60/40: No such thing as a free lunch (or chocolate) - Reflections from Chocolate's withdrawal crisis

Walter de Oude is the founder and CEO behind Chocolate Finance, the Singaporean fintech company that got swept up in a mass withdrawal debacle in March (check out episode 2 for more details about that!). In this episode, Walter chats with the 60/40 team about lessons learned from March, what keeps him building, and how he's cracked the most important part of any startup journey - scaling. Hot takes of the week cover the prospects for a merged Grab/GoTo financial services platform and the demise of Skype, the OG video calling service. Timestamps 00:00 Intros by Prashanth! 03:08 The world’s most exciting actuary? 06:10 The journey of building SingLife 14:02 How to raise $50M 16:00 The joy of building 17:10 Why the Chocolate product works 21:03 There’s no such thing as a free lunch (or chocolate) 24:20 The dark side of super scaling 27:55 What Walter would have done differently 33:00 The power of finfluencers 35:00 Where does Chocolate go from here? 37:00 Ain’t my first rodeo 39:20 Chocolate AI 41:28 Where AI will impact the financial services industry first 42:58 The joy of doing fun stuff 44:30 A blessing in disguise 46:20 Grab/GoTo - how the financial services support each other 50:34 Farewell to Skype, the end of an era Give us feedback or nominate topics & speakers at 6040podcast@techinasia.com 60/40 is co-hosted by: Prashanth Ranganathan, Peter Bithos, and Maria Li. Special thanks to our guest, Walter de Oude of Chocolate Finance. A podcast by Tech in Asia, a member of The Business Times.