very large brands love credit card as aloyalty tool mm-hmm and consumers love their reward. Mm-hmm and the third legof this tool is. you can borrow. It's still the easiest way to borrow money.

Kalpesh: Mm-hmm for consumer,no questions asked mm-hmm you could get a $10,000 credit card and go to Hawaii.Nobody's gonna ask you why you're using this money for what you're using thismoney. Right. And banks can give instant credit to their customers. Mm-hmm withjust four or five questions, right? Name, date of birth, social security, fiveplus four.

Kalpesh: Right? And then yougive the. Income and assets. So, so that's sort of the trifecta of use cases,payments, rewards, and lending under one. And what we are doing is we aremodernizing the entire stack with digital and the mobile experience front.Yeah. In the middle, you have your APIs and SDK in the back end, you have acloud infrastructure.

Kalpesh: So that's the stackthat we've built. Yeah. And your question was around. Why would businesses needbusinesses? Are. That we target the FinTech companies, the brands, right? Sothose are the verticals that, Hey, if you have a very attractive audience,mm-hmm , if you think of it as, you know a luxury brand like Louisan, right?

Kalpesh: Yeah. Yeah. If youknow, you have one item cost, an average $3,000, I'm just making it up. Now, ifyou give a, a luxury premium credit card to go with that, mm-hmm right. Ifyou're shopping at Louisan, right? So you, you can, you can think of all thepossibilities that come with that. Mm-hmm , you know, you can buy a big,expensive piece of luggage and you can pay it off over 12 months mm-hmm or 18months, right?

Kalpesh: Mm-hmm you can userewards to fund your purchases at Louisa. You can use the card somewhere else,right. And you can. So there's there's brands like Costco, Amazon, apple,everybody has airlines have a credit card. Yeah. Hotels have a credit card,right? Yeah. So retailers have a credit card, right?

Kalpesh: Yeah. Yeah. So that'swhat we serve. So we, we, we allow you to launch cards faster than any otherbank. Mm-hmm we allow you. Scale them better because it's a digital experience.Mm-hmm it scales at a lower cost than your brick and mortar sort of a oldschool, old school. If you think about how do you used to give your credit cardat Macy's or bar Republic, right?

Kalpesh: Yeah. You go out atthe checkout cashier as a register and you have bunch of clothes in your bagand they're like, oh, you know, Julian do you wanna apply for Macy's card todayor your purchase? 15%. now, how do you intercept a customer in a digital realm?Right? Mm-hmm at the point of purchase. Yeah, so we, we come in, we, we offerthis digital, highly digital solution, which is deeply embedded.

Kalpesh: In your, in yourproduct staff. So that's what we  

Julian: do yeah. Is, is, soobviously you hit a few points that, that hit close to home because I can'ttell you how many times I've been asked in a department store if I wanted tosign up for a credit card. And that's when, you know, like you said, theyintercept, you know, the, the customer in that in that way, is it similarexperience if I'm shopping online?

Julian: When you know, I, Iget intercepted by this potential chance to like have a credit card under acertain brand. Is it at checkout? Where, where do you capture the customer? Thedigital experience?  

Kalpesh: Yeah. At the checkup,right? Yeah. So you could get, like, I think Southwest airlines has it, or someother airlines where you are buying a ticket and they will say, Hey, put it onyour Southwest car.

Kalpesh: Yeah. And get $200off. Right. Mm-hmm yeah. Yeah. So at the, at the, at the checkout you do it. Sowe would enable that kind of experience for our.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. It's theinteresting piece about loyalty. I obviously there is the huge componentbecause I always think about like with my credit card, I'm always looking forrewards and different benefits.

Julian: And I, and I guess Ididn't really see how it's influenced on loyalty is for that brand. Do you feellike, you know, having that opportunity to use that brand and. that credit cardthat's under the brand to purchase other things outside of it increasescustomers returning, you know, to that specific brand of se whether it's Vuttonwhich, you know, $3,000, average purchase seems like you're fairly familiarwith Vutton then, then you may then, then you may be telling.

Julian: But you know, in whatways, I guess have you seen like the increase in loyalty in the consumers withtheir, the brands that they like and the credit cards that.  

Kalpesh: so I know a lot ofpeople have Amazon credit card. What they do is they would use it every day andthey will accumulate points and then they would just use to buy stuff fromAmazon.

Kalpesh: Mm-hmm using thosepoints, right? Mm-hmm mm-hmm so how you earned reward and how you redeemrewards mm-hmm so if you have a certain loyalty to a brand, and if you're gonnaearn rewards or automatically on, on everyday daily purchases, and then you canredeem them. Same thing goes for airline. Right? You, you spend that, you, youuse that card all year long and you you spend a lot of money on this card andthen you're a hundred thousand miles.

Kalpesh: Yeah. And then you cansay, okay, me and my friend go to Hawaii. Right. And I click the button and Iredeem them. Right. Yeah. So very, very powerful experience.  

Julian: Yeah, it's, it's sofascinating. I feel like, you know, for at least my generation, it's, it's beeninteresting to see kind of the evolution of credit cards as something whereit's like, you know, giving you more access to more possibility, but alsobecoming maybe.

Julian: A tool to get under acertain amount of debt, you know, and kind of people are a little bit morecautious in, in, you know, accessing that and using that as a part of their,their purchasing experience. Do you have any rules for, for the averageconsumer on, on ways to, to manage their, their purchasing and credit cards?

Julian: Like you said, 30, ifthey, if they increase their purchasing by 30%, obviously, you know, there'ssome, there's a counterbalance to that. Yeah. Just curious if you had any kindof tips or rules. Credit cards and how to manage them so that you can bestutilize their, you know, points, benefits, and, and and their, their purchasingpower.

Kalpesh: Yeah. So we can powerdigital experiences whereby. You can set limits per day. Really? You can spendlimits per, per, per, per merchant. You can spend send limits per location, youknow, to this card. I, I mean only buy 10 cups of coffee this month withStarbucks, which is about $50. Right, right, right. So I will only spend $50 atStarbucks.

Kalpesh: Mm-hmm right thismonth. If I, if I go over $50 card shouldn't work. Yeah. Yeah. So you can setcontrols. On the card. Yeah. That is possible at the merchant level, at thecategory level that I'm only going to spend, you know, $800 on grocery thismonth. Sure. You know, I'm not going to. Go and buy that extra, you know, winebottle or, or cheese or something.

Kalpesh: Is that, is that partof the, so you can do that. You can also, you can also do credit scores, right?So we do pre credit score. And what goes into your credit score? So it givesyou visibility into, Hey, if I utilize the card in 90% or a hundred percent, myscore will go down. If I keep my utilization to 20 or 30%.

Kalpesh: Yeah. Yeah. My scorewill be. Yeah. Yeah. So giving that feedback to consumer is important.Yeah.  

Julian: Is that, is that doneall through the, the deserve platform or do you partner with merchants kind oflike as a white label service to add that in their, their experience,  

Kalpesh: we, we provide thisstandard out of the box solution.

Kalpesh: Yeah. Yeah. For you tocreate controls by merchant controls by category. Yeah. You know? Yeah.Budgeting tools, certain budgeting tools we give out of the. Yeah, no, thatthat's credit score. Current score visibility out of the box.  

Julian: Yeah. Well, tell me alittle bit more about the traction and you, you mentioned you're working withbanks and financial institutions and is the, is, is the current expansion intobrands and, and seeing where that goes or where, where is the current directionof the company going right now?

Kalpesh: Yeah, so we want tohave as many cards under accounts, under management, as many partnerships aspossible. Mm-hmm and the categories we have for partnering with banks, FinTechcompanies, brands, and, and crypto companies. Right. Mm-hmm and also we have anew card that we are launching for small businesses.

Kalpesh: Oh, wow. So those arethe sort of the target verticals. If you will. Mm-hmm . What we bring is theend-to-end experience. That is second to none. You know, we have number ofdifferent ways to underwrite customer mm-hmm underwrite using traditional metrics,such as a five score mm-hmm income assets.

Kalpesh: Mm-hmm . We also canconnect through PLA. To your bank account to see ins and outs of your bankaccount saying, okay, children is getting some regular deposit from someemployer. So he probably is employed, right. This is how much money makes.Right. We also have payroll direct connect through companies like pen, wheel,and others with yeah, we would we would bring this integrations where you canunderwrite more people.

Kalpesh: Sure. So we. Increasethe approval rate. Then we have the various ways to earn rewards and redeemrewards. Yeah. So one of our partner, you can redeem rewards in Bitcoin. So oneand a half percent in Bitcoin, right? Mm-hmm so whatever you spend, you can earnBitcoin, one other partner and one. So this is block five out of the partners.

Kalpesh: One where you own astock in a company, let's say you own 10 stocks, a Tesla. Whole foods, which isnow Amazon you know, Disney, Starbucks you know Marriott. And then if you shopat this merchant mm-hmm, you get 5, 10, 2 and a half percent different,different percentages yeah. In stock. Wow. So you can automatically get stockin this merchants.

Kalpesh: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So Ipay.

Kalpesh: I pay my Tesla insuranceand I have a Tesla stock and I get it gets

Julian: refunded right back.Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's I  

Kalpesh: didn't this it'spretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It's interest another, another partner of oursis true bill where you. You know, manage your subscription. Yeah. So let's sayyou were on a flight and you sign up for Google air for $10 for a flight oninternet.

Kalpesh: Right. And you forgotto cancel and then next month they charge you again, $10. Yeah. And again, $10.So I I've been scammed by eFax, you know? Yeah. eFax one time I sent a fax.Yeah. Using eFax and for like six months they kept charging me. Yeah. Yeah. Soif you put that subscription on the. It's only one time.

Kalpesh: Mm-hmm it. The cardwill not work again. Wow. Wow. That merchant, right? Yeah. Yeah. So interestinguse cases that we are powering. So lot of traction, we have 20 differentpartners that we work with. We are adding new partners every month. Yeah.You're launching new cards every month. Yeah. So yeah, that that's been the,the story.

Kalpesh: Yeah.  

Julian: That's incredible. I,I love the idea of, you know, purchasing into a business as well as, you know,getting it, you know, the stocks back into into that business. It's almost likeit's like loyalty on a different level because now you're, you're even moreincentivized to see the success of that company.

Julian: I think a lot of timeswe feel, and I'm not sure if, if this is gonna influence it, you know, withwhat you're doing, but it, it seems as though we detract on feedback, we, wedon't give as much feedback as we should on products that we use regularlybecause we feel that they kind of have the onus in serve in, in providingsomething that is, hopefully serves all of the purposes that we, that we wantedto.

Julian: But, you know, withyou know, consumer reports and different, you know, review. I think that's likea, a little bit of the pie in terms of helping the, the company. Or pushing thecompany to increase the, you know, EF efficacy of their product. But it seemsas though if, if you partner with the company and buy back the stocks, youhave, you even have more of an incentive to make sure that product is going tobe like continually successful and, and better and better.

Julian: Do you see that as aresult of, you know, loyalty programs like the one you have for Tesla say ifyou buy your Tesla insurance and you buy back into stock, is that gonna leadinto consumers having more of a say in, into certain companies improving their  

Kalpesh: products? Yeah, no, Ithink so. I, I think having that voting with your dollars yeah, yeah.

Kalpesh: Is very powerful,right? Yeah. So more and more people are making a statement. With their, withtheir wallet. Yeah. Yeah. So you can write a review and I, I have a theory thatpeople only write reviews when they have a bad experience. Yeah. They writereviews. Okay.  

Julian: Good experience,right? Yeah. Yeah. You, you typically have to be asked if, to, to write a goodit's a good review.

Julian: At least with mostcompanies that I talk with, but what are some of the, the risks that you'refacing right now with, within your company or, or within the market that you'reserving?  

Kalpesh: I think that risk. Iwould say is you know, the timing of things, right. Mm-hmm as opposed to thefive of the upper size of the opportunity.

Kalpesh: Yeah. Yes. There iseconomy that is going through probably going through recession right now.Mm-hmm so it's not unique to deserve mm-hmm it's everyone is facing that. Right,right, right. In some, in some form or, or shape, right. Mm-hmm consumers areactually using credit cards more mm-hmm because gas is costing you $5 gallon.

Kalpesh: Yeah, right. Inflationis nine, eight, 9%. Right. So we don't see demand decreasing for our product.Right. Mm-hmm , it's just that modernizing a age old industry, which is kind ofstuck in the Kodak era. Yeah. It takes time to, yeah. You know, or to be theInstagram, we are the Instagram of the product generation, you know?

Kalpesh: Yeah. So a lot ofbanks are invested heavily in the legacy infrastructure, like COBOL andmainframe, right? Yeah. To convince. Is takes time. Right, right. And sort ofit's, it's a inertia that you're fighting. Yeah. So it's not about, you know,something that is existential. It's just more of a. Patients and, and thenfighting the inertia.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. What'sthe, I, I know you touched on it earlier with you know, the partnerships thatyou're building, the different brands that you're adding on and, and justincreasing that I would say increasing your, your, your product over, you know,different companies, but what's the long-term vision for deserve is going, youknow, in involving web three, is it going into a different sector?

Julian: What's, what's yourlong term vision for.  

Kalpesh: when you look atmoney, right. Money used to be paper money. Mm-hmm in the 1960s, seventies,then it became plastic. Right, right, right. With credit cards. Now it's movingto smartphones. Mm-hmm , mm-hmm and more and more your digital wallet. Right?Right. And then money is becoming a piece, of course.

Kalpesh: So there's a 5,000year transformation of money. Using cash mm-hmm to moving to code mm-hmm fromcash to code. Yeah. And that's the vision for the company. We wanna power thetransformation of money from cash to code. Right. And you know, and duringCOVID it got accelerated where many, many merchants were not accepting cash.

Kalpesh: Yeah. A touch, lessdigital payment. So the more we move in that direction. The more, thelimitations of the legacy infrastructures are gonna be exposed. Yeah. And wewanna be the modern cutting edge infrastructure to transform money into a pieceof. Yeah, that's a long term  

Julian: vision. I love that.Yeah. I was gonna touch on the digital wallet.

Julian: It feels like, youknow, when, when you talk about giving accessibility to small businesses, thedigital wallet is gonna be that much more important, you know, in terms ofcarrying around a lot of plastic that, you know, it just kind of gets lost orshuffled around the dig, the digital wallet, having that apple wallet or Googlewallet or whatever you might.

Julian: It's just, I feel likeit just increases the opportunity for a lot of businesses to have a, have astake in the game that previously they might not have had in the past. Yeah.Yeah. Well, awesome. I always like to ask a bonus question for, for our foundersand our guests to kind of give me a little bit of research to do on the side.

Julian: But also to help ouraudience kind of dive into other, you know, resources that might influencethem, but what books or people have influenced you? The.

Kalpesh: I think I like to readbiographies mm-hmm so the, the, you know, I read biographies you know, WalterIsaacson wrote title, sorry. There was a drawn channel. Rock fair, RockefellerBenjamin frankly, and Steve jobs. Elon Musk biography. I read the quest for fantasticfuture. Yeah. Jeff Bezos biography, I read was everything store.

Kalpesh: Those are veryinspiring biographies. Mm-hmm then I read sort of self-help books as well.Right? Part of thinking clearly by all

Kalpesh: also's book, recentbook, which I read was what, what you do is who you. And then the last one Iread was a Codebreaker about the mRNA revolution, the vaccine revolution. Yeah,it was Walter rotate about Jennifer do now and the Nobel prize for vaccineinvention. So. Yeah. What, what do you well that all the books  

Julian: I like to read.

Julian: Yeah. What, what doyou kind of, what, what is your main, do you dive into a book knowing whatyou're gonna take away from it? Or do you kind of let the experience kind ofelicit some kind of, I guess, epiphany or, or thought that that helps, youknow, lead you to the next thing? I'm, I'm always curious on how peopleapproach reading.

Kalpesh: So I'm in nonfiction,right? Mm-hmm and biographies. And this is something that You know, you sort ofsee the success and, you know, you celebrate the success people, but all the,all the hard work, all the patients and perceivers that goes into buildingmm-hmm large companies or doing anything worthwhile.

Kalpesh: I just like to be thestories behind it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So

Julian: yeah, I was reading.It's very inspiring. Yeah. I was reading, I reading the, I think it was calledthe four. But it was talking about Facebook, Netflix, Amazon yeah.  

Kalpesh: Scott's  

Julian: Scott Gall's book,right? Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And so fascinating how, you know, theideas came about and the timing of the market.

Julian: I think timing, likeyou mentioned is, is huge, but yeah, those stories definitely inspire a lot of.To think for me, at least in a new direction, or kind of take me away from the,the present and help me kind of extrapolate some kind of strategy or thoughtthat helps me see kind of things holistically rather than getting stuck in a,in a box I would say.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.All right, Kal thank you so much for joining the show. I really appreciate allthe insight and the knowledge that you shared and and how you kind of think ofyou know, money and the way it is transforming. Tell us a little bit before wejump off here, where can we find you?

Julian: Where can we supportdeserve? Where can we just follow its journey throughout its its revolution in,in creating money from paper to completely digital? Where can we find you?  

Kalpesh: Yeah. deserve.com isour website. It's easy to remember. Yeah. cards add deserve cards on Twitterand Instagram. LinkedIn.

Kalpesh: So you can follow uson all these channels. Perfect. It's interesting. Now people don't talk aboutFacebook as much. yeah.  

Julian: yeah, yeah, yeah.Everything's moving  

Kalpesh: TikTok it's for me orInstagram, right? Yeah. I, Instagram is owned by Facebook, so yeah. But yeah,it's it's like it's a. You know, the demographic for Facebook is maybe in the Idon't know who uses last time I logged into Facebook.

Julian: I don't know. Yeah.Yeah. It's, it's, it's distinct now. It's like, it's like boomers andmillennials are, are moving to Instagram. And then one of the gen Z audiencesis on TikTok. And you kind of, kind of, if, if interesting social experimentfor you to do at home is just look into the comment section of both and you cankind of see, and, and you can kind of tell who.

Julian: What demographic is inthose different platforms is actually kind of fun on on a weeknight if you, ifyou catch some time. But Kalpesh, thank you so much for joining the show. Ireally appreciate it. And we'll, we'll blast these on, on all channels. Butoverall, man, thank you so much for joining.

Julian: I appreciate it. Thankyou.  

Kalpesh: Thank you!.  

Julian: Welcome.

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