Max Faldin, CEO/Founder Silverbird, has decades of experience building global IT & fintech businesses. After getting his MBA at Stanford, he co-founded Russia’s largest eCommerce company, Wikimart (dubbed “the Amazon of Russia” by Silicon Valley VCs) and raised $50M+ from Tiger Global. He then switched over to work with e-commerce companies in Asia, focusing mainly on payments as a CEO, investor, and advisor to numerous startups. He started Silverbird amidst the pandemic in London, in 2020, after noticing a major banking gap in international trade: millions of underserved SMEs around Africa, Middle East, and Asian regions and beyond were exposed to high fees, unfair rejections, unnecessary paperwork, and outdated regulations. The key pain point was high-value cross-border transactions – something international trade is all about. Silverbird makes cross-border banking business-friendly and international payments borderless, limitless, frictionless and affordable. It can onboard companies traditional banks can’t through the use of AI and data-driven KYC which analyzes publicly open customs and supply chain data to assess the risk-profile of a particular SME.
London
Kamyar Naficy, Founder/Principal KNECTCOMMS
Kamyar Naficy is the Founder and Principal of KNECTCOMMS, a marketing and communications consultancy to the finance, technology and fintech sectors. He previously worked in senior marketing and communications roles at JP Morgan, London Stock Exchange Group and UniCredit. He holds a BA from the London School of Economics and an MPhil (Masters) in Management Studies from Cambridge University.