Podcasts about Valon

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  • 176EPISODES
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Best podcasts about Valon

Latest podcast episodes about Valon

Accenture AI Leaders Podcast
AI Leaders Podcast #72: The AI Revolution in Advertising

Accenture AI Leaders Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 15, 2025 37:28


Explore how AI is reshaping the world of advertising in the latest episode of the AI Leaders Podcast, with Craig Vaughan, Managing Director, Data & AI Lead; Kevan Yalowitz, Global Industry Group Lead, Software & Platforms at Accenture and Ludovic de Valon, Director of Product Marketing at Amazon. From smarter ad campaigns and AI-powered content creation to leveling the playing field for small businesses, they dive into the game-changing opportunities AI brings to the industry. The conversation also tackles key challenges like data privacy and the importance of responsible governance.

Storie di Serie A
Storie di Serie A: Valon Behrami

Storie di Serie A

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 19, 2025 32:04


Ospite speciale e straordinario della puntata n.21 della nuova stagione รจ Valon Behrami. Oggi commentatore tecnico per DAZN, Valon ha giocato in Serie A con le maglie di Genoa, Verona, Lazio, Fiorentina, Napoli, Udinese e Brescia, vantando esperienze anche in Premier con West Ham e Watford e in Bundesliga con i colori dell'Amburgo.

Jari Sarasvuo podcast
#65 โ€“ Keskitytkรถ enemmรคn siihen, mitรค puhut, kuin miten puhut?

Jari Sarasvuo podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 5, 2025 43:20


Oletko huomannut, ettรค et useinkaan muista elรคmรคsi eri kohtaamisissa kรคytettyjรค tarkkoja sanoja ja ilmaisuja? Sen sijaan muistat kyllรค, millaisia tunteita kohtaamisissa koit.Viestinnรคn tapa muokkaa sen merkityksen. Sanat voivat olla oikeat, mutta jos esitystapa on vรครคrรค, viesti ei pรครคse perille.Tutustu ja osallistu Valon voitto -valmennukseen: https://trainershouse.fi/valonvoitto

Kolme kรครคnnekohtaa
81. Vappu Pimiรค - Valon tuoja

Kolme kรครคnnekohtaa

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 5, 2025 61:33


1. Mรค erosin 2008, ja yhtรคkkiรค mรค olin yksin. Ensimmรคistรค kertaa. 2. Hรคnessรค on sellaista valtiopรครคmieskarismaa 3. Mรค hautasin neljรค ystรคvรครคni, ennen kuin tรคytin 30 vuotta. * Tiedรคthรคn, ettรค tรคmรค kuuntelemasi jakso on podcastin alkuvaiheilta. Podmessa voit kuunnella kaikki Kolme kรครคnnekohtaa -podcastin aiemmat jaksot. Lisรคksi kรคynnissรค on paraikaa Kolme kรครคnnekohtaa uusin kausi, ja mikรค parasta โ€“ ilman mainoksia. Eli jos tykkรครคt kuulemastasi ja haluat lisรครค, sitรค lรถytyy yllin kyllin osoitteesta podme.com. Uusi throwback-jakso joka keskiviikko.

DAB | Der Audiobeweis
Folge #244 mit Valon Berisha

DAB | Der Audiobeweis

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 3, 2024 63:38


In der 244. Folge unseres Podcasts "DAB I Der Audiobeweis" sprechen Moderatorย Otto Rosenauer, LASK-Vereinsredakteurย Roland Streinz & Sky-Experte Alfred Tatar mit Valon Berisha!ย  Wir sprechen mit dem Offensivspieler u.a. รผber die bisherige Saison der Linzer, sein positives Mindset, die Einstellung zum FuรŸball und den Kampf um die Meistergruppe. Zudem gibt der 31-jรคhrige Mittelfeldspieler Einblicke in den Start seiner Profikarriere in Norwegen und das kosovarische Nationalteam. Von welchem Trainer hat er am meisten mitgenommen? Und wie geht es eigentlich Bruder Veton bei Molde FK?

3รจme mi-temps - Couleur3
Les grands couples d'athlรจtes (Ep.4 - Lara Gut & Valon Behrami)

3รจme mi-temps - Couleur3

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2024 5:26


Kristallinen Jumalatar podcast
54: Lokakuun Auringonpimennys ja Muutosvoima

Kristallinen Jumalatar podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 3, 2024 57:04


Lokakuu tuo mukanaan voimakkaita energioita ja muutoksia, jotka avaavat uusia mahdollisuuksia kasvuun ja eheytymiseen. Tรคmรคn kuun enkeliviestin pรครคteemat auttavat sinua ymmรคrtรคmรครคn, miten nรคmรค energiat vaikuttavat matkaasi, ja tukevat sinua pysymรครคn yhteydessรค korkeampiin maailmoihin. Tรคssรค videossa tulet saamaan: Syvempรครค ymmรคrrystรค lokakuun energioista ja siirtymistรค Viestejรค korkeammista valomaailmoista, jotka tuovat selkeyttรค elรคmรครคsi Valon kielen siunauksen Kosmiselta ร„iti Marialta, joka auttaa sinua vahvistamaan yhteyttรคsi valoon ja rakkauteen Oraakkelitulkinnan, joka ohjaa sinua lรถytรคmรครคn uusia suuntia ja askelia henkilรถkohtaiseen kasvuun Tรคmรค on tรคydellinen hetki pysรคhtyรค ja vastaanottaa enkelten tuki ja rakkaus. Tรคmรค video on luotu juuri sinulle, auttamaan sinua kohtaamaan kuukauden haasteet rohkeudella ja luottamuksella. Kuuntele jakso ja anna nรคiden siunausten valaista polkuasi kohti sisรคistรค rauhaa ja selkeyttรค. Tรคmรค hetki on sinun โ€“ ota se vastaan ja anna sen inspiroida sinua!

Ecommerce Odyssey Podcast
Valon Xhafa from Behamics on AI and eCommerce

Ecommerce Odyssey Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 29, 2024 54:41


Valon Xhafa from Behamics was an AI professional before it was all the rage! His company makes a range of tools which use AI to help sellers understand their performance and optimise eCommerce stores. In this interview Trevor and Valon talk about the many ways which AI can be used to grow eCommerce sales including SEO, content creation, merchandising and conversion rate optimisation. How to Grow to Your eCommerce Business is sponsored by VendLab, the multi-channel eCommerce experts.

beyond FORMAT
30 Jahre Gaming (feat. Kayleigh & Valon von World of Games)

beyond FORMAT

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 10, 2024 120:52


Im Herzen des Geektums: Andrej und Christof sprechen mit Kayleigh und Valon von World of Games รผber olympischen E-Sport, den aktuellen Medienkonsum, Tabletop-Adventures, Preorders und 30 Jahre Gamegeschichte! Inhalt: Daily Business Talk (09:35) News-Release-Radar (23:04) Was konsumiersch du? (34:06) Frage ohni Antwort oder doch mit: 30 Jahre Gaming (01:02:42) Folge Word of Games auf Instagram @wog_ch und bestelle alles, was dein Geek-Herz begehrt auf ihrer Website! Zum 30-jรคhrigen Jubilรคum von WoG.ch verlosen wir ein Set von WoG-Glรคsern und ein T-Shirt von beyond FORMAT! Einfach beiden Instagram-Seiten folgen und unten kommentieren, welches Game ihr als letztes gespielt habt, und schon seid ihr bei der Verlosung dabei! Mรถge die Macht mit euch sein! BESTELLE JETZT DEIN SHIRT! SLIDE IN UNSERE DM AUF INSTAGRAM! Unterstรผtze uns mit einem Bier: www.buymeacoffee.com/beyond.format ย  Die beyond MODERN Classics-Liste: https://tinyurl.com/beyondmodernclassics

The eCommerce Podcast
AI's Revolutionary Impact on the eCommerce World

The eCommerce Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 25, 2024 49:00 Transcription Available


Join host Matt Edmundson in this insightful episode of the eCommerce Podcast as he sits down with returning guest Valon Xhafa from Bahamics to dive deep into the disruptive power of AI in the world of eCommerce.Key Takeaways:AI's Role in Automating eCommerce Tasks: Valon Xhafa explains how AI is revolutionising the eCommerce industry by automating repetitive tasks, thereby allowing businesses to focus more on strategic and creative aspects. This includes optimiswing organic traffic, reducing cart abandonment, and enhancing SEO efforts.The Importance of Relevance in SEO: A significant insight shared by Valon is the critical role of relevance in SEO. He highlights that measuring and maintaining content relevance is crucial for ranking higher on search engines. This goes beyond traditional metrics like domain authority, emphasising the need for accurate, contextually relevant content to achieve better SEO results.Future Trends in AI for eCommerce: Valon predicts that the next phase of AI development will focus on improving language models to enhance accuracy and cost-efficiency. As AI continues to evolve, businesses will see more advanced, faster, and cost-effective AI solutions that will drive innovation and efficiency in the eCommerce space.This weeks insights are vital for anyone trying to keep up with the changing world of eCommerce. Make sure to listen every week so you can stay ahead of the eCommerce game.

Ecommerce Coffee Break with Claus Lauter
How AI Helps Brands Survive in Ecommerce โ€” Valon Xhafa | Why AI-driven Brands Succeed More than Traditional Ones, Why Knowing Customer Behavior is Crucial, How Behavioral Science Impacts E-commerce and Shopping Habits (#318)

Ecommerce Coffee Break with Claus Lauter

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 1, 2024 44:04 Transcription Available


In this podcast episode, we discuss why AI is the key for brands to survive in the future of eCommerce. Our featured guest on the show is Valon Xhafa is the Founder of behamics.comTopics discussed in this episode:ย Why AI is becoming critical for brands to survive in the increasingly competitive e-commerce landscapeHow the pandemic changed the e-commerce industry, making traditional growth strategies less effectiveWhat behavioral science means in the context of e-commerce and how it impacts user decisionsWhy understanding external factors like weather, inflation, and competitor data is crucial for predicting user behaviorHow the paradox of choice creates friction in the user experience and impacts conversion ratesWhat role web performance plays in user experience and its impact on revenue and ad costsLinks & ResourcesWebsite: https://behamics.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valon-xhafa-b8ab856b/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/behamics Get access to more free resources by visiting the podcast episode page att.ly/FfJ-JSubscribe & Listen Everywhere:Listen On: โ€‹ecommercecoffeebreak.com | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | PoduramaHow did you like this episode? Send us a Text Message.Join "Founder's Sidekick" today - With โ€œFounder's Sidekick,โ€ you'll receive personalized advice and feedback to transition from 9-5 jobs or transform traditional businesses into flexible online ventures. A private advisory service designed for busy people to address burning business questions when starting and growing an online business. Visit https://ecommercecoffeebreak.com/start to learn more.Sign up for our free newsletter and become a smarter Shopify merchant. We scour and curate content from 50+ news sources, saving you hours of research and helping you stay on top of your ecommerce game with the latest news, insights, and trends.Ideal for online sellers, merchants, marketers, and DTC brands on Shopify who want to stay informed but are short on time. Join free. Every Thursday in your inbox. 100% free. Sign up at https://newsletter.ecommercecoffeebreak.com

Kristallinen Jumalatar podcast
53: Valon ja Pimeyden Tasapaino

Kristallinen Jumalatar podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2024 17:01


Valotyรถntekijรคnรค toimiminen ei tarkoita pimeyden kieltรคmistรค. Tรคssรค videossa ja podcast-jaksossa kรคsittelemme, mitรค valo ja pimeys todella tarkoittavat, ja kuinka valotyรถntekijรค voi tyรถskennellรค molempien energioiden kanssa. Sukellamme syvรคlle valon ja pimeyden merkitykseen ja tutkimme, kuinka voimme muuntaa raskaat energiat korkeammiksi valon taajuuksiksi. Tรคmรค on matka kohti suurempaa tietoisuutta ja henkistรค kasvua. Liity Lanseeraa valotyoyrityksesi koulutukseen ILMAISEKSI:ย  http://www.elamankeha.com/valotyo ย 

valon pimeyden
Puheenaihe
Maailmankaikkeuden rakenne: Alkurรคjรคhdys, pimeรค aine ja neutronitรคhdet (Heikki Oja) | Puheenaihe 504

Puheenaihe

Play Episode Listen Later May 9, 2024 149:07


MUSAMUSA
Valon varjossa โ€“ Juska Salmisen tarina

MUSAMUSA

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 29, 2024 68:49


Jakso 181. HIM-yhtyeen kosketinsoittajana(kin) tunnettu Juska Salminen julkaisee keskiviikkona 24.4. kirjan Valon varjossa - miten minusta tuli HIMin kosketinsoittaja ja mitรค tapahtui sitten (Docendo). Miten kovasta HIM-fanista tuli lyhyessรค ajassa yhtyeen kosketinsoittaja? Miltรค oma idoli nรคytti lรคhietรคisyydeltรค? Miksi nyt julkaista tรคmรค teos? Kysymyksenasettelijoina MUSAMUSAn Rosanna ja Mandรฉloz.

Two and a Mic
The worlds of TV shows with Amber from The Road to Tar Valon

Two and a Mic

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 26, 2024 59:14


Amber has fast become the go to person for all things new and fantastical on TV. She has successfully negotiated 3 Body Problem, Fallout, WoT of course, and also Shogun. She has also spoken a lot about The Expanse, and I am sure there are some others I can't think of off the top of my head.What is extremely impressive remains the dedication, professionalism and ever-increasing regularity with which Amber produces top quality, critical content. In addition to this, she has made the jump to regularly recording video content with her guests which is an undertaking I am still not technically willing to consider. What I mean with all this, is that Amber is a lot braver than I am.Here we discuss some of the shows mentioned above, the art of escapism, and how online trolling really doesn't make any sense.Thank you Amber for your time as always!Enjoy!

Fantasy for the Ages
The Three-Body Problem RAPID REVIEW, w/ Amber of The Road to Tar Valon

Fantasy for the Ages

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 25, 2024 42:30


In advance of the upcoming series adaptation on Netflix, Jim recently read this book, and in spouting off about it on Twitter he connected with today's guest, Amber, one of the hosts of The Road to Tar Valon podcast. Amber joins Jim here for a full-spoil breakdown and discussion of this terrific science fiction novel. Full spoiler episode will try to stay contain to discussion of just this first book in the series. #SFF #threebody #booktuber #booktubers #threebodyproblem #netflix #SciFi #ScienceFiction Find more of Amber's content here: https://www.youtube.com/@roadtotarvalon We hope you'll Like and Subscribe! Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/jMWyVJ6qKk Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FantasyForTheAges Check out our merch: https://www.newcreationsbyjen.com/collections/fantasyfortheages Rate & review us at Apple Podcast or wherever you download content. Email us: FantasyForTheAges@gmail.com. Find us on social media: Mastodon: @FantasyForTheAges@nerdculture.de Twitter: https://twitter.com/Fantasy4theAges Instagram: fantasy_for_the_ages Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FantasyForTheAges

BIG PROPAGANDA WRESTLING PODCAST
SHOT CHAMPS WRESTLING SHOW - Feat PRO WRESTLING REFEREE MR. VALON BROWN JR

BIG PROPAGANDA WRESTLING PODCAST

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 20, 2024 51:12


THE CREW SITS DOWN WITH PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING REFEREE MR VALON BROWN JR - HE SHARES HOW HE GOT HIS START WORKING AT ROW WITH BOOKER T AND MUCH MORE

Startup Insider
Predium erhรคlt Millionenfinanzierung fรผr Dekarbonisierung von Immobilien (PropTech โ€ข ESG โ€ข UVC Partners)

Startup Insider

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 17, 2023 23:47


In der Nachmittagsfolge begrรผรŸen wir heute Jens Thumm, CEO und Co-Founder von Predium Technology, und sprechen mit ihm รผber die erfolgreich abgeschlossene Seed-Finanzierungsrunde in Hรถhe von 4,5 Millionen Euro.Predium hat eine intelligente Softwareplattform fรผr die Dekarbonisierung von Immobilien entwickelt. Das Startup ermรถglicht einen einfachen und schnellen รœberblick รผber die ESG-Performance von Gebรคuden, Sanierungsfahrplรคne zur CO2-Reduktion und ein automatisiertes Reporting. Das PropTech wurde im Jahr 2021 von Jens Thumm, Mohamed Ali Razouane und Maximilian Kรถrner in Mรผnchen gegrรผndet. Unternehmen wie die Deutsche Investment Gruppe, die B&L Gruppe, Tattersall Lorenz, Valon und Pamera Real Estate Partners vertrauen auf die holistische Lรถsung fรผr nachhaltiges und profitables Immobilienmanagement. Da die EU mit der Offenlegungsverordnung Bestandshaltende dazu verpflichtet, Informationen รผber ihre ESG-Praktiken und -Risiken offenzulegen, steigt der Bedarf von Immobilienbesitzenden, MaรŸnahmen zur Reduzierung ihres CO2-FuรŸabdrucks zu ergreifen.In einer Seed-Runde hat Predium nun 4,5 Millionen Euro unter der Fรผhrung von UVC Partners eingesammelt. Zu den weiteren Kapitalgebern zรคhlen bestehende Investoren wie B2venture und neue Investoren wie Mutschler Ventures. AuรŸerdem haben sich Business Angels wie Joachim Drees, Alexander Schwรถrer, Heike Gรผndling und Maximilian Viessmann an der Runde beteiligt. Das frische Kapital soll dazu verwendet werden, das PropTech zur fรผhrenden europรคischen ESG-Management-Plattform fรผr die Dekarbonisierung von Immobilien auszubauen und den Markt weiter zu erschlieรŸen.

The Wheel Weaves Podcast
The Wheel of Time on Prime - Season 1, Episode 6: The Flame of Tar Valon ~EPISODE BREAKDOWN~

The Wheel Weaves Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 21, 2023 77:39


In this episode, Dani and Brett break down Season 1, Episode 6: The Flame of Tar Valon.NOTE: For Ad-Free Episodes, 100+hrs of Bonus Content and More - Visit our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/thewheelweavespodcastFind us on our Instagram, Twitter, YouTube & Website, and join the conversation on Discord!We would like to acknowledge and thank our Executive Producers Brandy and Aaron Kirkwood, Sean McGuire, Janes, Albert Lorenzo, LightBlindedFool, Green Man, Deyvis Ferreira, Margaret, Big C, Bennett Williamson, Dylan C, Hannah Green, Jordan Gower, Jamie Milligan, and Geof Searles!The Wheel Weaves is hosted and edited by Dani and Brett, produced by Dani and Brett with Passionsocks, Cody Fouts, Benjamin, Michelle O'Brien, Jamie Young, Magen Smiley, Jared Berg, Rikky Morrisette, Lance Barden, Charlie Haz, Adam, Martothir, Michelle Forbes, MKM, Antoine Benoit, Lawrence Bradley and Erik Reed. With music by Audionautix.Check out our partner - the Spoiler-Free Wiki - Spliki.com - Your main first time reader, Spoiler-Free WoT information source!Don't forget to leave us that 5 star review if you enjoy the show for a chance to win exclusive merchandise!Check out https://www.thewheelweavespodcast.com for everything The Wheel Weaves!This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5482260/advertisement

The Wheel Weaves Podcast
The Wheel of Time on Prime - Season 1, Episode 6: The Flame of Tar Valon ~POST WATCH REACTIONS~

The Wheel Weaves Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 20, 2023 29:34


In this episode, Dani and Brett share their reactions immediately after watching Season 1, Episode 6: The Flame of Tar Valon. Find the Video Episode on YouTube.NOTE: For Ad-Free Episodes, 100+hrs of Bonus Content and More - Visit our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/thewheelweavespodcastFind us on our Instagram, Twitter, YouTube & Website, and join the conversation on Discord!We would like to acknowledge and thank our Executive Producers Brandy and Aaron Kirkwood, Sean McGuire, Janes, Albert Lorenzo, LightBlindedFool, Green Man, Deyvis Ferreira, Margaret, Big C, Bennett Williamson, Dylan C, Hannah Green, Jordan Gower, Jamie Milligan, and Geof Searles!The Wheel Weaves is hosted and edited by Dani and Brett, produced by Dani and Brett with Passionsocks, Cody Fouts, Benjamin, Michelle O'Brien, Jamie Young, Magen Smiley, Jared Berg, Rikky Morrisette, Lance Barden, Charlie Haz, Adam, Martothir, Michelle Forbes, MKM, Antoine Benoit, Lawrence Bradley and Erik Reed. With music by Audionautix.Check out our partner - the Spoiler-Free Wiki - Spliki.com - Your main first time reader, Spoiler-Free WoT information source!Don't forget to leave us that 5 star review if you enjoy the show for a chance to win exclusive merchandise!Check out https://www.thewheelweavespodcast.com for everything The Wheel Weaves!This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5482260/advertisement

Mindalia.com-Salud,Espiritualidad,Conocimiento
รvalon: apertura de Portales y Planos Sutiles. Entrevista a Francisko Javier

Mindalia.com-Salud,Espiritualidad,Conocimiento

Play Episode Listen Later May 23, 2023 43:02


En Ivoox puedes encontrar sรณlo algunos de los audios de Mindalia. Para escuchar las 4 grabaciones diarias que publicamos entra en https://www.mindaliatelevision.com. Si deseas ver el vรญdeo perteneciente a este audio, pincha aquรญ: https://youtu.be/yPhiIT4XqZI Los Planos Sutiles son la base de la realidad cotidiana tridimensional, por lo que hay que saber emplearlos y usarlos para el mayor beneficio personal y social, siendo, a la vez, los grandes desconocidosโ€ฆ Se pueden abrir portales para traer a este plano toda la informaciรณn poderosa y de gran beneficio. El reino de รvalon es el Plano Sutil por excelencia. Francisko Javier 30 aรฑos trabajando con personas. Canalizador de informaciรณn y experto en aceleraciรณn de cambio vital, procesos humanos y reconexiรณn con el Ser en La Aceleradora, el lugar donde se toman definitivamente las riendas del control de la propia vida. https://franciskojavier.com/ https://www.instagram.com/franciskoja... https://www.facebook.com/franciskojav... Infรณrmate de todo el programa en: http://television.mindalia.com/catego... **CON PREGUNTAS AL FINAL DE LA CONFERENCIA PARA RESOLVER TUS DUDAS *** Si te parece interesante.... ยกCOMPรRTELO!! :-) DURACIร“N: 45m Aproximadamente ------------INFORMACIร“N SOBRE MINDALIA----------DPM Mindalia.com es una ONG internacional sin รกnimo de lucro. Nuestra misiรณn es la difusiรณn universal de contenidos para la mejora de la consciencia espiritual, mental y fรญsica. -Apรณyanos con tu donaciรณn en este enlace: https://streamelements.com/mindaliapl... -Colabora con el mundo suscribiรฉndote a este canal, dejรกndonos un comentario de energรญa positiva en nuestros vรญdeos y compartiรฉndolos. De esta forma, este conocimiento llegarรก a mucha mรกs gente. - Sitio web: https://www.mindalia.com - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindalia.ayuda/ - Twitter: http://twitter.com/mindaliacom - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mindalia_com/ - Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/mindaliacom - Vaughn: https://vaughn.live/mindalia - Odysee: https://odysee.com/@Mindalia.com *Mindalia.com no se hace responsable de las opiniones vertidas en este vรญdeo, ni necesariamente participa de ellas. *Mindalia.com no se responsabiliza de la fiabilidad de las informaciones de este vรญdeo, cualquiera sea su origen. *Este vรญdeo es exclusivamente informativo.

Wharton FinTech Podcast
Angela Strange, General Partner at a16z - On why every company is a fintech company

Wharton FinTech Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 4, 2023 32:01


Nihar Bobba hosts Angela Strange, General Partner at a16z. She focuses on Financial Services including fintech infrastructure, insurance, real estate, and increasing financial inclusivity. In the Fintech world, Angela is well known for coining the idea that "Every Company Will Be a Fintech Company"โ€” and idea driven by the influx of new, transformative financial infrastructure tools that enable non-fintech companies to derive a significant portion of their revenue through financial products. Today, Angela serves on the boards of Addi, Casai, Jeeves, Moov, SeedFi, SynapseFi, Tally, and Valon. Prior to joining a16z, Angela was most recently a product manager at Google where she launched and grew Chrome for Android and iOS. And she started her career as a consultant at Mercer. In this episode you will hear about: - Angela's time at Google, and what operating principles she uses in her investing role - Why every company is a fintech company - The state of fintech today, and so much more

Sweet Child Of Time: 1899, Dark, and Wheel Of Time Recaps
Wheel of Time REWATCH The Flame Of Tar Valon S1E6

Sweet Child Of Time: 1899, Dark, and Wheel Of Time Recaps

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 21, 2023 76:53


We rewatch episode six and read more reviews, and discuss the Aes Sedai, The Amrylin Seat, and potential darkfriends. Todays song is "Whispers Of Silent Gods" by Dronegazer, available on Bandcamp! https://dronegazer.bandcamp.com We are proudly hosted by Marsh Land Media! https://mlmpod.com is where you can check out all the podcasts, and it helps support the show. You can join the discord at https://discord.gg/aRdKmv9Ybc James McCollum records his music under the name Marsh Land Monster; he runs Marsh Land Media, and hosts podcasts such as Mostly Speakin' Sentai, Formulaic, and The Height Of Horror, and he also co-hosts the Wheel Of Time recaps of Sweet Child Of Time. Steve Barnes is guitarist for stoner metal band Introvoid, and also plays guitar for the cover band Rebecca Crow. All of Steve's stuff can be found at https://linktr.ee/introvoid

The eCommerce Podcast
How AI and Consumer Behavior Can Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment

The eCommerce Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 26, 2023 53:20 Transcription Available


What if you could reduce shopping cart abandonment and increase sales? Learn the secrets of AI and consumer behavior to boost your online sales in this new episode with our guest Valon Xhafa on How AI and Consumer Behavior Can Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment! ABOUT VALONValon previously worked as an AI scientist at Google and at other research institutes, developing sophisticated AI techniques and algorithms. Valon is always looking for innovative methods to use artificial intelligence to improve the online shopping experience at Behamics.Here's a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:Shopping cart abandonment is when a consumer visits your shop, adds products to the cart but leaves without purchasing the products. This is a major concern for eCommerce business owners because statistically 70% of consumers who added something to the cart, abandon it. There are several external and internal factors to cart abandonments. At Behamics, Valon and his team mainly focus on internal factors because these are factors that one can actually impact and improve to prevent cart abandonments. Internal factors comprise of Behavioral & Technical issues.AI not only predicts whether the consumer will abandon the cart but can explain why they choose to abandon the cart. If a consumer leaves the website without making a purchase, it will cost the business more money to try and bring them back through emails etc. It is far more cost-effective to interact with the consumer while they are on the site and to be able to intervene and prevent things before they happen. For complete show notes, transcript and links to our guest, check out our website: www.ecommerce-podcast.com.

Action and Ambition
Ryan Bloomer is Shaping The World of Fintech, Work, and Health By Supporting Mission-Driven Entrepreneurs

Action and Ambition

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 9, 2022 31:50


Welcome to another episode of The Action and Ambition Podcast! Joining us today is Ryan Bloomer, the Founder and Managing Partner of K50 Ventures, the most trusted first-check investor for mission-driven founders building a better future for the 99%. They invest up to $2M in pre-seed and seed-stage companies in the US and LATAM that focus on improving access, affordability, and well-being across the categories of Health, Finance, and Work & Learning. Since 2016, they have invested in 170+ companies, including Groww, Mammoth Biosciences, Self, Tul, Frubana, Kueski, Fintual, Valon, Real, Osana Salud, June Homes, among others. In addition to K50, Ryan is also a founding partner and advisor of Kairos HQ, a venture studio that co-founded Cera, Rhino, Bilt, Alloy, and Little Spoon. Tune in to learn more!

Ecommerce Odyssey Podcast
Reducing Cart abandonment with Valon Xhafa from Behamics

Ecommerce Odyssey Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2022 42:49


Cart abandonment is a big problem with up to 70% of carts abandoned before a sale is completed. With traffic becoming more expensive, this is a growing issue for retailers. In this podcast, we talk to Valon Xhafa from Behamics about the major causes of abandonment and how to fix them. Common causes of cart abandonment There are two main causes of abandonment 1. Technical. The website does not function properly, e.g. payment failure, images do not load. This accounts for 30-40% of abandonment 2. Behavioural. The useability of the site impeeds the purchasing process For example, sites can cause users to make too many decisions and overwhelm the user. Common misconceptions about cart abandonment Users want to buy everything in their cart Adding to a cart is not necessarily an indication that the shopper is looking to buy. Many sellers use it as a wish list. Upselling is always good Too much upselling can suffocate users, leading to higher rates of abandonment. The merchant needs to know when to upsell and when to close the user. More options are not always better Having too many options (e.g. payment, product options) forces users to make decisions, suffocating the user. Fewer options mean faster decisions and potentially higher conversion rates. Fixing cart issues Monitor your site for errors Using a tool like Google Analytics, monitor the performance of your site and identify the points at which your site fails. Make it simple, stupid! Simplify the purchase process as much as possible. Valon's Behamicsolution provides a solution for predicting the options which will most appeal to each user Focus on site speed You only have a brief window to make an impression on your user. Benchmark and work to improve your site speed. For example, faster images are one of the biggest reasons why buyers leave a site without buying. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ecommerce-odyssey-podcast/message

The EcomXFactor Podcast: Ecommerce, Funnels & CRO
Using AI and behavioral nudges to increase profits | Valon Xhafa & Yaron Been

The EcomXFactor Podcast: Ecommerce, Funnels & CRO

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 23, 2022 31:57


Our guest today is Valon Xhafa.Valon is the Founder of Behamics.ย  In the past, Valon worked at Google as an AI scientist and in other research centers developing advanced AI approaches and algorithms.ย  At Behamics, Valon is constantly working on finding new ways in applying AI to take the online shopping experience to the next level.Topics Covered: -Cart Abandonment Prevention Vs. Recovery -Ways to reduce product returns by analyzing and influencing shopping behavior -Providing coupons is easy, but not efficient and much moreโ€ฆ ย  -For more info: https://behamics.com/ **Check out the EcomXFactor Youtube Channel:https://tinyurl.com/EcomXFactor-YT Check out the EcomXFactor Facebook group:https://www.facebook.com/groups/EcomXFactor * If you enjoy the podcast, would you please considerย leaving a shortย reviewย on Apple Podcasts/iTunes?It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference

Capital Musings
S03.36 Blue Finance Solutions to Boost Ocean-Based Investments and Fight Climate Change

Capital Musings

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 4, 2022 42:03


Our host, Edoardo Tancioni, conducts an interview with Mr Anouj Mehta, Head of the ASEAN Catalytic Green Facility and ADB Country Director in Thailand, and Mr Ghislain de Valon, Senior Infrastructure Specialist for Innovation and Green Finance, from the Asian Development Bank. They discuss ways to increase investments in ocean-based economies that are environmentally sustainable. The implementation of "blue finance" strategies is one way to increase investments in the fight against climate change and the creation of a sustainable economy based on the ocean. Websites: https://www.un.org/en/conferences/ocean2022 Hashtags: #CapitalMusings | #SaveOurOcean Leave a ReviewThanks for listening! If you found the episode useful, please spread the word about this new show on Twitter mentioningย https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Funcdf.us1.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D565a555b66f6c4de99f3bd48a%26id%3D41770e0ed0%26e%3D017f46cadf&data=04%7C01%7Cfernando.zarauz%40uncdf.org%7C436c8e936a144a6af1b808d9faba243a%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C0%7C637816500258542558%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=rU%2F%2F8%2Fvjq1OKMe%2Ff%2Fuyi38U%2FH0xYpK3AlfiWV6gyvYc%3D&reserved=0 (#CapitalMusings), or leave us a review on iTunes.ย  Reviews are hugely important because they help new people discover ourย podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here's how:ย 

Swords & Satire
Episode 148 - Satire TV, The Wheel of Time (S1, E6): The Flame of Tar Valon

Swords & Satire

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 2, 2022 58:46


This week we cover episode six of The Wheel of Time, about healing and reconciliation, family strife (which we can all relate to), and being punished in public by your domi mommy. But it seems like Moiraine (the sub) and Suaine (the dom) are super into that kind of thing and it was probably just foreplay to them, so that makes it okay. But in the end we always love seeing healthy relationships, even if they are forced apart by an epic level evil that threatens to consume the world in darkness. It's a tale as old as time.

The Live eCommerce Podcast
Adding a Human Touch to eCommerce Using AI with Valon Xhafa

The Live eCommerce Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 22, 2022 42:14


Take part in our special giveaway for the chance to win a professional microphone at https://forms.gle/gy5iCAPVvzhXUBfg7Special guest Valon Xhafa shares how AI and behavioral science can reduce eCommerce cart abandonments and product returns. Valon is the founder of Behamics. In the past, Valon worked at Google as an AI scientist and in other research centers developing advanced AI approaches and algorithms. At Behamics, Valon is constantly working on finding new ways to apply AI to take the online shopping experience to the next level.Learn how to optimize the shopping experience in real time to increase satisfaction. Discover ways to add a human touch to your customer service and sales. Get tips on helping shoppers make decisions based on behaviorial science. Receive insight on variables that impact purchase choices, like price and having too many options. Hear surprising facts, like how coupons impact return rates. Find out Valon's thoughts on the future of online shopping.Ready to get started livestreaming? We have a free PDF checklist that you can download here: https://try.estreamly.com/successchecklist/Get marketing best practices here: https://try.estreamly.com/marketingbestpractices/

Microsoft Security Insights
101: Security Community with Ryan Heffernan and Valon Kolica

Microsoft Security Insights

Play Episode Listen Later May 16, 2022 64:15


Show Links:ย  Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/microsoftsecurityinsights Discord: https://discord.gg/thCAR7RMUe Must Learn KQL - MSI Podcast Coffee Mug All profits go to charity https://must-learn-kql.creator-spring.com/listing/microsoft-security-insights-po

The Quiet Light Podcast
Zero % Churn For This AI-Centric Cart Abandonment SaaS

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 10, 2022 29:24


Valon Xhafa is the Founder of Behamics, a SaaS company that combines behavioral science and artificial intelligence to reduce cart abandonment. Valon has more than six years of experience with AI/machine learning software and previously worked for Google building data-driven applications. He earned his master's degree in computer science from the Technical University of Munich.ย  In this episodeโ€ฆ How can you optimize your user experience to generate more revenue? What would reducing your cart abandonment rate mean for your sales and brand success? Valon Xhafa founded a software that combines AI and behavioral science to decrease cart abandonment issues, optimize the consumer experience, and increase conversion rates by up to 15%. According to Valon, it's important to build a campaign that reduces the friction between the consumer and your product. He designed his software to help you create campaigns that improve consumer engagement, then track their success through split testing โ€” and he's achieved a zero percent churn rate in the process.ย ย  In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley sits down with Valon Xhafa, Founder of Behamics, to discuss his tried-and-true software for decreasing cart abandonment. Valon talks about the key factors of cart abandonment, what better communication with consumers can do for your brand, and actionable steps to forge stronger partnerships โ€” and achieve a lower churn rate.ย 

Sweet Child Of Time: 1899, Dark, and Wheel Of Time Recaps
Episode 14 with Annie Jean Linn: The Flame Of Tar Valon pt 2

Sweet Child Of Time: 1899, Dark, and Wheel Of Time Recaps

Play Episode Listen Later May 5, 2022 69:36


Singer Musician Annie Jean Linn joins us to wrap up Wheel Of Time episode 6, The Flame Of Tar Valon. We talk music of course, Annie is both a solo musician and singer for Sadurday; we listen to Annie's "High Road" which synchs up well with a certain exile scene, and talk about SubtowerMT of Montana, a community that Steve wants to run away to join, and play Killizabeth's fantastic "An Ode To Those In Need".ย  These are all MUST CLICK LINKS, High Quality Stuff! Subtower: www.subtowermt.comย  Annie Jean Linn Solo work: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5ifYkgLL7sIDiP8rvGLz6Q?si=7_f-8A6XSTKBCHS3GKZknQ Sadurday band link https://open.spotify.com/artist/3BLMrDGmurtnZeFCdX5lSp?si=IxW50douQIO9rJNH2gfWuw Intro music and hosted by Introvoid www.linktr.ee/introvoid Also hosted by Marsh Land Monster www.mlmpod.com

Sweet Child Of Time: 1899, Dark, and Wheel Of Time Recaps
Episode 13: The Flame Of Tar Valon pt 1

Sweet Child Of Time: 1899, Dark, and Wheel Of Time Recaps

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 29, 2022 75:16


Episode 13: We discuss The Flame Of Tar Valon pt 1, listen to the black metal of Asagrimmr, the pyscho punk of Beer Pocket from Subtower, and we talk snow, skate rinks, Jack White, and Iron Maiden.

Road to Tar Valon: A Wheel of Time Podcast
E86 Road to Tar Valon IN PERSON!!! Full Spoilers

Road to Tar Valon: A Wheel of Time Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 27, 2022 87:22


Eighty six episodes later and we are actually recording in the same room, the same time zone, breathing the same air! Don't mind our excitement. All this happy energy tumbled out in a full spoiler conversation ranging from our love of the creepy crawlies that live in the Blight to our desire for Talmanes to be played by dreamy Wes Chatham, and discussing the parallels between Egwene and Rand. Next week, back to the 101s with the nation of Tear and our regular spoiler free front half and full spoilers in the second half. Thank you, thank you for joining us! Our new shop with Wheel of Time merch can be found here: https://cozy-contorta-creations.myshopify.com/ There are also links and merch for the other projects we are currently developing. Go look it over and let us know what you think. Don't forget we post bi-weekly content on youtube as well. Road to Tar Valon listener support https://anchor.fm/roadtotarvalon/support Our website: https://roadtotarvalon.weebly.com/ Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/roadtotarvalon?fan_landing=true --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/roadtotarvalon/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/roadtotarvalon/support

Road to Tar Valon: A Wheel of Time Podcast
E85 Road to Tar Valon: Uncharted

Road to Tar Valon: A Wheel of Time Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 20, 2022 98:05


Uncharted, but totally in sync. If you ever wanted a full peek into where our imaginations take us, this is the episode for you. We thought we would end up being all over the map with this one and instead it became a feast of ideas on cold open ideas for season two of the show. We still don't know why Amazon hasn't hired us yetโ€ฆ Thank you, thank you for joining us! Our new shop with Wheel of Time merch can be found here: https://cozy-contorta-creations.myshopify.com/ There are also links and merch for the other projects we are currently developing. Go look it over and let us know what you think. Don't forget we post bi-weekly content on youtube as well. Road to Tar Valon listener support https://anchor.fm/roadtotarvalon/support Our website: https://roadtotarvalon.weebly.com/ Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/roadtotarvalon?fan_landing=true --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/roadtotarvalon/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/roadtotarvalon/support

How We Solve
How to Outsmart Cart Abandonment with Valon Xhafa

How We Solve

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 3, 2022 23:19


This episode features Valon Xhafa the Founder of Behamics. Valon previously worked as an AI scientist at Google and at other research institutes, developing advanced AI approaches and algorithms. At Behamics, Valon is constantly working on finding new ways in applying AI to take the online shopping experience to the next level.Valon Recommends these Resources:Behamics Official Websiteย Behamics Blog

The Book Report
S4E5: WoT The Flame of Tar Valon

The Book Report

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 26, 2022 48:19


Today we discuss lesbian pocket universes, intricate stonework forest wall THAT DONT EXIST IN THE TV UNIVERSE, and beautiful scenes in the 6th episode of Amazon's Wheel of Time adaptation. The Flame of Tar Valon

Non-Productive.com
Wheel of Time – Episode 6: THE FLAME OF TAR VALON Review!

Non-Productive.com

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 16, 2021 63:45


SPIEL OF TIME!! We discuss fantasy literacy frameworks, the language of unspoken romance, and Amazon Prime's THE WHEEL OF TIME Episode 6 THE FLAME OF [...]

Behind The Timeline
The Wheel of Time Episode 6: The Flame of Tar Valon Book Spoilers Discussion

Behind The Timeline

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 15, 2021 38:15


You've been perfectly well behaved and spoiler-free all week, now come relax at the Dark Friend Social to get out all those evil book spoilers for the Wheel of Time episode 6, The Flame of Tar Valon! Join Lindsay to discuss Mat's future, Aes Sedai scheming, and, of course, Ta'Veren. Plus predictions for episodes 7 & 8 (but no discussion of leaks!)-Make sure to subscribe to Behind the Timeline wherever you listen to podcasts and check out our website----Email: gobehindthetimeline@gmail.comTwitter: BehindtimelineInstagram: GobehindthetimelineReddit: BTTPodcast

House Podcastica: A Game of Thrones Podcast
"The Flame of Tar Valon" (The Wheel of Time S1E6)

House Podcastica: A Game of Thrones Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 14, 2021 103:34


From learning the White Tower power structure and politics, to sucking the Dark out of Mat and kicking Moiraine out of the Tower, to the Aes Sedai Boss Bitch and a giant stone Portal in the middle of a random field, we got a really full episode finally developing Moiraine as a character. Greg, Wendy and WoT super-fan guest host Eric break down their favorite and notable scenes from a powerhouse group of actors absolutely killing it. Between Rosamund Pike (Moiraine), Sophie Okenado (Siuan), and Kate Fleetwood (Liandrin), this episode was full of high tension and drama and the machinations we didn't know we needed, but are thoroughly grateful for.***Disclaimer: We had a couple of technical issues with this episode. We think we got most of them, but there are a couple of spots that echoing still happens, sorry about that**Rosamund Pike interview: https://tvline.com/2021/12/10/the-wheel-of-time-episode-6-rosamund-pike-moiraine-enter-ways/Hammed Animashaun interview: https://nerdist.com/article/the-wheel-of-time-hammed-animashaun-loial-interview/We'd love to hear your thoughts on Ep. 7, "The Dark Along the Ways"!You can find our contact info and all our other shows at: podcastica.comย Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Watch Party: Wheel of Time
9 - Episode 6: The Flame of Tar Valon

Watch Party: Wheel of Time

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 14, 2021 96:28


Are you burning for a fiery Wheel of Time discussion? Well we've got a scorcher for you, as Rhuarc and the crew take on Episode 6, "The Flame of Tar Valon." We finally meet the eponymous Amerlyn Seat, judgments are rendered, an old alliance is revealed, and Moiraine shows our travelers the Way. If you are a newbie to The Wheel of Time, don't worry - this podcast is spoiler-free! Watch the show along with us! Do you have a question you need answered? A theory? Want to join the watch party? Contact us at watchpartywot@gmail.com. You can also find Rhuarc on Facebook moderating WOT fan communities:ย  Cold Rocks Hold: An Inclusive Wheel of Time Fan Community Wheel of Time TV Series Wheel of Time TV Series - No Spoilers Page CREDITS Intro and Outro Music: Find You, by Lion Spring (Rebekah Rolland). https://www.rebekahrolland.com/ย  SPONSORS 4KatsBoutique on Etsy This is a production of the Watch Party Podcast Network.

Pod of Time: A Wheel of Time Podcast
S1 Ep 6 - "The Flame of Tar Valon"

Pod of Time: A Wheel of Time Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 14, 2021 41:58


*WARNING* THIS PODCAST CONTAINS BOOK AND SHOW SPOILERS. AND THIS EPISODE DESCRIPTION PROBABLY DOES TOO, TBQHIf we had to pick one word to describe this episode of Pod of Time (and we don't), it might be "satisfaction". Total delight and utter satisfaction. If you can't tell, Nicole and Jackie are very VERY into the romance introduced in this episode -- and just about everything else that "The Flame of Tar Valon" had to offer.Do they have opinions? Yes. Rewrites? Oh, of course. But this...this was a good one. We both got romance. Jackie got her world-building (in a bathhouse no less!) and Nicole got the reunion we were all hoping for. Plus, we add segments! Actual segments! Getting Randy is back along with Highs and Lows, Storyline Breakdown and even a Hot Take. If you're on the fence about downloading, get off the fence because this is a good one. Also, that fence *can't* be comfy.Pod of Time is a Wheel of Time podcast hosted by Nicole Drespel (Broad City, Wet Hot American Summer) and Jackie Jennings (SYFY, My Brother, My Brother & Me). Pod of Time is a for WoT diehards and newcomers alike. Jackie has read all the books and may or may not own a Great Serpent ring (she does). Nicole is a huge genre fan who is going to experience Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's series for the first time in TV form.ย  Join them as the breakdown every episode from the perspective of longtime fan and enthusiastic, first-time watcher!

The Wheel of Time Podcast
7: "The Flame of Tar Valon" (The Wheel of Time S1E6)

The Wheel of Time Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 14, 2021 103:34


From learning the White Tower power structure and politics, to sucking the Dark out of Mat and kicking Moiraine out of the Tower, to the Aes Sedai Boss Bitch and a giant stone Portal in the middle of a random field, we got a really full episode finally developing Moiraine as a character. Greg, Wendy and WoT super-fan guest host Eric break down their favorite and notable scenes from a powerhouse group of actors absolutely killing it. Between Rosamund Pike (Moiraine), Sophie Okenado (Siuan), and Kate Fleetwood (Liandrin), this episode was full of high tension and drama and the machinations we didn't know we needed, but are thoroughly grateful for.***Disclaimer: We had a couple of technical issues with this episode. We think we got most of them, but there are a couple of spots that echoing still happens, sorry about that**Rosamund Pike interview: https://tvline.com/2021/12/10/the-wheel-of-time-episode-6-rosamund-pike-moiraine-enter-ways/Hammed Animashaun interview: https://nerdist.com/article/the-wheel-of-time-hammed-animashaun-loial-interview/We'd love to hear your thoughts on Ep. 7, "The Dark Along the Ways"!You can find our contact info and all our other shows at: podcastica.comย Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Wheel of Time Show About The Wheel of Time Show
TWOTSaTWOTS - Season 1, Episode 6: The Flame of Tar Valon

The Wheel of Time Show About The Wheel of Time Show

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2021 51:08


Garrett, Adam, and Fei discuss the sixth episode The Wheel of Time. This episode is named after the Amyrlin Seat herself, and she takes center stage. WTF Rafe begs for an end to the constant red herrings and Who's Hot on TWOT gives a shout-out to one badass lady whose name Fei had been mispronouncing.

Wheel of Time: A Post Show Recap
The Wheel of Time | Season 1 Episode 6 Recap: โ€˜The Flame of Tar Valon’

Wheel of Time: A Post Show Recap

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 11, 2021 91:40


The Wheel of Time | Season 1 Episode 6 Recap: โ€˜The Flame of Tar Valon' Josh Wigler (@roundhoward) and DM Filly (@DMFilly) cover โ€œThe Wheel of Timeโ€ on Amazon Prime, based on the late author Robert Jordan's best-selling fantasy series of the same name. In this week's podcast, Josh and Filly discuss โ€œThe Flame of [โ€ฆ] The post The Wheel of Time | Season 1 Episode 6 Recap: โ€˜The Flame of Tar Valon' appeared first on PostShowRecaps.com.

A Thousand Eyes And One
The Wheel of Time S1E6: "The Flame of Tar Valon"

A Thousand Eyes And One

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 11, 2021 54:28


Nikki and Tanya discuss Season 1 Episode 6 of The Wheel of Time. ***** Join us on December 12th at 3:00 p.m. ET for some good old virtual trivia with A Thousand Eyes and One! DJ Raydar Ellis will be on the decks, and your favorite hosts Tanya and Nikki will be ready to stump you. Don't forget to message us for the link: Trivia@ThousandEyesPodcast.com Find us online! thousandeyespodcast.com facebook.com/athousandeyesandone twitter.com/thousandeyesone instagram.com/athousandeyesandone www.youtube.com/channel/UCknUhSLKaWVmIWHvvf2njxw

Shade of My Heart - a Wheel of Time Podcast
The Flame of Tar Valon Recap

Shade of My Heart - a Wheel of Time Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 11, 2021 30:16


Josh and Kat recap Episode 6 of The Wheel of Time - The Flame of Tar Valon, and compare it to the book series. Watch before you listen - we have so many spoilers! We also give away a free book! Linktr.ee/shadeofmyheart Instagram: @shade_ofmyheart Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Shade-of-My-Heart-a-Wheel-of-Time-Podcast-112832491179723 --- This episode is sponsored by ยท Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/shade-of-my-heart/support

Dragonmount: The Wheel of Time Podcast
7: "The Flame of Tar Valon" (S1E6)

Dragonmount: The Wheel of Time Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 11, 2021 67:52


Kathy, Rajiv, and Maureen break down this episode, discussing the day in the life of Moiraine Sedai, the busiest woman in Tar Valon. Kathy Campbell, Rajiv Motรฉ and Maureen Carr.

Perfectly Boring
Mortgage Servicing with Valon CEO, Andrew Wang

Perfectly Boring

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2021 46:21


In this episode, we cover: 00:00:00 - Reflections on the Episode 00:03:15 - What is Mortgage Servicing 00:13:20 - Impact of the Great Financial Crisisย  00:18:40 - Andrew's Background 00:24:10 - Valon's Technological Innovationsย  00:31:06 - Relationship with the Consumerย  00:36:00 - Regulations and Regulatorsย  00:40:40 - Valon's Future/Outro Links:Website: Valon TranscriptJason: Welcome to the Perfectly Boring podcast. Today we have Andrew Wang, CEO of Valon, on the show, and today we're taking on the topic of mortgage servicing. So quickly, what is mortgage servicing?Well, a mortgage is obviously a loan for a home. And mortgage servicing is the institutions that actually take care of paying off that loan over the 10-, 20-, 30-year timeline. So, that digital interface where you pay your bill, et cetera, that is not always your originating bank. And Andrew is building a fascinating business in this space. We learned a lot about the mortgage, the evolution of the mortgage servicing space over time, the impact of the great financial crisis, and the interesting approach Valon is taken, not only just with technology, but changing the relationship with the end customer. So, what were some of the interesting touch points that we got during the conversation, Will?Will: It was a really wild discussion because I started with a fairly preliminary understanding of what mortgage servicing was. And in part of the wind up that listeners are going to get an opportunity to hear, Andrew really gives us a perspective as to how critical mortgage servicing is to the underlying health of the US, and therefore global, economy, and how much of an afterthought mortgage servicing has historically been, and why that should not necessarily be the case, and why now is the, sort of, unique moment in time to be able to use advanced technology and a reorganization of the overall stack for mortgage servicing to bring a better product to market for both consumers, for originators, for investors, and for regulators. And so, I mean, really badass discussion, really cool company, a space most people never think about, definitely a boring space, but with a just immense amount of value to be created.Jason: Yeah, and hopefully our listeners go through kind of the same increase in excitement that I had during the conversation, which is you kind of over time just realize this entire industry of mortgage servicing, not only is it critical, but how much they're missing the actual point which is, if you really just focus on the homeowner and creating a great experience for them, this is a huge relationship, it's a multi-decade relationship, and there's probably not just one product you can offer them. But they're stuck in the staid and stodgy technology of yore, and haven't been able to move as quickly and break through to open that aperture and open that relationship with their customer. So, before we get too deep into the weeds, let's just jump into the interview. Here's Andrew.Will: Andrew Wang, founder and CEO of Valon, thank you for being on the podcast with us today to talk about the very boring, very large industry of mortgage servicing. For the benefit of our listeners, it would be good to start at a really high level and give people kind of a baseline for what mortgage servicing is, and maybe a little just on the history of the mortgage servicing industry, you know, before we dive in a little bit on the specifics of your background and Valon.Andrew: So, mortgage servicing is a sort of pervasive thing that exists throughout the mortgage ecosystem and in the lives of most American homeowners, but it is also just not very well understood in terms of the dynamics that are involved with mortgage servicing in terms of who's involved, how they're involved, and exactly what they do. But again, nonetheless, it's something where it's within every part of the mortgage ecosystem today. But to give you some background on mortgages and how mortgage servicing even is a real thing, let me first talk about the mortgage industry as a whole. When you think about the mortgage industry, it's obviously a very large component of the American economy today. When people look at it, they say, โ€œHey, 20% of GDP in terms of housing,โ€ something that the US government often uses in order to boost spending; they lower our mortgage rates in order to cause people to have more savings and then spend on other things. It's just a very, very core piece of the American ecosystem.But it actually came into play really, during the depression, the Great Depression, were effectively pre the Great Depression, mortgages weren't really regulated all that much, and as a result, there were kind of weird, funky structures, even crazier than what people saw in 2007. And as a result of that and as a result of all these people who weren't able to pay their mortgages due to these balloon loans being in place, which are basically loans that don't amortize, and basically become due and payable at a certain point in time, what the US government did as a function of the New Deal was put these government institutions into place to create more affordable housing structures, to create these institutions who would really regulate the housing market, or really add liquidity into the housing market so Americans could actually own a home.Will: And that kicked off the current, almost philosophical ideal that we have today about homeownership kind of being the epitome of the American dream. This wasโ€”the mortgage was almost an invention to bring that to fruition after World War Two?Andrew: That's exactly right. So, after World War Two, it became more and more core to the American dream. When everybody talks about, โ€œHey, what is the American dream?โ€ It's obviously being able to get further in life based on your own merits, it's about owning a home, and starting a family, building a community, all of those different things, and the home is just so central to that dream. But exactly to your point, it started from post-World War Two.By the 1990s, it became such a large component of how the US economy even functioned and worked that there was more and more so this focus on affordable housing, putting people in homes, putting people in sort of a structure that creates the ability, creates stronger communities, and create a more robust ecosystem within cities, within neighborhoods, and everything else. So, that's how mortgages became so intertwined in the American system versus, you know, other countries, which may have relatively high homeownership rates, but just not nearly as high as the United States. That's, like, the genesis of how mortgages became a big component of it. The mortgage servicing aspect of it actually wasn't as relevant of a thing, that became more of a thing, actually, after the great financial crisis, the GFC. So pre-2008, what ended up happening was actually that most people when they got a mortgage were serviced by the same people who gave them that mortgage. So, you had Countrywide, you had some of these older institutions which have since gone bankrupt or have been acquired by more older financial institutions, servicing the mortgages. So, it wasn't really a separate thing, for the most part, at that point in time, and it wasn't really an important topic, actually.Jason: Before we go too deep, maybe you can define servicing. Like, how does that show up in the average American's life? What is servicing when it comes to an individual?Andrew: So, mortgage servicing specifically is what happens right after you get a new mortgage. So, when you get a new mortgage, you go to your originator. It can be someone who works at a bank, it could be mortgage broker that is a family friend of yours, it could be someone on Main Street who has a sign out that says, โ€œI'm a mortgage lender. Come inquire about rates.โ€ Once you get that mortgage from them, you have to make the payments back because you've got the mortgage to buy your home.That entire process of making those payments and the institution that you make those payments towards, that is the mortgage servicer. Now, when you look at that very simply, that is similar to a debt collection agency where you're effectively making payments, they're collecting on the debt and they're making those payments back to the person who made that mortgage. Now, what's actually more complex about mortgage servicing, as opposed to normal general debt collection is the fact that one, there's a lot of more regulation associated with it, right, because there is a home involved, and there's a lot of regulation around how you deal with homes; there's a second component which is, as per the government agencies and as per many state regulatory agencies, you are considered the trusted financial advisor to the homeowner along the homeownership journey. So, when a homeowner says, โ€œHey, I'm unable to make a payment; I need some help,โ€ the mortgage servicer isn't allowed to just say, โ€œI don't care. Deal with it,โ€ they're often required to go through all these interactive processes to make sure that the homeowner can actually get the right solution and continue owning their home.Long story short, just jumping quickly back to what we were just talking about, it's really core, and part of the thesis, really, of the American economy that they want to keep people in homes, they want to keep people getting homes, increase the homeownership rate, make it part of the American dream. So, what they did was they made mortgage servicers responsible for keeping people in homes.Jason: Gotcha. And this was on the back of the great financial crisis?Andrew: Correct. Actually, it was there before but what I was trying to really get into was that pre the great financial crisis, it wasn't as really hot of a topic because homes were honestly increasing prices all the time; anyone who bought a home basically made money on their home, so just not really a big worry throughout the entire ecosystem. So, when people thought about mortgage servicing back then, it existed but it wasn't really a concern. It wasn't a focus of both regulators, politicians, really anyone in the entire ecosystem. But when the great financial crisis happened, what ended up happening was, well, people weren't able to get out of their homes, they weren't able to pay for their homes, their homes were less valuable than the mortgage that they took out.And as I mentioned just right now, the mortgage servicing process is actually also the process of helping the homeowner stay in that home. And that's why home mortgage servicing became such a large topic and became such a large focus because post the great financial crisis, it became all about making sure that people who took out these mortgages were able to put themselves in a position where they were able to keep their homes. Obviously, there was a lot of difficulty with respect to it. Obviously, there were a lot of people who were unable to actually pay for their mortgages on an ongoing basis, so there were a lot of what's called modifications, basically changes to the underlying mortgage in order to make it affordable. But that entire ecosystem really exploded both from a regulatory scrutiny perspective, from the amount of activity that was happening in it because of the great financial crisis.Jason: So Andrew, why does mortgage servicing even exist to begin with?Andrew: Yeah. So, this is one of those really long archaic, sort of, pieces of knowledge that people have to understand the ecosystem, understand the history, understand all the different dynamics before they end up realizing why it's even a piece of the entire pie. And if you look at other countries out there, like Great Britain, Asian countries where there's tons of mortgages, as wellโ€”China, Japanโ€”but mortgage servicing as a separate concept, it's just not really a thing. So, it's really, for the United States, a concept that is tied to Fannie, Freddie, FHA, VAโ€”which are basically Ginnieโ€”these government institutions. So, the long story short, but still very long story, is that when the government put these different institutions in place, they created a concept where basically the underlying person who they wanted to interact with the mortgage was still the originator.So, I make a mortgage, my business isn't to hold this mortgage because the government wants to buy the mortgage and make it more liquid, and therefore more people can make mortgages, and therefore the cost of a mortgage is lower, but I still want you to be the person who interacts with the homeowner. So, I want to split this concept out. I'm going to own the mortgage, you're going to service the mortgage. And let's stick with that for now. So, that was, like, phase one of it.Then phase two of it was the fact that well, if that's going to happen, then every single person who makes a mortgage needs to be able to service the mortgage, so that's not fair to mom and pop shops across Main Street. If I originate whatever, 10, 20, 50, 100 mortgages a month, I'm not going to be at a place or a scale where I can run a true mortgage servicing operation. It just doesn't work. So, how am I going to deal with it? So, the government, again, to try to incentivize mortgage lending to incentivize liquidity in the space, said, โ€œFine. You can sell that servicing to another guy who then will deal with the relationship.โ€And boom, thus mortgage servicing is born, the idea of mortgage servicing is born, and this entire ecosystem then diverges. And really, not just diverges, it converges really to an efficient model of saying who is the best at mortgage servicing? Who are these cheap cost providers who are in the Midwest, who do it poorly, but thus can pay the highest price for mortgage servicing, and thus that's where all of the capital and all of the assets, sort of, flow? And that's why we live in the world we live in.Will: So, servicing is kind of an afterthought for the majority of the existence of a mortgage industry at large. Until, '08, '09. In '08, '09, everybody starts fixating on the servicing process as what it should always have been looked at, which is this really critical interface between the borrower and the lender, to a degree. And as a part of all of the regulation and the ongoing focus on servicing during that period of time, as we almost reworked the entire housing market, the cost to serve as a mortgage also changed a lot. Maybe you could just touch on that because there are a lot of compliance and regulatory framework aimed at servicing actually dramatically increased the complexity of doing servicing, which I think had a pretty profound impact on the cost to do so, right?Andrew: Yep. So, to elaborate further on these points that you're mentioning, the mortgage servicing ecosystem was really underdeveloped, both from one technology perspective as well as an understanding perspective, pre-2008. Again, people were not really afraid of being able to pay mortgages because naturally whenever you couldn't, you just sold your home and you probably made money on it. So, it's debatable as to whether or not [unintelligible 00:14:48] people are fully compliant back then whether the cost of servicing would be higher, but nonetheless, it is based on the data that people can see in the financials of mortgage servicing companies. Mortgage servicing became extremely expensive and really double, tripled in costs post-2008.And the way that it played out was basically the great financial crisis happened; people were unable to pay their mortgages; the traditional way would be to just put people out of homes, and as I mentioned earlier, the government's very incentivized to keep people in homes. And in order to make sure that the servicers were doing the right things, they basically put a bunch of different regulations both on the federal level and the state level to ensure that mortgage servicers were following the right processes in order to determine whether or not someone could make a payment for the mortgage, make sure that they're offered the right plans, and to make sure they were provided the right disclosures before they actually got through a process of foreclosing. So, when they put these regulations in place, normally you would think, โ€œWell, these things can be somewhat automated. These things can be provided as part of the process.โ€ But as I mentioned because it was so under-focused, there was just really not that much technology in the space, really not that many technological providers even involved in the industry.There's one main one, named Black Knight. So, when this all happened, these servicers went to Black Knight and basically asked them, โ€œHey, well, we are running into these issues. Can you help us?โ€ And the answer was, quite frankly, โ€œWe will try, but we can't really guarantee all that much to you because there's a lot of changes, there's a lot of code that needs to change, and we just can't get it all done that quickly.โ€ So, the only way that the mortgage servicers could handle these different regulatory requirements was basically to put people in place.You basically replaced what you would like to use, or what like to get done with technology, with people. So, you basically have this explosion of people cost in the number of people required to service a mortgage, and basically got to a place where today, there's two to three times as many people who need to be involved in a mortgage, versus pre-2008.Jason: What does the actual structure and distribution of mortgage servicers look like today, and how has that changed since the great financial crisis?Andrew: It's one of the things that honestly, the government focuses a lot on. There's a term, which is systematically relevant of financial institutions. So pre-2008, like I mentioned, there wasn't really that much of a concept of mortgage servicing. There were mortgage servicers out there, but most of the servicing was still held by the originators who made the mortgages. So, as a function of that, the ownership and really the people or entities that were servicing the mortgages was distributed quite similarly to the origination volumes.The guys who made the mortgages were the guys who serviced the mortgages, and as a result, there was a good split between bank who were very involved in mortgage space, as well as non-bank entities became more relevant, you know, probably post-2005. Today, we've gone into a world that is more and more non-bank-oriented, meaning the regulations have stepped up to such a dramatic degree that the underlying institutions who were originally involved had really substantially changed. I'll give you some simple examples. CitiMortgage, one of the largest originators previously, still a very large originator probably top five, now no longer services its own mortgages. It's completely outsourcedโ€”I think as of 2017โ€”all of their mortgage servicing to Cenlar.Similarly, US Bank is no longer servicing their mortgages. The folks at JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon has, you know, publicly stated that they want to get out of this business and they've been working with other sub-servicers to slowly migrate to a place where they're not servicing their mortgages anymore. So today, you are in a world now, where it's basically 70% non-bank dominated versus pre-2008, we were in a world that was probably 70% bank dominated.Jason: You're painted a really stark picture of an increasingly disjointed, highly regulated, under-digitized, mortgage servicing market. This sets the table really well, I'm sure, to start to talk about how you're changing those dynamics with Valon. But before we dive into the company, maybe you can give us a bit of background as to how you personally got involved with mortgage servicing to begin with.Andrew: I like to coinโ€”or use the term that I am an accidental operator because my background is actually on the investment side. I started out, really, in my career focusing on investing in some of these legacy mortgages. So, my first job out of college was working at Goldman. I was on what's called the short-term products [unintelligible 00:19:24], did some stuff with mortgages, I did some stuff with aircraft, but I quickly moved over to a Soros Fund Management where my primary job was actually to look at mortgages. So, I started out actually looking at the legacy, what's called non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities, and looking at the data underneath and seeing what was going on with these mortgages.Naturally, as with much of the market, we went from buying these securities to a place where we started buying the underlying home loans, the actual mortgages as opposed to the securities that you can buy on an exchange. And as a function of that, I ended up having to work with the servicers because when you buy the whole loan, unlike a security where everything's packaged up for you, you don't have to think about the accounting, the servicing, whatever else, when you buy the whole loan, you have to go find the guy who's selling the whole loan, you got to understand what he's doing, so he's not selling us stuff that you didn't want to buy, he's running the processes the right way, and you also have to go work with the servicer to actually get the servicing to happen, because it's a licensed activity. So unsurprisingly, the way I got about it was I started calling all my friends who had owned whole-loan portfolios before, and I asked them, โ€œWho do you guys work with? Who should I be talking to you?โ€ And the answer was, very simply, โ€œThey all suck.โ€ Like, nobody likes your servicer.Now, you would think that would be an answer purely from one perspective, one angle like it'd be the perspective of an investor, maybe they charge too much. But it turns out it's because they aren't liked by the consumer, extremely low NPS scores of on average about 16; they aren't liked by their investors, they're extremely commoditized and extremely poor customer service, and they're most certainly not liked by the regulators who just keep fining them over and over again. You search mortgage servicing [unintelligible 00:21:07], you basically have, like, thousands of pages about this. And it's still even happening today. And it's not even entities that, you know, are foreign and pretty small and not understood; it's even large institutions like Citibank which isโ€”like I saidโ€”why they got out of mortgage servicing.So naturally, my view on it was, well, this seems like something that technology can solve. This is something that we should be able to do better. This seemed insane that in the 21st century, that we're still dealing with this type of stuff. But as you start to dig in more and you start to pry into the actual underlying business, you start to understand both the complexities from an execution perspective and the actual underlying technological challenges. So, I ended up trying to find a couple of venture companies to invest in to go do this, but I actually couldn't find anyone who had the right idea, the right setup, the right vision in terms of how to build this company.So, you know, I went about my way, kind of left this on the side, and focused on other things at the time. But actually came back to it when I started looking at mortgage servicing rights which, at the time, I didn't understand nearly as well because I bought what are called whole loan mortgages, this entire mortgage. Mortgage servicing rights are basically the contractual relationship between the person who owns the right to service the mortgageโ€”like I said, to collect, to interact, to really deal with the data of the mortgage borrowerโ€”and the person who actually services the mortgage. So, it's the contractual right that allows you to sub-service a mortgage out. What's interesting about that is that is basically a way to own that relationship and contract that relationship long-term.And for me, as someone who had started looking more and more into FinTech, the way I sort of saw it was, here is a way and here is an asset class, and here's a space that actually allows the mortgage servicer to own these relationships and do have these long, sticky monthly engagement type relationships that they can have over 7, 10, 30 years. And that's a very unique thing to have. More importantly and most interestingly, it's in a situation where actually in this ecosystem, people pay you to own that relationship, people pay you monthly fees to say, โ€œHey, actually work with the borrower. Hey, actually interact with them, help them find what they need, whatever else, and we'll pay to do it, and you're allowed to market additional things to them.โ€ So, to me, that seems like such an interesting situation because not only can you have a business that is built to really improve the margins of the business and build automation around it, but you have this sticky relationship with the homeowner that you can really use to build trust, and really sell future financial products to.And that just seems like a very interesting business in my mind. So ultimately, I decided, hey, investing is interesting but this seems like too big of an opportunity to give up. So, I decided I wanted to go start a business, and this was the business I started, you know, right after.Jason: And one of the most interesting things to me is that it's not just a software component, right? Because you had looked at a number of other software providers and decided to do something a little bit more full-stack, which we don't typically see in the venture space. People tend to just want the software component and tend to steer clear of the services component. Maybe you can talk a little bit about why you still decided to include services as a part of what Valon offers.Andrew: There's an understanding amongst most venture investors that you want to be in the software business because it has a high margin business, it's defensible business, and it's less subject to changes in terms of margin profile because of the large amount of margin you have. Which, you know, is understandable. And that's ultimately actually where we thought we were going to get to, until we dug into and, sort of, operating this business, the actual origin of starting a mortgage servicing company as opposed to just the technology company was the fact that we realized that existing players were hamstrung by their current software in such a crazy degree that they weren't even able to migrate off of their existing systems to a new system. It's also a super-regulated space so anybody who wants to do it, wanted or needed to see clear performance, clear audits, really regulatory buy-in before they even made those things. So, it actually started out originally as an execution [ploy 00:25:31] where we said, โ€œWell, we can execute faster, we can learn faster, we can dogfood our own product so much faster, and come back to people later on once we've been able to show these numbers.โ€But as we started doing this business more and more, we began to further understand that there's actually a really, really great opportunity running the mortgage servicer because you have that direct customer relationship. And that's such a valuable thing because even if we had automated all of the backend processes and even if we were focused on just making these margins more efficient, it's not really fundamentally changing how the borrower perceives it. It's changing the financial profile of these businesses. And additionally, a lot of the things that we wanted to do was build trust, and that's a front-facing thing; that's something that you need to be invested in as a business, which a lot of the existing mortgage servicers didn't have that perspective and that view. So, for us, it became more and more of a consumer story versus an enterprise SaaS story where we can say, โ€œHey, not only can we get this cash flow machine by doing servicing well and build really good software around it, but we can really build a great partnership with the homeowners that are being serviced by us and really build longer-term relationships with them.โ€ So, that's where I think the turning point change from, โ€œHey, we're doing this out of necessity,โ€ to, โ€œHey, we're doing this because we think it's the best thing we can be doing for people.โ€Jason: I love also that because the existing system isn't able to migrate off, their slow and outdated solutions and they're a highly fragmented space, it's effectively a commodity; you can come in, build a whole new tech stack, still put humans against the problem, but undercut on price. But you kind of used that extra cost as a way to broker a relationship directly with the consumer and offer a more expansive and holistic product over decades, which is a fascinating inversion of what the traditional mortgage servicing mantra and MO is. Maybe you can talk to us about how you actually convinced the originators and loan purchasers, mortgage purchasers, to trust you and your new small startup to actually service those loans? Because it feels like a difficult business to really get your foot in the door and get those initial loans through the platform so that you can build that trust with the originators and the loan owners as well.Andrew: To your exact point, it's a business that's extremely difficult to get into, [again 00:27:52], a lot of regulatory scrutiny, there's a lot of requirements to get into the business. And just name a couple here, you needโ€”generally speakingโ€”all 50 states licensed for you to be a quote-unquote, โ€œScaled servicer.โ€ You need to have what's called agency approval, Fannie and Freddie approval, to be able to service most mortgages in the United States. So, between those different aspects, it's really hard to even get the legal requirements to be involved in this business, let alone get commercial contracts.But the way we approached this was really two-fold. The first part of it is, we were fortunate going into this space knowing that the existing players were so bad and so commoditized that actually, people were willing to work with different servicers. I'll give you a really simple example here: there's a company out there that we partnered with, it was one of our big investors, it's called to NRZ, and they're one of the largest owners of these mortgage assets. They own, like, 7% of the entire market. They own their own servicer, it's called Shellpoint.But even as an owner of that servicer, they don't actually give all of their business to their own business. And that's because they're trying to keep them competitive, that's because they're trying to diversify their risks, but the very fact that they don't give all their business to the entity that they are most financially incentivized to work with gives you a little bit of insight into how everybody thinks about this space, which is, โ€œI'm not married to my vendor. I'm going to work with anybody who seems to be better. And there's a lot of things that are lacking, so you can try to convince me in a variety of different perspectives.โ€ Obviously, if you've increase the bar because you've improved everything, that will no longer be the case, but today as it stands, that's how the ecosystem works.The second part of it, which is we actually went into this knowing that if we need these portfolios, we don't want to just have to convince people, we want to guarantees. So, we actually made sure that the initial investors in this company, the people who would take the benefits and the fruits of the technology that we built are some of the largest players in the space. So, we actually got folks like for example, Soros, NRZ, Jefferies, and a couple of other guys later on, to invest in the company with the belief that, โ€œHey, if I give you some mortgages to service and you actually are able to improve these margins, our business will be that much better off for it.โ€ In some sense, they view this as, โ€œHey, this is an outsourced R&D effort. We can't hire good enough technical talent internally; we'll give you guys that through an equity investment, and if you guys win, we also win.โ€If you think about it as an example, NRZ spends something like, eh, on order of a billion dollars a year on servicing fees. If we can truly save them 10% on it and give that back to themโ€”and let's say we save more than that, but we're just getting tenโ€”well, that's $100 million a year that they're saving. And the way that their investments, or really their fund is really valued, that's a billion dollars of value that was just created. So, that's what's so interesting about this space which is, you have these players who are very incentivized for our success and we just made sure that we went to them very early on and said, โ€œHey, we're going to get this done. This is a very low risk for you; we're going to ask for a small portfolio, but if you give it to us and we succeed, we can both be big winners at the end of the day.โ€ It's really about incentive alignment.Will: Andrew, I think one of the more profound things that you brought up here is that you're being paid to have a direct relationship with a consumer, a home-owning consumer, and that historically, I think mortgage servicers were happy being collection agents and not thinking about the long-term relationship that they had with the consumer, thinking about themselves as a commodity. How do you think about the relationship that you have with a consumer over the arc of your relationship with them and the types of products and services that you can start to bolt onto that relationship?Andrew: This is a really crucial point for us as a business, which is fundamentally and philosophically different from preexisting and the incumbent mortgage servicers. So today, the way people view this industry is that they view the extraction of value from the consumer as how they are still in business, the way that they generate margin. Meaning if there's a way I can extract an extra dollar from the consumer, for example, if I charge them a fee for making a payment online or for convenience, that's how they are continuing to make profits. Which is a very foreign and crazy concept, obviously, for people who are in venture and tech, et cetera. We take the approach that we want everything that we can do to make the consumer happier.a happier customer and investment towards making their experience better is how we actually make money. Because if you remember, at the outset, we don't actually make money from the consumer directly; we make money from servicing mortgages. And to us, the most efficient way to service the mortgage is a borrower who wants to use our automated products, who trusts us, and who doesn't call us with a lot of difficult questions. So, to do that, you have to really make sure you do everything right for the consumer so they are willing to trust you with that large financial ticket item that is their home. Now, I'll give you a couple of cool examples as to what you can do if you're a mortgage servicer who's really focused this way.So, really simple example; today, a lot of homeowners actually don't even use autopay, and you get a variety of different explanations. One of the really good explanations is that many people actually have lumpy incomes, so they don't really know when they'll get paid. Now, they want to use autopay, but the problem is because they don't know when they'll actually get paid, they need to make sure that they're paying when there's money in their bank. They don't want NSF fees, they don't want overdraft fees. We can use integrations with folks like Plaid to check their bank account and make sure that they have enough funds in their bank account before we pull, basically guarantee to them that you'll never get these type of fees.Now, that increases the convenience for the homeowner and allows them to put themselves on autopay, reduces actually for us the amount of times we have a call to make sure that they remembered to pay, and then overall, it actually results in a situation where we save more money and thus we make more profits at the end of the day. That's a really, really simple example.Another deeper layer you could go for example would be to tell people, โ€œHey, instead of just paying your mortgage through bill pay or whatever else that you're using, why don't you set up autopay and when you set up autopay will take $1 every time you use autopay and we'll actually pay it towards the next delinquent borrower.โ€ Meaning it's a charitable donation; we're taking money out of our pockets to pay a delinquent borrower. Now, that doesn't seem like a big impact when you just think about the dollar, but when you think about the percentage of people who are current, and then people all do this, we actually can generate enough money that we can donate to delinquent borrowers. It actually reduces our overall delinquency rate and therefore our overall costs as a mortgage servicing company. That's virtually unheard of.Lower delinquency rates look better for agencies, for regulators, for investors, and we can do in a way which really doesn't take any money out of our own pockets, it just reduces costs because we're servicing with a lower friction way, but actually generates a lot of goodwill with the homeowner. Which then leads us into the second part, which is, well, we can actually cause people to stay on our platform because as the servicer, we actually can offer them the lowest rate possible. If you look at a world that we service the mortgage as well as originate, we don't care that much about making money on originations because we own the consumer, we own that relationship. And we know everything about them; we also have most of the information, so it's easily preprocessable. Which means that we can go to the homeowner and say, โ€œYou know, you're usually going to try to refinance right now, but I'll give you the best rate because I have zero marketing costs, and I just want to keep working with you.โ€So, you don't even need to shop with everybody else because I'm going to preload it, I'm going to give you the best rate, and you're going to have a very smooth origination process and servicing process because nothing will move off. So, you get more and more into these type of conversations around, hey, because of our relationship, because of the trust we build, we can offer people more and more products that honestly make them happier, and ultimately that will drive them towards using us more longer-term, which is exactly what we want. And that's what we find so interesting about the mortgage servicing space because while it's not understood this way today, it is the perfect setup to be in a situation where you're really building a long-term financial platform, and the mortgage is that linchpin to getting into that consumers life and really trying to build that trust relationship with them long-term.Jason: I've got to imagine the regulators absolutely love what you're doing. I'm curious if you're thinking through feeding that data loop back into the regulators because I can't imagine the regulation has gone down since a great financial crisis. I'm curious what relationship you have with the government on this front.Andrew: So, our relationship is primarily with the agencies. When you think about regulators, there are regulators who are the state regulatorsโ€”they manage their own department of financial services in each stateโ€”there's obviously the CFPB, and then there's Fannie and Freddie who are called regulators, but really they're investors by and really regulate the mortgage market through their buying of mortgages. But from Fannie and Freddie's perspective, yeah, this isโ€”you hit the nail on the head; this is exactly what they want, this is what they've been seeking for. When you look up on Fanny's website, โ€œHey, what is a servicer?โ€ They literally write, โ€œTrusted financial advisor.โ€ That's what they want.But nobody does it today, and there's not much that they can do about it. So, from their perspective, they love this outcome where the servicer is thinking about this; they love an outcome where if the homeowner gets a stay with their originator, they have that continuity of relationship; and then they lastly love the outcome where if we are providing this platform on a greater scale, they then don't have to worry as much about the volatility of earnings for originators because they have this blended financial profile. It basically turns in originator from a company that basically has highs and lows based on how much origination is happening to a customer relationship management company. And that is honestly where they want this stuff to go long-term.Jason: And do individual homeowners get any say in the decision on who gets to service their mortgage? Or is it entirely up to the originals?Andrew: Unfortunately, it's buried on page whateverโ€”probably, like, tenโ€”on your closing disclosure, and then later on your mortgage documents, you get put to whoever your mortgage originator wants you to be serviced by.Jason: So, the way you'llโ€ฆ [laugh] coming into a home near you will be through your success with the people who are originating the mortgages and paying for that mortgage servicing contract?Andrew: Today, that is the case, but in very short order, by the end of the year, you can get a Valon mortgage. And when you're with Valon, you stay with Valon. We won't sell your mortgage, we'll keep your mortgage on our platform, and we'll build that long-term trust-based relationship with you.Jason: Tell us more about that.Andrew: Yeah, so weโ€”I mean, we would love for a worldโ€”and this is something, by the way, plenty of people have gripes about where they want to be able to have a mortgage that they transfer the servicing based on their own discretion, based on who they want to work with, but that's a longer-term conversation, that's a highly regulator-based conversation. So, it's something that's not going to happen tomorrow. The easiest way that we can become partners with people who actually want to work with Valon is that we offer them a highly competitive mortgage. Again, the fact of the matter is, we don't need to make money off of mortgage origination; we make money off of having the consumer stay with us. So, we'll be happy to offer them possibly the lowest rates that they can get.So, when they come to Valon, they can get their mortgage refinanced, or if they're getting a new mortgage, they can just get a mortgage from Valon, and then thereafter, they'll continue to stay with Valon. There'll be serviced by Valon, when rates drop, we'll just be proactive and we'll preempt any sort of refinance that they want to do. They can log onto our webpage, they can log onto their app, and they will exactly know how much they can refinance it for, what the costs are, all those different things. But again, the nice part here is because we don't really need to make money on originations, like a Quicken, like a [loanDepot 00:40:13], or any of these other players out thereโ€”even Better Mortgageโ€”they know that we have an incentive just to keep them on a platform and we can offer that lowest rate. And we can do that. So, that's what's so unique about it which is, you get that relationship, you get that great service, but you also get really priced competitive results, which we believe ultimately will build longer-term trust.Jason: I mean, it's an amazing and powerful refocus where you've effectively created alignment with all the major players in such a way that's made it difficult for any other competitors to compete with you. It's a pretty [laugh] amazing approach to the market that you've developed here. What gets you most excited about the future? Like whโ€”you know, obviously, you've got origination coming up; you know, in five, ten years, if you're massively successful, what's the impact you've had on the US economy and the US mortgage space?Andrew: So, there's obviously elements where we're helping consumers, right, so we can reduce the delinquencies in the system, like I mentioned, through different mechanisms. We offer people really cheaper financial products, which we believe they deserve, but I think the long-term most impactful thing is that we can provide, really, researchers as well as government regulators the right tools to make the right decisions. When you think about what basically happened recently with COVID, now the government went about and offered everybody forbearance, which is extremely expensive for both players in the industry as well as the government, but they don't really have a good way to address the crisis at hand. So, they used the very blunt-edged solution to it. As the platform that hopefully ends up winning the market, we can provide that information to the government; we can provide that implementation to them.So, they can be much more, with a sharp knife and really a small pencil, start to draw exactly what they want to end up happening. So, instead of giving a forbearance for every single personโ€”which is what happened; they said, โ€œYou didn't have to pay a mortgage for nine months, twelve months,โ€ instead of giving a forbearance to every person out there, you could say, โ€œLet me check your bank account. Let me see that you're actually running into a crisis. And if you are, actually I will give you even longer. I will give you 18 months, I will give you until you figure out what to do next.โ€And for the people who didn't actually have a crisis, we're not going to give it to you. So, you actually can help the right people in this sort of situation. Alternatively, you might have a situation where the government wants to test a different modification program. Usually, it gets into a large argument about does this work; does it not work? There's not much data out there.But with a technological platform like us, you can actually go as far as to say, let's actually A/B test these results. If the government buys-in will test it with [unintelligible 00:42:54] portfolios, and we'll report these results. So, this is kind of where we believe government policy and really, American policy around housing can be really shaped if you had the right system and the right sort of infrastructure. So, while we are very focused on trying to build that long-term vision and build out a trust relationship with homeowners across the United States, we believe the longer-term impacts of doing something like this really come from the fact that we can leverage this infrastructure to help so many different people.Will: Aside from going deeper in the value chain on the mortgage lifecycle, are their orthogonal productsโ€”I know before we jumped on the call, we were sort of talking about insurance a little bitโ€”are there other orthogonal products that are correlated to homeowners that from a product standpoint that you see Valon being able to bolt on to the platform over time?Andrew: I think the big new products that we'll be focused on outside of insurance as an example that we talked about where offering property insurance is a very natural next step, which we're already going to look to do by the end of this year is actually getting into things like for example, credit card debt consolidation. So, it's a very well-known thing that people when they get credit card debt sometimes want to refinance it with a HELOC because it's cheaper to pay a HELOC than a credit card. Now, that's not a very simple process today because getting a HELOC is a painful thing because you have to work with the servicer or you have to work with a HELOC originator. So, making it really easy where someone who has credit card debt, move it quickly over to their HELOC and pay less interest is obviously a quick next step. But that really actually speaks a lot more towards long-term financial management because again, we are dealing with such a large purchase and a large component of their dailyโ€”their monthly cash flows.So, as we look to what we do going forward, there probably will be a lot more around financial literacy, financial advisory, around all these different components. And if we can build that trust really leading the homeowner to make these right decisions and being able to forecast for them different outcomes based on what they want to do. So, I'd say that's probably the direction we'll ultimately take with this business. We need some time to work on all the different sort of initiatives that we have, but we're really hopeful that we can really make a difference here.Will: Andrew, congratulations. This is an unbelievably badass business and a very, very boring, esoteric industry that you are transforming. We really, really appreciate you taking the time to hang with us today and to give our listeners a look inside the mortgage servicing industry.Andrew: I appreciate it. Thanks for letting me talk. I went on a very, very long rant.Will: Thank you for listening to Perfectly Boring. You can keep up the latest on the podcast at perfectlyboring.com, and follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll see you next time.