Runway Series, by Olive Capital (https://olivecapital.vc), explores since 2019 the same curiosity that has always shaped this show, the stuff changing underneath finance, product, and the way people build and finance tech innovation. The next generation of great consumer finance companies, the ones that could become the Revoluts of the next decade, are being built right now, during this shaky technological shift. We explore: invisible rails, the agentic economy, trustless privacy, and everyday money.
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October 27, 2026Episode 35 min
[Everyday Money #10] The feature that kills engagement: over-gamification in fintech
Full episode There is a simple temptation in consumer fintech: if engagement is good, then more engagement must be better. More opens. More taps. More notifications. More streaks. More goals completed. More trades. More activity. That logic makes sense in many consumer apps. In finance, it can become dangerous very quickly. Because the purpose of a financial product is not to keep somebody inside the product. The purpose is to help them make better decisions, move money safely, and build a stronger financial position over time. Those two goals can overlap. But they are not the same. That is where over-gamification becomes a problem. Gamification, at its best, can be useful. Savings is abstract; progress bars and milestones can make a long-term goal tangible. Financial education can feel overwhelming; a guided experience can make the next action clearer. An onboarding flow can use small prompts and rewards to help somebody build a good habit. The issue begins when game mechanics become detached from financial outcomes. - Authored and produced by Raphael Grieco.
October 20, 2026Episode 211 min
[FULL Everyday Money #9] The user interface after agents
FULL EPISODE - There is a debate happening right now about the future of the user interface. Michael Mignano from Union Square Ventures (USV) makes the case that UI is here to stay. Nik Storonsky ’s direction at Revolut points somewhere else. Both perspectives describe a real part of the future. The question is how product interfaces evolve once software can reason, coordinate, and act with increasing autonomy. Will AI agents replace the user interface? As software becomes increasingly autonomous, a major debate is unfolding: do we still need screens when we can simply state a goal and let an agent execute the steps? This episode explores the clash between two visions of our digital future, the shift from navigating complex app menus to simply expressing our intent. We unpack why conversational chat isn't enough, the importance of "hiding the machinery while surfacing the meaning," and why visual UI remains essential for building trust, especially in consumer finance. Discover why the future isn't about the interface disappearing, but rather a powerful new division of labor: agents will handle the invisible complexity, while adaptive interfaces will provide the context, consent, and visual control we need to feel confident. - Authored and produced by Raphael Grieco.
October 20, 2026Episode 10 min
[trailer Everyday Money #9] The user interface after agents
TRAILER - There is a debate happening right now about the future of the user interface. Michael Mignano from Union Square Ventures makes the case that UI is here to stay. Nik Storonsky’s direction at Revolut points somewhere else. Both perspectives describe a real part of the future. The question is how product interfaces evolve once software can reason, coordinate, and act with increasing autonomy. Will AI agents replace the user interface? As software becomes increasingly autonomous, a major debate is unfolding: do we still need screens when we can simply state a goal and let an agent execute the steps? This episode explores the clash between two visions of our digital future, the shift from navigating complex app menus to simply expressing our intent. We unpack why conversational chat isn't enough, the importance of "hiding the machinery while surfacing the meaning," and why visual UI remains essential for building trust, especially in consumer finance. Discover why the future isn't about the interface disappearing, but rather a powerful new division of labor: agents will handle the invisible complexity, while adaptive interfaces will provide the context, consent, and visual control we need to feel confident. - Authored and produced by Raphael Grieco.
October 13, 2026Episode 2116 min
[full] ANNOUNCEMENT: Launching Angelo, the conversational and social-native dashboard, built for angel investors
Today’s episode is slightly different. We have spent this season looking at the infrastructure, behaviours, and product principles shaping the next generation of finance. We have talked about invisible rails, agentic workflows, programmable confidentiality, stablecoins, super wallets, financial intuition, organic growth, and the transition from crypto as a visible story to crypto as quiet infrastructure. Today, I want to bring those ideas together through something much more concrete. Today, we are launching Angelo . Angelo ( https://ask-angelo.com ) is a conversational and social-native investment dashboard for angel investors. It is a product I built because I could not find the tool I wanted for my own portfolio: something that could consolidate investments, handle the difficult mathematics, make sense of fragmented data, and help me communicate what I was seeing. So I built it. And then I became Angelo’s first client. That is usually where the most interesting products begin. Not with an abstract market map or a feature checklist, but with a repeated frustration that the builder is unwilling to keep accepting. The problem with angel portfolio management. Angel investing has become more accessible, but the infrastructure around it has barely caught up. The investments themselves are often exciting. The portfolio management experience is usually not. Information lives across spreadsheets, PDFs, emails, data rooms, fund reports, cap tables, bank records, and memory. Valuations arrive in different currencies. Instruments behave differently. Distributions need to be reconciled. SAFEs, convertibles, direct equity, and LP fund positions all require different interpretations. Then there is the reporting problem. An angel investor may want to know: What is my current unrealised return across seed investments? Which companies represent the largest share of my exposure? What is my portfolio worth in Swiss francs? How much capital have I deployed by year? Which investments have distributed cash? What is my exposure by geography, sector, stage, or instrument? Which positions are driving my performance? What can I confidently share with my community? Today, answering those questions often means opening several files, updating formulas, checking exchange rates, reviewing old emails, and trying to remember whether a number represents invested capital, current value, or a previous estimate. This is a strange gap. Angel investors are making long-duration, high-conviction decisions about companies that may shape the future of entire industries. Yet the system used to understand those investments is often a spreadsheet that has quietly become unreliable. The problem is not that spreadsheets are incapable. The problem is that they were never designed to become an intelligent, conversational, social layer for a modern investment practice. I built Angelo because I could not find the tool I needed for my own portfolio. Now I want to make that clarity available to other angel investors. The beta is live at ask-angelo.com . Build your portfolio, ask Angelo your first question, and see what your investment data can tell you. - Authored and produced by Raphael Grieco.
October 13, 2026Episode 200 min
[trailer] ANNOUNCEMENT: Launching Angelo, the conversational and social-native dashboard, built for angel investors
Today, I am launching Angelo , the conversational and social-native investment dashboard for angel investors. Angelo brings your fragmented portfolio data into one place, handles the difficult mathematics across investments, currencies, instruments, and performance, and lets you ask natural-language questions about what you own and how it is performing. You can then turn those insights into beautifully designed social cards to share privately or publicly. The value proposition is simple: see your angel portfolio clearly, understand what is happening, and communicate the judgement behind your investments. I built Angelo because I could not find the tool I needed for my own portfolio. Now I want to make that clarity available to other angel investors. The beta is live at ask-angelo.com . Build your portfolio, ask Angelo your first question, and see what your investment data can tell you. - Authored and produced by Raphael Grieco.
October 6, 2026Episode 197 min
[Everyday Money #8] How Robinhood echoes our convictions at Olive Capital.
Today for "Everyday Money #8" : -- If you watched Robinhood’s “Engines of Creation” (their HOOD Summit 2026) you saw a stream of product launches spanning 24/7 continuous markets, autonomous AI agent loops, verified social execution, and embedded earnings prediction contracts. But beneath the sci-fi presentation framing lies something more profound for product builders and venture capital investors. What Robinhood showcased is the real-world convergence of our four core investment pillars at Olive Capital: invisible rails, the agentic economy, everyday consumer finance, and sovereign cryptographic trust. Today, we are mapping Robinhood’s major announcements directly to our investment thesis and podcast episodes from across this season. Let’s break down how the future of finance is being built right in front of us. [ Learn more in the episode ] -- The podcasts are authored, edited and produced by Raph Grieco ( raphael-grieco.com | olivecapital.vc ).
September 29, 2026Episode 186 min
[Disclosure #3] What a user-operated identity vault looks like in 2027
Today for "Disclosure #3" : -- A lot of people hear the phrase “digital identity” and imagine a more convenient login. One app instead of many passwords. A faster KYC process. A government-issued ID on a phone. That is part of it. But it misses the more interesting question. What would a user-operated identity vault actually look like in 2027? Not a database that collects more about you. Not another profile that a platform owns. A vault you operate: a place where verified facts about you live under your control, and where you decide what gets shared, with whom, for what purpose, and for how long. The practical starting point is familiar. You already carry fragments of your identity across dozens of systems: your passport, driving licence, payroll records, bank relationship, university degree, proof of address, insurance policy, professional credentials, and transaction history. Today, every time a service needs one of those facts, the default process is often to create a new copy. [ Learn more in the episode ] -- The podcasts are authored, edited and produced by Raph Grieco ( raphael-grieco.com | olivecapital.vc ).
September 22, 2026Episode 173 min
[Disclosure #2] How to share your salary.. without sharing your salary (selective disclosure)
Today for "Disclosure #2" : -- There is a strange ritual embedded in modern finance. You apply for a loan, rent an apartment, request a credit card, or try to access a financial product. And almost immediately, someone asks for proof of income. What they often receive is far more than they need: a payslip, a tax return, a bank statement, sometimes several months of transaction history. In order to answer one narrow question “can this person afford this?”, we routinely disclose an entire financial biography. Your employer. Your exact salary. Your account balances. Potentially your spending habits. Sometimes information about other people in your household. All of that, just to establish a simple fact. This episode is about a different model: how to share your salary without sharing your salary. The underlying idea is called selective disclosure. Rather than handing over the complete document, you provide only the specific proof required for the decision at hand. [ Learn more in the episode ] -- The podcasts are authored, edited and produced by Raph Grieco ( raphael-grieco.com | olivecapital.vc ).
September 15, 2026Episode 163 min
[Everyday Money #7] When crypto stops being the story.
Today for "Everyday Money #7" : -- A few weeks ago, Konstantine Buhler, Partner at Sequoia, published a research graph titled “What the internet hyped, versus what got built”, to measure hype over the past two decades: https://x.com/Konstantine/status/2085053452640817334 . Take a look at the chart if you can, but let me walk you through what it shows, because it captures something we talk about a lot on this show: the difference between hype and infrastructure. The chart tracks what topics dominated the internet's attention each year since 2007, ranked by hype, alongside the most valuable company founded that same year. And if you trace the yellow line, the one labeled Crypto and Web3, you see a very specific arc. It barely registers in the early years. It climbs sharply around 2017, spikes again around 2021, and then falls off a cliff after 2022, dropping out of the top rankings entirely by the more recent years on the chart. At first glance, that looks like a story of decline. [ Learn more in the episode ] -- The podcasts are authored, edited and produced by Raph Grieco ( raphael-grieco.com | olivecapital.vc ).
September 8, 2026Episode 152 min
[Everyday Money #6] "Deliver WOW": the economics of organic growth.
Today for "Everyday Money #6" : -- A few episodes ago, we talked about the idea of a $0 CAC consumer finance product, and whether that was actually achievable. Today I want to come back to that question with a concrete example, because there is a company that has built its entire growth engine around exactly this principle: Revolut. Their internal slogan was famously displayed in neon signs across their offices: Deliver “wow”. On the surface, that sounds like a marketing line. But underneath it is a genuine economic strategy, and it explains a lot about how organic growth actually compounds. The idea is simple to state but hard to execute. [ Learn more in the episode ] -- The podcasts are authored, edited and produced by Raph Grieco ( raphael-grieco.com | olivecapital.vc ).
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