What does embedded finance look like from the other side of the Atlantic?
In this podcast episode, I speak with Jane Podbelskaya, founder of Charge Forward in Toronto. Jane advises software companies and investors in North America on embedded finance: helping them understand the opportunity, map their roadmap, and choose the right partners. It is, to put it simply, exactly what I do in Europe. When she reached out on LinkedIn, it felt more like comparing notes with a counterpart than interviewing a guest.
Jane's background spans software engineering to a decade in VC, where she had a front-row seat as Shopify turned payments into 75% of its revenue. She eventually decided the biggest gap in the market was not on the capital side but on the education side: software executives still do not understand embedded finance, and that is the problem she has built her business around.
Key Takeaways:
- How VC and PE funds are actually thinking about embedded finance today, six years after Angela Strange said every company will be a fintech company
- Why embedded finance is increasingly seen as an antidote to AI disruption, not a casualty of it
- What the data advantage of vertical SaaS really means in practice, with concrete examples
- The North America versus Europe divide: where the markets differ and where they are converging
- The framework Jane uses with software CEOs from day one: how to assess the opportunity, where to start, and how to avoid the most common vendor selection mistakes