Disrupting the Banking Industry with Shamir Karkal

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Shamir is a software engineer turned finance and banking expert. He is the advisor, Co-Founder and former CFO of Simple. Prior to Simple, Shamir was a consultant with McKinsey & Co. specializing in strategy consulting for financial institutions in Europe, the Middle East, and the US. Prior to McKinsey, Shamir was a software engineer. He has a bachelor’s in computer science, a master’s in information technology, and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University.

Some of the topics covered on this episode of Breaking The Borders with Shamir Karkal include:

• How startups in a heavily regulated industry can be complicated. But this barrier to entry also means that there can be less competition
• How the ‘startup’ tech business model is just starting to hit some of the bigger industries, ie Uber, etc…
• The ways that the banking industry’s model of making money on fees hurts their overall relationships with their customers
• The reason that it is a good idea to take advantage of times in your life without additional responsibilities (children, etc) to pursue startups
• The ways that the banking industry and other entrenched industries make innovation extremely difficult, with so many levels of bureaucracy to go through to get anything done
• The importance of reading books, and always continuing to learn
• Finding the best partners and advisors that you can
• Making sure that you are working on something that you are genuinely passionate about

“If there’s any trick to success, it’s find the best partners / advisors you can, and be certain that you will never give up.” – Shamir Karkal

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Resources:

Simple.com

Twitter: @shamir_k

LinkedIn

Free Download: The Shamir Karkal Startup Checklist