Michael Bernzweig (00:02.041)
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I'd like to welcome everyone to this week's edition of Career Spotlight. I'm your host, Michael BernZweig from Software Oasis. And joining us from London, England, we have Deon Crasto He is a principal product manager over at Velocity Global and has had quite a career in tech. So welcome to the podcast, Deon
Deon Crasto (00:29.004)
Michael, thanks for having me.
Michael Bernzweig (00:30.585)
Yeah, no, I appreciate you taking the time out to share your journey with us. And I can see from some of the questions that came in prior to the episode that there's a lot of interest in some of the different areas that I know we're going to touch on over this episode. So I was hoping maybe you could for, you know, anyone in the audience that may not be familiar with either yourself or Velocity Global, if you could share a little bit about your
career journey, getting to where you are now, and a little bit about Velocity Global and what you're doing there.
Deon Crasto (01:07.116)
Yeah, so Velocity Global is an international employer of record. So for those of you who don't know, an employer of record helps people hire globally and we take care of the compliance of the payments and all that fun stuff. I lead a specific function within payments, which takes care of cross border payments, which basically means employees get paid. In terms of my career trajectory,
I started off being a software engineer early on into my career. At some point I was like, I don't really enjoy this, I kinda wanna do something else. I really wanna enjoy talking to people. And this opportunity kind of landed in my lap where someone said, hey, why don't you try being a product manager? And this was...
Michael Bernzweig (01:46.321)
Sure.
Deon Crasto (01:57.934)
It was almost a decade ago when people didn't really know what product was. And I was like, what does that mean? And that was basically, hey, you speak to a bunch of stakeholders and you understand the software and you build a product that basically consumers love. So my early career started on from a transition basically working in software side of things to then being a product manager. I've worked in small business lending, which is machine learning focused small business lending at this company called On The Capital.
Then I moved on to healthcare, this company called Livongo. They did something really novel with the idea of applying machine learning and artificial intelligence to remote healthcare monitoring. And I think it was specifically important during the pandemic because that's when we don't need a lot of technologically advanced solutions for that. Then I spent a couple of years at Checker, which was...
primarily focused on background checks for gig customers. If you ever driven for Uber or Doe Dash, those customers, we basically did a lot of the onboarding. And my focus there was on monetization and payments and then looking at different ways to identify fraud. So yeah, that's been most of my career over the last 10 years.
Michael Bernzweig (03:14.737)
Great. And so what were the names of each of the companies? So the first company you were at was?
Deon Crasto (03:20.812)
was on net capital. did small business lending with the focus on machine learning. Second company was Livongo, which did AI healthcare based signals for people who live with chronic conditions. Then was this company called Checker, which did background checks for gig workers, basically, if you want to be employed.
Michael Bernzweig (03:26.598)
Right?
Michael Bernzweig (03:35.623)
Sure.
Michael Bernzweig (03:48.583)
Sure.
Deon Crasto (03:49.902)
And most lately, I'm at Velocity Global, which focuses on employer of record solutions.
Michael Bernzweig (03:56.295)
So if you were to tie a thread through all of the different positions, what is that common foundation between the different positions and what did you love, what did you not like so much, what did you kind of learn along the way?
Deon Crasto (04:01.005)
If I were.
Deon Crasto (04:12.3)
Yeah, you know, in terms of like background that actually isn't a lot of common themes, which actually makes my career very interesting. I think one of the most common themes has just been curiosity in certain areas. And I was like, I really want to learn about this and only want to get better at this in some ways. think the only, the only common theme that I had probably for like a few careers is that I've done payments and I've done monetization. kind like built out a niche for myself within that space.
Michael Bernzweig (04:18.791)
Sure.
Deon Crasto (04:42.392)
So if you think about the world of technology, there's a lot of machine learning and AI that's being applied. we see chat shipping and lot of different solutions out there. But how do you build technology within highly regulated industries? So I worked in health care, and I worked in payments, and I worked in background checks, which typically are highly regulated industries. So.
Michael Bernzweig (05:05.009)
Sure.
Deon Crasto (05:08.306)
I like building innovative solutions that have a very constrained space to work in. But how do you build the right solution with the right customer within that space? that's something that really intrigues me. I think being a product manager, you have to have an intellectual curiosity to kind of push certain things and see what's the best solution for the customer. So yeah, I think that's probably the one common theme that I have.
Michael Bernzweig (05:33.681)
Sure.
Deon Crasto (05:38.444)
had in general.
Michael Bernzweig (05:40.199)
So as a principal product manager at Velocity Global, can you give the audience an example of what a day in the life of that position is and what you're doing throughout the course of your work day?
Deon Crasto (05:57.154)
Yeah, think it depends. I think as a product manager, no two days are usually the same. I think a large part of my day is basically just starting off and trying to execute in terms of what commitments you have for the quarter. So typically in tech, we do quarterly roadmaps. So what that basically means is for the quarter, the Q1 quarter, which starts from January, ends in March.
We've decided on the projects we're going to work on, certain KPIs, certain metrics we want to achieve by the end of the quarter. And we assume that the projects that we're working on that quarter will achieve them. So a lot of my focus throughout the early part and the mid part of the quarter is making sure that the projects are being worked on, the requirements are being defined. If there's any new roadblock for the team, how do I get rid of them? How do I manage them?
So a lot of your primary focus as a PM should be that. And I think secondary, just a lot of meetings. You're focusing on executing in the current roadmap, but your old thing strategically is like, hey, what's next quarter gonna look like? What's this new product that came out of the market? How do we win this respective deal? There's an issue that came up with some other software and it's a P zero. P zero basically means something that's really important.
needs attention right now. So I think that's pretty much most of my day. But I think if you told me what takes the largest chunk of your day, I think it's probably meetings. Spending a lot of time in meetings.
Michael Bernzweig (07:36.295)
Sure. And let me ask you, because you have a unique perspective. know, Velocity Global is obviously a larger organization, but I take it over your career, you've worked in some smaller organizations as well. Within Velocity, who would be the typical individuals involved in your day in terms of who were you interacting with? What other roles would play a key part in your day?
Deon Crasto (08:06.338)
Yeah, think, so we have something called pods or squads. I think it's pretty traditional in most software companies. So a pod is typically an engineer, an engineering manager. Typically a designer might be involved and then some engineers. So that's your core group of people that work together and they usually have a focus area. So like in payments.
then you might have a squad that's typically focused on payments. So could have a PM, an a designer, just focus on payments. And then a couple of engineers or maybe five engineers working on those initiatives. Then looking a little more broadly, you have cross-functional stakeholders, which typically in this case could be risk, it could be compliance, it could be legal if you're trying to make some changes out there. So yeah, it could be sales.
So those search thoughts are for the sake of code.
Michael Bernzweig (09:05.041)
There's a lot of individuals within the pod, within the team getting each each. And are there multiple product managers within the organization typically, or not so much?
Deon Crasto (09:17.806)
Yeah, I think it depends on the size of your organization. think I've been at companies where there have been 60 product managers. And I think for typical startups, you could have like two or three or four. So I think it just depends on how big the company is and the areas they're to improve and influence. So yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (09:38.545)
So what would be the next step above product management in a career trajectory? What would be the next logical step managing multiple project managers or some other role?
Deon Crasto (09:53.1)
Yeah, so it depends. in tech...
you have a few different career paths. So typically it starts off for product, the typical career path is something called an APM. An APM is basically early career, it's called an Associate Product Manager. You then move on after a few years, certain experience, to a Product Manager. Then you move to a Senior Product Manager. Then you move to a Staff or a Principal, basically.
That's the IC track, which is the individual contributor track. And you can go pretty high in terms of the IC track. And I have a lot of friends who never want to manage people. So there's an entire career track that's just targeted at just being an IC, and you can get pretty high up there. But if you do want to manage people, and you do want to get into people management, and that's out of the world, then typically, for a principal product manager, you typically have something called a director. And a director of product basically manages a bunch of PMs.
Michael Bernzweig (10:34.202)
Right.
Michael Bernzweig (10:39.751)
Sure.
Deon Crasto (10:55.342)
senior product managers and the gamut of things. And then you move on to VPs and SVPs and C-suite. And basically that's how the two different tracks work.
Michael Bernzweig (11:06.595)
So for someone just starting out in their career, let's say they're changing careers and they're in a completely different space and they're looking to get into product management, what would be the first role or the best transitional step to go from a different career to project management? Because obviously you started in engineering and transitioned over.
And it sounds like at the beginning you were like, what the heck is a product manager?
Deon Crasto (11:37.186)
Yeah, I think project and product are two very, very different things. think project management is basically making sure that things get delivered on time and you're managing the entire program in some ways. And you just want to make sure that if things aren't getting delivered, then you speak to different stakeholders and try to make sure people know where things are stuck. Product management.
Michael Bernzweig (11:42.149)
Okay.
Michael Bernzweig (12:03.505)
Got it?
Deon Crasto (12:05.454)
is basically defining what should be built and why it should be built and how it should be built.
Michael Bernzweig (12:14.097)
So you may have project managers on your team as a product manager, but I got you.
Deon Crasto (12:17.132)
Yes, yes. Yeah, so I've always worked with project and program managers, and I'm sure they've worked with product managers. So that's the difference. In terms of career paths, I think the easiest way is to transition from an existing company
Sorry, it's the transition at your existing company. So if you're in sales and if you know the product really well, you speak to customers and you enjoy speaking to customers and you really want to solve a pain point or a problem, that's probably the best way to say, hey, I had this really good idea. I know the product really well. I the customer's pain points really well. And I want to build a product that basically solves for this.
I think that's probably the easiest way to kind of like transition because you have some experience and leverage and relationships that exist that you can help transition into. So I'd say that's the easiest one. But if you don't, and if you really want to start off early career and say you're graduating college or you just want to make a career change, a lot of larger companies like Google and Meta and Amazon have something called an APM program.
or a returning career program where they interview and they take a specific batch of individuals into the program. And then you can get your experience there and move up the ladder. And then if you want to transition, you could do that.
Michael Bernzweig (13:58.065)
So they'll basically train you up for a specific position. Interesting. So I guess if you were to look back on your early career, kind of transitioning from engineering to product management, what kind of inspired you to make that leap? Because that's a pretty big leap.
Deon Crasto (14:01.228)
Yep. Yep.
Deon Crasto (14:16.162)
Yeah, I just noticed I like talking to people a lot more and I like solving problems a lot more. And I think software engineering was very tied to, hey, here's a ticket, here's the problem that we've already discussed and we just want you to go build it. And I just wanted to be involved in like, hey, what's the problem? Why haven't we thought about a different solution? Maybe there's a different solution.
Michael Bernzweig (14:20.849)
Sure.
Deon Crasto (14:43.086)
That intellectual just just the average curiosity of like what have you thought about this? Why can't I be at that table? Why can't I think about these different problems differently? And that's when I realized I probably Enjoy that a lot more and talking to customers and solving pain points. So yeah, that's I made transition
Michael Bernzweig (15:01.287)
So as far as product management, who's responsible at the end of the day to make sure the execution happens the way everyone's agreed to get things done? Is it you as the product manager? Is it a project manager? Is it different individuals on the team, another manager? Who's responsible if they say the buck stops there?
Deon Crasto (15:26.83)
Yeah, that's a good question. And I think it depends. So typically early on, this was about like 2018, 2019, when the PM role kind of, the product management role got really popular. And there was this tagline, is, PM is the mini CEO of the product, the CEO of the product, right? Which is basically you get to make decisions on the product so long as you move a specific metric.
So no one cares what you're doing so long as you're moving a metric, again, within certain bounds that help make the product better or help move a KPI or an indicator, something along those lines. So typically you as the PM should be involved or should be invested for making that happen because that's your primary goal. How you get that doesn't matter so much, right? So it could be...
could be a project that takes nine months, or it could be a project that takes two weeks because you changed something. But typically in software companies or larger companies, there's something called a program. And a program typically has a product manager, an engineering manager, and a program manager. And the program manager is basically responsible for making sure things get done.
And if something isn't happening, then looping all the different stakeholders in there and escalating.
Michael Bernzweig (16:52.849)
Got it, okay. Makes a lot of sense. So with all of that going on, I'm sure there must be some challenging moments in the day in the life, you know, doing what you're doing.
Deon Crasto (16:53.966)
So, yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (17:08.871)
How do you overcome some of those challenges? What learning lessons have you had over the years that you'd pass along to someone just getting started in the role to make a transition easier?
Deon Crasto (17:22.806)
Yeah, the easiest one, or probably the biggest one in terms of like, this is a good career path, then know is you should like talking to people. Like if you don't like talking to people, or if you don't like people in general, then maybe this isn't the best like career path, because there's gonna be a lot of conflicts, because you're working with so many cross functional stakeholders, and everyone has a different opinion. So how do you get people on the same page?
Michael Bernzweig (17:36.071)
Sure.
Michael Bernzweig (17:44.049)
Sure.
Deon Crasto (17:51.022)
is probably one of the most underrated skills in terms of getting stuff done. You could be the most technical product manager in the world and you could know things inside out. But if everyone on your team, or everyone in your larger stakeholder group can't see eye to eye, it's never gonna be a successful. Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (18:09.957)
Yeah, if everybody has different ideas and all of that, yeah. Finding, you know, common ground.
Deon Crasto (18:15.884)
Yeah. So I think that's probably the biggest one. Then beyond that, you just, lot of things, I don't think you, I think most things in life and most things in tech can be taught. Right. I don't think there's something that you can't learn something like, this is like too difficult. You have to be like really, you're not born with this cause I think a lot of things can be transferred. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's a delicate balance. So yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (18:36.997)
Yeah, a little bit of art and a little bit of science in terms of all of that.
Michael Bernzweig (18:44.547)
And talking about science, your data science background, how has that kind of influenced your approach to payment solutions? Because I know payment solutions are really a core component of what it sounds like you really love and enjoy.
Deon Crasto (19:00.162)
Yeah, I think having an analytical brain or having that analytical background really helps because you start thinking about everything in binary decisions in terms of how can I multiply certain factors to make decisions. For instance, one of the biggest struggles with payments, Even consumers can see this is basically fraud.
which is how do you have early detection models of fraud? Probably credit cards have the biggest problem, right? How do we detect fraud early on? How do you know if it's the same person who's paying? How do we know if the card is lost and like block it before someone makes an illegal transaction and then we lose money either way because the consumer reported it, right? And the way that the world is working and the way that hackers are working is that they're always one step ahead. So it's not something that you can just build and like just sit on it.
because things just keep changing. So in data science, or typically in machine learning, there's something called supervised and unsupervised learning. And unsupervised learning is basically it learns from itself based on certain modulations. So a lot of my focus has been how do we get one step ahead and how do we build self-learning models that basically understand and can kind of give us signals in terms of, here's...
Here's what's happening in the world of fraud. Here's what our customers are telling us without us having to go out and look for those different aspects. So I think it gives you a certain sense of being a little more analytical and looking at the data early on to build stories. One of my favorite classes in grad school was something called storytelling with data science, which is if you couldn't write anything and words weren't the biggest story, you could just draw diagrams and
and graphs, how would you tell a story? So that's been pretty.
Michael Bernzweig (20:52.091)
And I think, yeah, fraud management is obviously even more important, you know, when you are in a tech space and you're moving from an early stage startup to really starting to scale where maybe early stage you have a lot more interaction with each individual client as they're onboarding, especially in a B2B solution. But then as you're scaling,
you may not have that same level of interaction. And I know one of the early entities in fraud and machine learning and all of that was a company out of Israel, Riskified, who was one of the first, obviously you've had Signified and all kinds of other companies jump on the scene since, but they really mastered the art of.
you know, into all of the subsets of fraud and fraud management to be able to look at massive sets of data and to identify elements that you wouldn't even think of that could.
Deon Crasto (21:57.122)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Bernzweig (21:58.509)
know, contribute to fraud, whether it was transaction fraud or login fraud or other types of account setup fraud, all kinds of different areas. So it really is a fascinating, fascinating area of tech.
Deon Crasto (22:15.714)
Yeah, no, I agree. think there's a lot of different things that happen. And typically people think of fraud as just like, just someone is like trying to like from a different country trying to take over your account. there's a lot of, within the world, and if you dive into it, there's a lot of legitimate businesses that could actually be bad actors. And I worked on projects that had stuff like, how do you determine a bad actor early on?
through like models and what does that look like? How do you a model to kind of like build a bad actor for a bad actor identification for like certain projects. I've worked in some fun projects along those lines. We've called one project, project Nicholas Cage, which we still identify bad actors. yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (22:44.113)
you
Michael Bernzweig (22:57.785)
Yeah, and very sophisticated types of fraud. No, it's interesting. And just over the course of your career, you've been between B2C, B2B. Have you seen fraud as a larger component of concern in one space over the other, or is it just pervasive across the board?
Deon Crasto (23:24.878)
I think it depends. Like for instance, let's take B2C. I think about the big B2C companies are like probably customers that are facing this right now. You think about TikTok. I think something like TikTok, they have fraud as well. It's not financial fraud, but you could have merchants onboarding on TikTok, selling products that basically they have no intention of shipping, right? So a user could just say, hey, I really like this product.
Michael Bernzweig (23:49.105)
Right.
Deon Crasto (23:53.506)
I'm going to pay this business my money and there's no shipping because they're a bad actor. So how do they control that version of it? Because if it gets too large, then users are going to lose trust. But how do they also maintain growth? And on the B2B side, I think it's a lot more about smaller number of businesses, but the dollar size of each deal is so much higher that
Michael Bernzweig (24:00.049)
Yeah.
Deon Crasto (24:22.974)
propensity of the ability of you losing money is pretty large. So from what I've think B2B is a lot more cautious in terms of approaching these respective problems because there's a lot more money at stake, at least from my experience.
Michael Bernzweig (24:46.727)
Yeah, interesting. And you mentioned your early career over at Checker and Livongo and other organizations. If you were to kind of bullet point for some of the listeners to this career podcast, what key lessons did you learn during your time at both of those organizations?
Deon Crasto (25:11.244)
Yeah.
I think on that, was like the first place I started working within the space, was that the landscape is ever evolving and you have to evolve with it. It was probably one of the key goals or the key learnings, the takeaways, because when we were building models and we were building models for assessing credit worthiness, right? It wasn't just like, hey,
We built it and we've launched it. I was happy about launching a product, but you have to monitor it. Like for instance, when COVID hit, when COVID hit, our models were looking at all these different factors of determinative worthiness. But what we didn't anticipate for was a global pandemic that was going to stop businesses from being open, which basically means that those businesses couldn't repay the loans, which basically means that they were going to go delinquent. So we had to look at certain factors like
what businesses are essential, but certain governments won't allow them, right? So we had to take all those different things into consideration for determining credit worthiness altogether. And we had to like flip a switch overnight, over like a week. So that's one that I learned from OnDeck. And from Livongo, it was really interesting because I joined Livongo as a smaller company, but I think within a few months,
of joining, they got acquired by this company called Teladoc. So I from this small, nimble, really high tech company to this, I think, 6,000 person company, like almost overnight. And they come with different structures and adaptability and different goals. So again, how do you think about, okay, cool, we've thought about that, but that's on a pause because now we're changing something and we're coming into a new world altogether.
Michael Bernzweig (26:56.261)
Wow. Sure.
Deon Crasto (27:13.74)
So being open to being adaptable to new strategies as they come in front of you and what does that look like? I think that's another big learning I took from my time there.
Michael Bernzweig (27:26.843)
Yeah, very interesting. And I think that's something that, you know, listeners need to keep in mind. You know, obviously the company you sign on with may not be the company that you end up working at. And, you know, things in tech change pretty, pretty quickly and sometimes pretty, pretty dramatically. So, obviously AI is something that's touching everybody's worlds and, know, every organization out there.
Deon Crasto (27:39.555)
Yes.
Michael Bernzweig (27:56.209)
you know, a year ago wanted to be able to say AI is in there. But I think now organizations are trying to figure out, you know, what is useful that can help the, you know, user of this specific product by incorporating AI in the solution itself. So how do you balance innovation with, you know,
implementing AI and also the ethical considerations in implementing AI.
Deon Crasto (28:30.018)
Yeah, that's a good question. I've actually seen so many different interpretations of AI at this point in time that I'm very, what is it, confused, but I don't think, firstly, we're so early on into the race of AI. think it's been a thing, but I think it's been such within like close models, like banks have been using it for like different.
things, lenders have been using it, some tech companies have been using it. But I don't think we've seen mass adoption for it up until probably about a year and a half or two years ago when OpenAI came up with Sora and Dali and then obviously the GPD models later on. I think if you think about more broad scale applications, so there's something called fundamental models, which is, all these companies are anthropic with Clor, OpenAI with ChadGPD. They're building these foundational models.
they're competing with each other. DeepSeek out in China, Baidu and Alibaba in China as well. But they're competing with each other on these foundational models, which is fine because they have the resources and they have the money and they have all these different things kind of like go at each other's throats. I think about it as one layer above that, which is businesses being able to like pick and choose what makes the best sense for like
Michael Bernzweig (29:32.903)
sure.
Deon Crasto (29:56.654)
their use case. Like, for instance, if I'm a healthcare provider and I just want to, let's say, reduce my wait time for someone to get really quick access to queries, I could use AI to build a conversational agent that either solve for those very baseline queries. And you could build that on an application layer, which basically means
You can get all this data, pass it to a cloud or an open AI or whatever model you want and say, hey, if someone asks these specific questions based on these specific criteria, here's the answers that you should give. So it's not a traditional chatbot that basically was very limited. You now have these machines that can now think for themselves, access records, access data, make much more informed decisions within certain confidence intervals.
So I think for businesses, they need to narrow down in terms of what is the use case to try to solve for and how do you leverage AI as a tool to solve for those specific use cases or those metrics.
Michael Bernzweig (31:04.188)
Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (31:12.347)
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And obviously, it's not so black and white a lot of times. So over your career, what would you say in terms of strategies that you've used that have been kind of the most effective in managing global payments and global payment systems? Are there some unique strategies in that role that you found helpful?
Deon Crasto (31:43.436)
I think it depends on the problems that it has to solve. I don't think there's one size that fits all, to be honest. Every company has different problems and it's very rare unless you're moving from one very similar company to another very similar company that it would fit. I think having a general sense of what the payment landscape looks like is useful, but I don't think I've ever been in a career where I could just literally pick.
everything that I learn and apply everything to the next company and it's like literally one for one. I'd say probably about 30 or 40 % applies if that here next year. So I think the most important thing is just having like a strong foundation in terms of how does a payment work? Like for instance, if I take my credit card and if I tap it, what basically happens? are the underlying infrastructure? What are the different things that work there? And then you can move on to like cross border payments and
risk, fraud and all those different things. But I think just having a strong foundational understanding of that really helps to kind of like build products in a perfect way.
Michael Bernzweig (32:49.319)
Yeah, it makes good sense. So, no, that's helpful. Yeah, no, think there's just so many different areas to consider in a career trajectory, but obviously you've had a very international career in terms of your path. I mean, I know you.
When we spoke even before the podcast, you mentioned you spent time in the US and some time in other countries and now you're in London. So you've really had a, you've been somewhat of a jet setter in terms of your career. Have you found that it's important to be flexible in terms of location and all of that in a career?
Deon Crasto (33:35.438)
Yes and no. I think I'm at that stage where I like traveling, I enjoy traveling and if you think about like payments and tech, everyone runs on it. So you do need, if you can afford the flexibility, I think it's always a good opportunity to try new things. And I have always wanted to live in Europe at some point in time. I think it was something that was up there. So when the opportunity presented itself, I just took it.
But yeah, I think if you want a career in tech and if you want to find something, I think there's a lot of different roles and opportunities out there. Especially if you want to look at payments and banking and the gamut. I Amsterdam's a really big hub for payments. London is as well, especially for banking and tech. So yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (34:26.713)
And do you see certain, know, obviously some segments of the market have been hit harder than others in terms of tech careers. Have you seen some segments where you think there's still really great opportunity and, you know, if you were just getting started, where would you look?
Deon Crasto (34:50.306)
If I was just getting started, I would pick a product or an area just genuinely that I really enjoy and work within that. I don't think I'd really look at like a career path. And that makes sense. Like for instance, if I really like travel, I would try to work within the travel industry to kind of like pick a specific career and then kind of move from there.
Michael Bernzweig (34:59.335)
Mm-hmm.
Deon Crasto (35:19.586)
I was just one of those weird people who really enjoyed models and data science models. And I was like, how do I apply this to like an area that I had prior experience in, which was banking and lending. So that's where I got my initial start from. And I think that's how people should traditionally look at it. Like for instance, if you've worked
Michael Bernzweig (35:37.244)
Right?
Deon Crasto (35:47.918)
in banking and if you want to send banking even from like a tele perspective you can start off from there and then you understand the inner workings of back office and can move on from there to like move on to a different career within tech or program management or product management. So I think it's I think I think we live in a world where there's a lot more flexibility so long as you go to the job and you're open to learning new things. So yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (36:15.291)
Yeah, and I think I would agree with you. think it's really important to find something that you love and, you know, whether it's a specific business that you're starting or a career that you're starting or whatever it is that you're doing, just something that you're going to wake up every day and enjoy what you're doing and be able to, you know, look forward to that next morning because at the end of the day,
Clearly, there's a lot of opportunities to make money, but the important part of all of it is to have fun with what you're doing along the way. for anyone that, of the different spaces you've been, for anyone that may not have been to England or to where you are in the country, is there anything that you specifically
love about where you are for anyone that might be considering either a career there or traveling or just anything just kind of fun.
Deon Crasto (37:21.858)
Yeah, my, I have a funny, funny story. I love, I still love playing football or soccer. So one of the reasons why I did move to London is because they have the largest total number of football clubs within the city. So every weekend I have the ability to go to
Michael Bernzweig (37:41.415)
Sure.
Deon Crasto (37:49.012)
Fulham is a football club and Chelsea is another football club. It's literally a stone's throw away. So I want to go watch a football game, it's always a good opportunity to go watch them. And there's a lot of smaller teams out there as well. if that, I'm not sure that's something you should base your career options off of.
Michael Bernzweig (38:08.135)
And the food isn't half bad, right?
Deon Crasto (38:11.318)
Yeah, it's not that bad at all. I used to live in Denver, so I'd say the food is a lot better here.
Michael Bernzweig (38:17.121)
Yeah. I love it. I love it. Well, I really appreciate your, you're taking the time out to, join us on the career spotlight today. It's been, been a lot of fun and that was a really nice, nice deep dive. I'll finish up with one, one question that I think a lot of people I saw come in. Do you see any specific emerging trends kind of at the intersection of AI and financial tech that you think,
listeners should be keeping their eye on in terms of either careers or just opportunities.
Deon Crasto (38:55.298)
Yeah, that's a good question. From what I'm seeing, think there's a pretty... I think the landscape is changing so rapidly, so I don't think an answer I give you today might be true tomorrow or a week from now. I think from what I'm seeing right now, I think there's a pretty big focus on growth and on understanding how...
Michael Bernzweig (39:11.974)
Sure.
Deon Crasto (39:22.574)
you within a payments focus can facilitate growth, right? Which is pretty interesting because you think of payments as like this back office, hey, it's just like you're tapping a card, you're paying it, getting done with goods. within the world of like payments, like for instance, Stripe, you think about out here, there's a lot of other like competitors, right? So how do you cross-sell? So how do you build a best-in-class product that helps you cross-sell? I think it's a really...
is it really important skills? Or I think people within the payments world who have a focus on growth and who can understand how do you bundle different products to like get more adoption and become the best in class product, which is, it's not such a direct answer, but I think that's, that's what I'm seeing right now because a lot of companies that are focusing. Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (40:14.011)
Yeah, no, I mean, that's honest. That's obviously what you're saying. That's, that's okay. I mean, you're, you have a very interesting vantage point from, from where you said, so that's really exciting. But, you know, and I think, you know, if, any, any detail helps out just one person out there, I think it's, it's really exciting. And that's what the career spotlight is all about. So anyways, Dionne Crasto from
England at Velocity Global. Thank you so much for joining us on Career Spotlight this week. And we'll leave a link in the show notes for anybody that would like to reach out. And I appreciate your time today.
Deon Crasto (40:57.518)
Thanks so much.
