Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the behind company lines podcast. Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Akbar Thobhani CEO and co-founder of S Fox, a full-service crypto prime broker, bringing together liquidity, best price, execution, dark pool, access, treasury management, custody, and settlement services together in one trading platform and API Akbar.

Thank you so much for joining the show. I'm really excited to chat with you and learn more about your experience. SFox and, and what the company's doing now, but before we dive into all that, what were you doing before you started the company?  

Akbar: First of all, Julian, thank you so much for having me. You, you know, you're great.

So I'm excited to be there. Appreciate it. Thank you. You know, so look right before I started this company, I was with Airbnb and there, we had to send money to 190 countries. We're dealing with the, you know, all different currencies. And what you realize is that there is no global financial infrastructure.

For companies that go global. And so, you know, the, the closest that [00:01:00] came to it was Bitcoin and the Bitcoin blockchain I had played with Bitcoin, you know, back when I was at MIT back in 2009. So it was an obvious kind of marriage of here's a big problem that everyone has in the world, a lack of financial infrastructure, and here's a solution.

And so that's really what, what got me started with this.  

Julian: that's amazing. And so within that whole discovery process and, and working with different countries what was like some of the, the biggest hurdles you faced, you know, you know, it sounds so easy, you know, book, book, your Airbnb you know, go to that location, pay through whatever payment service, but what are some of the barriers that you have to, you know move past when you're doing business internationally like that, that some people might not.

Akbar: Yeah. You know, I think at the end of the day when you are doing any international transactions one of the big pieces is actually sending money. And that even for the companies is really hard. Sometimes if you are working with people that are in remote regions with smaller banks, the wire transfers usually take a lot longer.

Yeah. And so when you look at Bitcoin, you're like, okay, I can actually take that and transfer that within one hour 24, 7, 7 days. Are most banks stop wires at, you know, 1:00 PM Pacific time. Yeah. On Fridays. And then Monday morning is when you can start. Well, what happens when you have transactions on the weekend?

So, you know, an infrastructure that just like you send an email, you can send an email on the weekend. Why can't you just send money on the weekend? So really that's where it started. But I think the key to keep in mind though, is that blockchain has gone a lot from just being a Bitcoin to becoming this, you know, infrastructure for For financial contracts and other financial transactions.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. It it's really grown to be, so, you know, kind of I, I will say it's like growing to this ingrained financial structure that we're all gonna be, you know, using at some point especially on the institutional level, but on the consumer level as well. But down, you know, going back from, from your experie, Were you always headed in this direction?

It sounds like, you know, you saw the problem, you solved it. But in terms of this entrepreneurship direction, where did all that come from? If you were to take me back a little bit further in your experience you know, working with startups and building companies, and then working with bigger companies like Airbnb and now with S V where did all this inspiration to seek out the unknown come from?

Akbar: Yeah. And look, I think, I think seeking out the unknown is, you know, a personal passion of mine. So. When I joined JPL back in the day, you know, we, we had a saying to, to explore new places and leave a, a trail behind. And I think ultimately that's what I enjoy. I enjoy identifying new areas and then, and setting something up so that everyone else can also kind of get there.

Stamps.com was the same way I worked@stamps.com. Back in the day they were startup. Eventually they became big. I worked at Boku, which did mobile payments. Again, it was a startup that went public couple years ago. Airbnb was also a startup. So, you know, I do like to start early and, and, and essentially build something unique and, and something that, that creates value in the world.

Julian: Yeah, what's common amongst those experience of [00:04:00] starting obviously very different products across the board. But what's similar about those experiences you know, building companies from the ground level to, you know, either an exit or to, you know, a large kind of enterprise company.  

Akbar: Yeah. They all have one thing in common.

They all use technology to solve a problem. Yeah. And so the problems might be different. The markets might be different, but they use technology in a unique. To solve that problem. I think the second thing that they all have in common is that they're all transactional based. If you notice mm-hmm, , you know, there there's a transaction, it's not just a communication platform, it's a transaction based.

So be it commerce global travel or . So that's, you know, those, those are common thread. But really the, I think that the key is really how can use technology to simplify something and that, you know, that's really what I,  

Julian: what I look. . And when, when you go through this process of discovery, I think a lot of founders or people even not in, within the founder community view problems in a few different ways, one it's, you know, through an experience that then kind of.

Almost like, you know, a a light bulb moment where you kind of see something that needs to be solved and then you work towards that problem. Others kind of see it more proactively within their day to day life. How do you go about finding problems to solve or is it all through experience? What's your process?

You know, and identifying now, I think the third or fourth problem that, that you're solving,  

Akbar: It's actually very straightforward. You talked to. . Yeah. The more people you can talk to, the, the better you get at identifying problems you also look for trends. So if you, if you kind of notice a lot of these businesses are really similar and they kind of do similar things to, to use the technology.

But you kind of want to be early at solving those problems. You don't want be the last at solving that problem. So, so, you know, you talk to people and you look for.  

Julian: Yeah, no, that's, that's, that's amazing. I feel like the founder journey is, is a lot of that when you have an inkling and an idea, or it comes from that communication with people and customers and, and it starts to develop into this elephant in the room where that, that you just can't ignore.

So in, in regards to S Fox, I love, I love what you're doing there and, and the. There's the bottle of water. Fantastic. In regards, we were, we were talking before the show of how cool that that was. Hopefully somebody gives you a meal and then a plate and everything like that. Maybe the best . But yeah, tell me a little bit more about Xbox and, and Xbox and the traction you're you're facing.

And the, the partners you're starting to work with and where it's grown to now.  

Akbar: Yeah, look, I, you know, when, when we started Xbox, it was literally out of a garage. And then like we were building it and you know, every day we would meet to just solve one problem for that day. You know, today we do have a full service platform.

We've gone from just being a trade execution platform to liquidity, providing custody. We recently got a, a Wyoming trust license. We launched a, our NDF project, you know, which is a derivative. so the products that we've gone away from just like a trading execution to full service prime broker services.

Yeah. In terms of customers, you know, we've gone from, I would say individual and professionals to being a a premier institutional platform. You know, some of the biggest hedge funds in this space use our platform some of the, the traditional banks names that you probably heard of that I can't talk about yet.

They're all interested in using this platform. So I think, I think this is a it's gone from just, Hey, you know, this is a hobby in the garage to actually becoming a real product.  

Julian: amazing. Amazing. And, and when you're, when you're going through this, this building and development process, it sounds like two different customers that you were, you know, at one point you were doing individuals and professionals and then institutions.

How does that evolution take place? What was the decision maker to kind of move from one customer group to another? Or, or, I don't know if you're still working with both customers expanding that reach, what are the challenges and, and what's that evolution look.  

Akbar: Yeah. And a really good question. So a professional traders is really what we focused on and we continue to focus on them because you know, every group has lots of different, you know, ways of looking at it, but we wanted to build a platform that was for professional traders and so institutions to usually hire these traders.

And so it was a natural extension because they, you know, they understand what a good trading platform would look like. And. The the more, the more traders traded with our platform, the more we realized what we needed to add, like the custody. And so we did but a lot of it really came from just listening, you know, listening to the customers, listening to our team and, and then taking that one step at a time.

You know, I think everyone wants to kind of become big overnight and the realities, all startups are, you know, great overnight successes, usually after years in the making. Yeah. So, you know, I think at the end of the day, you know, that's, it just takes a long time and you just work hard and, and you.

Thing.  

Julian: Yeah. What are some of the challenges you're facing with building in web three at, at its current state right now?  

Akbar: I, I think web three is so early and so nascent that I think a lot of how it will be used and how it will be managed and how it'll be regulated is still unclear. And so we do find ourselves experimenting a lot.

The good thing is, you know, we do have a, a good revenue stream from our training. , but there's a lot of experimentation because it's clear that web three, you know, the technology itself is very interesting, but the use case in the application is still in the early.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's growing from what its conception was to now, what it is and, and the different regulations that are kind of guiding its growth in that direction.

It's interesting to see how kind of the, the push and pull of that experience and growing product. But I'm, I'm curious a little bit more about you know, the. The space in, in web three and where Xbox kind of is leading towards in that direction, is it offering more kind of trading services and APIs that build into this platform and just kind of more financial services that or, or is it something else?

Is it something bigger that kind of you're you're leading towards, or have an inkling that might be more worth more worth in terms of value to your customer base in the future? Yeah.  

Akbar: So look, I think, I think web three is really the use of decentralized. . Yeah. And in that you have a token, a lot of the web three companies actually don't have a company.

Wyoming has the way to actually registered what's called a Dao or Dow mm-hmm . And so let's say you built, you were starting a web three company, you set up a Dow, maybe you could Wyoming and set that up. Well, if there is no company and you have all of these tokens, where do you, where do you hold it and how do you manage it and how do you distribute it?

How do you. And so that's kind of what we focus on. We still focus on the financial services of web. So if you want do asset management of those tokens, you want to distribute that to your users. You want to kind of hold onto that in a custody. We can help with all of those services. And that's why we got a Wyoming trust license.

So that as a, as a trust company in Wyoming, if you registered a Dow, you know, we can, we can work with you. We can. .  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. Where, where do you think the, you know, how, how far out, maybe it's years? I don't know how many are, are we from adopting, you know, web three and in this technology, as, you know, not something that we invest in trade in, but something that we use as you know, for, for not only like financial services like loan but also, you know, your wallet and actually, you know, using it for transactions.

How far are we from adopting this type of technology in our day to day? In your opinion.  

Akbar: Yeah. I mean, this is, this is where no matter what I say, it's gonna be wrong. but basically I think what, as you said, as you said, it starts with financial financial transactions. Yeah. I'm not sure if it will become ubiquitous to all users.

No, anytime soon. I think a lot of the, the growth in, in blockchain and. We come from, I would say institutions over the next, you know, four to five years. Yeah. Underlying right. Do, do I think individuals will, will hold us, you know, stable points and, and manage it. Yeah, I do think that, and I think that as, as these, the rise of stable points happens as as more and more people learn how to use these wallets.

I do think there will be kind of growth in, in management of that, but I don't think that it replaces any of the current financial infrastructures. It is fairly early.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. No, it makes sense. I would just like to ask a question to, to get somewhat of a, an answer out of my guess, but I, I appreciate the the honesty there in, in terms of just like, you know, as you're building and as you're building technology and, and you know, the, the experience from Airbnb and, and now seeing it used as a global way to exchange, you know goods and services and, and use that as a currency.

What does that mean in terms of the ability for businesses to work internationally, you know, in terms of the global growth, is it, is it giving more access to other opportunities on a smaller scale and letting those grow and, and that's kind of my hope and, and my my want, but is it also, or, or more so giving more wealth to those who have kind of the means to access this technology now?

Akbar: Yeah, I. I think technology should always be open and UBIs. I don't think that technology should be limited by, you know, two people that have money or what sure. Because really the, the power of technology is really to, you know, essentially open the world up. And I think it will continue to do that. I don't think that you know, people with world will actually be the only ones, you know, with the technology.

I mean, just take into account Bitcoin, everyone knows after Bitcoin, but now we have E. . Yeah. And, you know, there's so many other blockchains and tokens that people can invest in. So I do think that to the extent that, you know, there is such a thing as a global financial network and platform, mm-hmm, a blockchain, is that, and it does really open the world up to kind of level the, the playing field.

Mm-hmm , but I don't think it's also a mechanism for voltage distribution or redistribution. I don't think that blockchain is a good medium for that, and I don't think that's gonna happen. I think governments are best suited to, to manage that. Yeah. Yeah.  

Julian: Curious with, with your experiences building companies from, you know, from the ground up and doing so multiple times over what are some kind of key features.

You look for for companies that will have success, you know, seeing, seeing so many go through so many evolutions and now, you know, S Fox is working within a new space and an environment. So you can think of it as a new product, but it seems like a repeatable process. Like what are some key features that, that you see will lead to success of not only the current company you're working on, but other companies around you?

Akbar: I think first and foremost, you've, you've gotta solve problem. Right? There's gotta be a problem. You're. Okay. You know, the, the more severe the problem, the better second generally when you, once you've solved a problem you also wanna make sure that there's some way to monetize because if you can't, you know, those tend to kind of struggle over time.

So that has to be a good monetization mechanism now to add to that, if you can add viral growth, That is phenomenal, but that's, it's not a necessary thing. Right. It's sure if it's there. Great. But if it's not, you can still build big businesses that don't have viral growth. Yeah. But the first two are really important.

Julian: Yeah. When you say viral growth, is that like is that like going viral essentially is that, you know, kind of exposure and like fast exposure and adoption from like, you know, your customer base. Is that, is that what you're talking  

Akbar: about? Yeah. If you have some sort of a network externality. Yeah. You know, emails, right.

If I can email you, you can email me then the value of email increases for both of us, but if I'm only only email access and no one else has it in the world, so it's zero to me. So right. The more people have it, the value. So if you have that kind of a mechanism in your platform or a new product, that that's a third piece that I look for.

Julian: Yeah, I'm, I'm reading a book that I found recommended to me called contagious. And it's all about this idea of of word of mouth and, and spreading your product by word of mouth as, as a, the best medium for getting, you know, your message across people to adopt your product. I'm not, I'm not sure if you've read the book or not, but I'm curious on how how that works.

Like, you know, we all think about this going viral. You know, if I think for, for my generation, it's about social media posts and either making the funniest video. Something that's extremely relevant to that, that point in time. How do you view it from a product standpoint on helping your product become viral and being adopted more quickly, more readily by your customer base or by a, a broader audience?

Akbar: Yeah. I like, I can think of it from a product perspective. Right. So generally any, we'll just take, talk about for a second. Yeah. You know, our platform is a buyer and a seller. mm-hmm so the more buyers I have, the more value for the sellers, the more sellers you have, the more value for the buyers.

And so that essentially means that the, the, you know, the more I can out of each site, the value gets created for everyone. Yeah. And so that, you know, that's something that you can look at from product perspective. Certainly if you have you know, one-on-one communication, right? If, if I, if you're withdrawing coins on our platform and you're suddenly with someone.

if you can make it so that they're both on our platform, then that also increases viral growth. So, you know, transactions, deposits, and withdrawals. All of those can add, to growth from a product side mm-hmm I think, you know, on social media, right? It's no different than following and retweeting, right?

So, you know, it's kind of very similar where you, if you can create more value every time, a new user ads and you create that value by growing the value for all. That's what it matters in terms of marketing communication, which is the part you're talking about. Not an area that I focus on at all. Yeah.

it's, it's I think that people are really good at that. And it's something that, that, you know, I should probably learn from them about,  

Julian: yeah, well, I love the, I love the value piece and I think I've, I've heard a time and time again and it's just been echoed. So I hope the audience is listening because it is such a, a thing about doing good work, adding value to both of your.

Parties for me, you know, we run a marketplace at outer labs so that, you know, we have, you know, two pieces of our marketplace is two sided marketplace and it's really about how can we increase the value and, and, you know, work the Seesaw. So, you know, I ask it from a product perspective because, you know, selfishly I'm curious.

On on your experience, but you know, being within so Fox and going back to, you know, building and what you're building today, what are some of the biggest risks that your company faces as you continue to grow? And you continue to, you know, work with more partners and add new products to, to your platform.

Akbar: Yeah, look, I think some of the, some of the earlier risks were, you know, would crypto survive. I don't think that the question anymore, I think crypto is here to stay and I think he's gonna continue to grow. But there are other risks, you know, making sure that our, you know, our product continues to be competitive in the market.

The space is evolving so fast that we continue to continue to develop new ways of attracting customers and, and creating value for them. I think regulatory is another big unknown because you know, the, the laws in the space are still. In many ways, it's in a good thing for us when you know, new laws come out because it does create clarity.

And we've built a platform that really just follows regulations. So I think in many ways it's a good thing, but it isn't unknown. It's something that we need to be prepared for.  

Julian: Yeah, no, that, that, that makes a lot of sense if, and, and if everything goes well within what you're building, what is the long term vision for S Fox?

Where do you see it, it going, where, who do you see it working with and what do you see it becoming in terms of its overall.  

Akbar: Yeah, look, I think long term, if you can build a global financial network, that again will, will be used by professionals, right? So institutions, money managers, RIAs, I think that can create a foundation for a lot of the people around the world to use blockchain.

Cause I don't think that individuals will, all individuals will go to the blockchain directly. I think they'll all go through some intermediary. And so creating that network and infrastructure to. A lot of these businesses access to the blockchain, it's really, really kind of the, the  

Julian: ultimate goal. Yeah, no, that's incredible.

Well, I, I'm really excited about where Xbox is going, the different products and the different people and stakeholders you're working with. It's, it's amazing to see the adaptation of web three technology into so many different areas, especially within financial services. You know, that that ability to access it it only trickles down to, you know, consumers and, and really offers, like you said, that infrastructure that allows a lot of people to use it through an intermediary.

So yeah, overall, just really excited about that. Bonus question. I like to ask all my guests for, you know, selfish research and for them to get more information and seek out more information is what books or people have influenced you the most. Oh, that's a good  

Akbar: question. I think I read a book on when you hear of who beats, think of a zebra thought that was a, that was a very eyeopening book.

It, it really changed my perspective. So I think, you know, one, as a result of that kind of, you know, I think you asked me the question in the very beginning, you know, what inspires me to, to think differently. Yeah. And it is that kind of thinking where, you know, you don't just follow what everyone else is kind of norm enormous.

And sometimes you do need to think a little differently in order to come up with ideas that, that are. And so, so I highly recommend that book.  

Julian: Amazing, amazing. And and obviously it's been such a, such a pleasure having you on the show, and I'm excited to share this with the audience, but where can we support you?

I'd love to learn more about your plugs, you know, gimme your LinkedIns, your Twitters. Where can we be? A supporter of S Xbox. And not only that get more information like this from, you know, someone like yourself,  

Akbar: I mean, S fox.com, right? You register it's free to register. You could use it as a free wallet.

And then give us feedback, you know do some training, give us feedback, cuz we'll only get better if we hear from, from the people.  

Julian: Amazing, amazing Aqua. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I'm really excited to share this with the audience and not only you know, have learned a lot from your experience, but from where you've taken Xbox and your other companies that you've worked with.

I hope you enjoyed yourself on the show. And again, thank you so much for joining for joining.  

Akbar: Thank you for having me really appreciate it.

Julian: Of course. .

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