In episode 002 of Blockchain Chatter, Dexter Cousins is joined by David Engel, Head of Business Development for Starkware, a Layer 2 scaling solution that helps companies build on top of Ethereum while reducing the cost of doing so by up to 1000x.
David is a business development executive, with deep experience in accelerating the growth of Web3 and Fintech companies.
Prior to StarkWare, David was a Fintech BDM at AWS, in both the ANZ and EMEA markets from 2019-2022.
David has also been a Commercial Director for the Australian and New Zealand markets for Verrency, a fintech platform that allows card issuers to innovate faster, and at scale, as well as Australian Country Manager for i2c, a Silicon Valley-based cloud payments processor.
StarkWare is paving the way to a Web3 future, using uncheatable cryptographic technology to scale blockchain for mass adoption.
StarkEx, StarkWare’s SaaS-based scaling service, has settled over $770B, processed over 294M transactions, minted more than 90M NFTs, and serves hundreds of thousands of users monthly through customers like ImmutableX, dYdX and Sorare.
StarkNet, a permissionless, general-purpose scaling solution, is live (Alpha) on Ethereum Mainnet. Developers from across the world are using it to build tomorrow’s decentralized applications.
Peter Jones used to be the CEO he now sells to. It's helped him bootstrap a core banking platform that now holds 20% market share in Australia's mutual banking sector, without a dollar of outside capital. We are celebrating the World Credit Union Conference coming to Sydney. Dexter Cousins will be bringing you interviews from […]
Andy Taylor is Co-Founder of Stakk an embedded finance infrastructure solution. On 6 July 2026, ASX-listed Stakk Limited signed a definitive agreement to acquire US document intelligence firm ParaScript for US$63 million. I've interviewed Andy more than once over the past decade, way back when he was just starting to build Douugh out of Tank […]
When QED Investors, Blackbird, Square Peg and Airtree all back the same early-stage Australian AI startup, the funding round is news. What matters more for anyone hiring or being hired in fintech right now is why they all said yes, and what the founder behind it says about building and hiring in an AI native […]
Looking to scale your fintech leadership team? Start at tieronepeople.com Clayton Howes is the co-founder and CEO of MONEYME (ASX: MME), a Sydney-based non-bank lender that has originated over $5 billion in consumer credit since 2013 and manages a $1.9 billion loan book today. In this conversation, Clayton covers the full arc: bootstrapping without external […]
