Figure Co-Founder: How Figure Became A $10B Business | Mike Cagney
This week, Mike Cagney joins the show to discuss Figure and how it became the leading non-bank HELOC lender in the U.S. We deep dive into how Figure leverages blockchain rails to scale the next evolution of capital markets before Mike shares his thoughts on tokenization, being a public vs private company, how to fix tokens and more. Enjoy!
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Follow Mike: https://x.com/mcagney
Follow Jason: https://x.com/JasonYanowitz
Follow Empire: https://x.com/theempirepod
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(03:20) How Do Blockchains Disrupt Capital Markets?
(09:28) Why Did Mike Build Figure?
(27:00) Will Figure Launch a Wallet?
(38:05) SoFi’s Superbowl Ads
(45:42) Tokenizing Equities
(55:08) The Provenance Blockchain
(01:01:46) Being a Public vs Private Company
(01:07:18) How To Fix Tokens
(01:12:27) What’s Next For Crypto In 5 Years?
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Disclaimer: Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Santiago, Jason, Rob and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
Lessons From A Successful Tokenization Project & What Market Structure Reveals About Trump-Linked WLFI’s False Promises: Bits + Bips - Ep. 986
In this double-header episode of Bits + Bips, Steven Ehrlich first speaks with Figure CEO Mike Cagney about why most tokenization projects fail, how Figure built an onchain mortgage replacement, and why he believes big banks may now be leading blockchain innovation.
Then, Jason Brett joins the show to explain how an upcoming crypto market structure bill could expose President Trump’s World Liberty Financial as centralized, and why that matters for DeFi, regulation, and the industry’s credibility.
Sponsors:
Uniswap
Mantle
Host:
Steve Ehrlich, Executive Editor at Unchained
Guests:
Mike Cagney, Co-founder and CEO of Figure Technology Solutions
Jason Brett, Former Banking Regulator With FDIC
Links:
Unchained:
Inside Robinhood’s Big Super App Plan: ‘There’s Still a Lot of Work to Be Done’
Coinbase Launches Stock Trading and Prediction Markets
How the GENIUS Act Creates a Built-In Advantage for Banks and Deposit Tokens
Timestamps:
🚀 00:00 Introduction
🧠 1:48 What is a HELOC?
💡 4:48 How Figure is turning HELOCs into a mortgage replacement
⚡️ 7:58 How Figure issues loans from origination to disbursement
📍 11:28 Why Figure uses a blockchain
⚠️ 12:15 Cagney explains how liquidity poses a challenge for many tokenization projects
🧏♂️ 13:10 Why the real value proposition is in DeFi and how Figure is bring $1 billion on-chain
📃 14:14 Cagney reveals Figure's preferred DeFi platforms
💥 16:09 How the GENIUS Act could drive assets onchain
⚡️ 17:46 How Figure is working towards stablecoin settlement of loans
👀 23:40 Why Cagney says the big banks are doing more disruptive work than the likes of Coinbase
⚖️ 27:53 What Cagney is advocating for around DeFi in DC and his litmus test for decentralization
❕️ 31:30 Why Cagney believes anonymity is not necessary for decentralization CLIP
💡 33:32 How Cagney deals with the pressures of going public
🧠 34:32 Why Cagney has taken a different philosophical approach to Robinhood and Coinbase
💥 37:05 Cagney explains what it takes for tokenization projects to succeed
41:55 Intro
45:51 If crypto finally gets rules, what then?
49:39 Frozen wallets: the DeFi dealbreaker
55:51 Has the White House picked a DeFi side?
56:36 Why this goes beyond “ethics”
58:49 If Trump’s DeFi fails the test… then what?
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Mike Cagney on bringing every market onchain
Mike Cagney is the co-founder and CEO of Figure Markets.
In this episode, Cagney discusses the need for a 'marketplace of everything,' the potential for equity trading on the blockchain, and more.
OUTLINE
00:00 Intro
07:21 The 'Everything' Platform
12:16 Onchain Equities Trading
17:50 Institutionalization of Crypto
27:12 DeFi Lending
29:59 Rebuilding Crypto's Credit Markets
33:51 Wall Street Appetite for ATS
36:28 Regulatory Considerations
38:09 Closing Thoughts
Exploring The Insights And Impact Of Dan Delorey's Distinguished Career In Data
Summary
Dan Delorey helped to build the core technologies of Google’s cloud data services for many years before embarking on his latest adventure as the VP of Data at SoFi. From being an early engineer on the Dremel project, to helping launch and manage BigQuery, on to helping enterprises adopt Google’s data products he learned all of the critical details of how to run services used by data platform teams. Now he is the consumer of many of the tools that his work inspired. In this episode he takes a trip down memory lane to weave an interesting and informative narrative about the broader themes throughout his work and their echoes in the modern data ecosystem.
Announcements
Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management
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Your host is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Dan Delorey about his journey through the data ecosystem as the current head of data at SoFi, prior engineering leader with the BigQuery team, and early engineer on Dremel
Interview
Introduction
How did you get involved in the area of data management?
Can you start by sharing what your current relationship to the data ecosystem is and the cliffs-notes version of how you ended up there?
Dremel was a ground-breaking technology at the time. What do you see as its lasting impression on the landscape of data both in and outside of Google?
You were instrumental in crafting the vision behind "querying data in place," (what they called, federated data) at Dremel and BigQuery. What do you mean by this? How has this approach evolved? What are some challenges with this approach?
How well did the Drill project capture the core principles of Dremel as outlined in the eponymous white paper?
Following your work on Drill you were involved with the development and growth of BigQuery and the broader suite of Google Cloud’s data platform. What do you see as the influence that those tools had on the evolution of the broader data ecosystem?
How have your experiences at Google influenced your approach to platform and organizational design at SoFi?
What’s in SoFi’s data stack? How do you decide what technologies to buy vs. build in-house?
How does your team solve for data quality and governance?
What are the dominating factors that you consider when deciding on project/product priorities for your team?
When you’re not building industry-defining data tooling or leading data strategy, you spend time thinking about the ethics of data. Can you elaborate a bit about your research and interest there?
You also have some ideas about data marketplaces, which is a hot topic these days with companies like Snowflake and Databricks breaking into this economy. What’s your take on the evolution of this space?
What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected data systems that you have encountered?
What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on building and supporting data systems?
What are the areas that you are paying the most attention to?
What interesting predictions do you have for the future of data systems and their applications?
Contact Info
LinkedIn
Parting Question
From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?
Closing Announcements
Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to check out our other show, Podcast.__init__ to learn about the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used.
Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.
If you’ve learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email hosts@dataengineeringpodcast.com) with your story.
To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and co-workers
Links
SoFi
Bigquery
Dremel
Brigham Young University
Empirical Software Engineering
Map/Reduce
Hadoop
Sawzall
VLDB Test Of Time Award Paper
GFS
Colossus
Partitioned Hash Join
Google BigTable
HBase
AWS Athena
Snowflake
Podcast Episode
Data Vault
Star Schema
Privacy Vault
Homomorphic Encryption
The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
Support Data Engineering Podcast
Inflation and The Great Resignation — With SoFi Head of Investment Strategy Liz Young and Margins’ Ranjan Roy
Inflation is skyrocketing and everyone’s quitting their jobs. What does it mean? Liz Young, the head of Investment Strategy at SoFi, and Ranjan Roy, the co-author of Margins, help us figure it out in this week’s Big Technology Podcast. Come for an exploration of the source of the price hikes (Turkeys are 14% more expensive this year!) and a wild theory connecting interest rates with quitting. Stay for where to find savings (Hot Dogs!).
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