In this FutureX interview, Shuo Chen, a general partner at IOBC, discusses how exponential technologies are reshaping finance. She frames the evolution of any industry on a three‑stage timeline – “Now” (current everyday changes), “Next” (the next 3‑5 years), and “Beyond” (5‑10+ years). In the “Now,” finance is becoming a core component of every software business, as companies embed financial services to improve margins. In the “Next,” AI will become mainstream once workers develop prompt libraries and better tooling, moving beyond the current novelty of ChatGPT. In the “Beyond,” blockchain will fundamentally digitise money, making it programmable and enabling the transfer of digital assets such as email domains. Chen introduces the “fractional founder” pattern: employees who identify a pain point in their full‑time role, experiment with side projects, and eventually spin out a full‑time startup that solves that internal problem. She argues large financial institutions should nurture these internal innovators or risk losing them to external startups. Throughout, she stresses a human‑centered, problem‑oriented lens for technology adoption, urging finance professionals to shift from being pure problem‑solvers to “problem explorers.” She recommends a concrete habit: regularly pursue a curiosity‑driven activity (e.g., newsletters, podcasts) to build a decade‑long knowledge base that fuels future problem exploration.
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We are back. We are here with Shuo Chen. She's a general partner at IOBC. She works with exponential thinking, foundational concepts, innovation, transformation, technology, artificial intelligence, leadership. These are a lot of things, Shuo.
Well, thank you so much for hosting this conversation, Mike. I'm excited to talk through all of those.
I want to talk about the financial system and what do you think is the most vulnerable to exponential technologies like AI or blockchain in a way?
It's a really good question. So the way I like to talk about the future state of any industry including finance is splitting it on a timeline. So I'd like to think about what is going to happen in the now, what's going to happen in the next, and what's going to happen in the beyond. Okay. So now is really the everyday changes that we see happening. Next is typically in the next 3 to 5 years. And then beyond is we're talking about 5, 10 years and beyond. So in the now, where we see a lot of change happening, is actually just the core of how people perceive finance. So one of my favorite things to talk about is how, at least in Silicon Valley, people are increasingly accepting a somewhat controversial statement that every company will want to be in finance. And so, of course, I can talk about this in detail more, but it's just the evolution of how software was eating the world and now finance is eating software. So every single company in trying to expand to a larger group of customers and to improve margins and profit opportunities, they're all trying to add and embed finance of some version into their existing business model. So we see every single company at least wanting to be in finance by embedding finance into how they run their current businesses. In the next, I see AI playing a massive role. Of course, some people might argue that AI is the now. The reason why I think AI is more of what's coming in the next 3 to 5 years is that there is a timeline that's required for everyday workers to really be able to start using AI. What we see happening now is that a lot of people are getting very excited about all that AI is capable of doing. Many people have already tried tools like ChatGPT, but, you know, oftentimes they go onto ChatGPT and they face a blank page problem where you're looking at a blank page and a blinking cursor and you're not really sure what question to ask AI and how to ask the question so you get the most helpful response. We think that's going to change in the next 3 to 5 years where people are increasingly going to have to have the tools to have an AI prompt library for sharing the best prompts with each other. People are going to increasingly have access to better AI tools to really change how they use it in a day-to-day setting. And then of course in the beyond is, as you mentioned, where blockchain is going to make a massive impact. We don't see that happening in the next 3 to 5 years, but in the beyond it absolutely will make a huge impact Because blockchain fundamentally changes the way we see money. It makes money truly digital. It makes money smart and programmable. And it makes money so transactable in that it allows us to transact anything of value, not just things that exist in the physical world. So now that we're increasingly spending more and more of our times in the digital world, we're eventually going to want to be able to transact things like that. For example, you probably own an email domain that you're very proud of. Yeah. worth some money. A good friend of mine is the proud owner of ben@gmail.com. That is a huge valuable email domain in and of itself. So imagine in the near future to beyond being able to transact that email domain and have blockchain facilitate transfer of ownership of that digital item and have it be of digital value.
Yeah, it's a different world.
It really is.
Yeah. So from your experience, What sets the most promising startups apart from the large financial institutions when it comes to adopting these new technologies?
So I'll start with what sets the founder apart, and then I'll talk about how that ripples into the startup. So the best founders that we've worked with are what I call fractional founders. These are people who don't quit their job cold turkey or drop out of school like you hear a lot in the headlines in Silicon Valley. So these are people who in their full-time jobs come across a very big pain point. And instead of just living with the pain point, they actually experiment quickly and they try to iterate through a lot of different part-time projects, side projects, side hustles, whatever you'd like to call them, to try to build a better solution. Amazing. And in experimenting, they're able to find a really good solution that they find solves their own problem. And then they soon provide to friends and family around them that help them solve a problem and eventually It gets so much traction that they convert this part-time project into their full-time startup. And this is the transformation process I see a lot of founders go through, especially the most successful ones. They start out as a fractional founder and they eventually turn and become full-time founders. And these tend to be some of the best founders because they don't just leverage a new technology, try to build a new solution out of thin air. They're actually solving an existing demand and a pain point. Pain point that people are currently struggling with. And so many of them are actually coming from existing financial organizations. The question you asked is, you know, what sets them apart? Well, they come from these existing organizations, they understand very well what the pain points are, and they build a solution to solve exactly that problem. And that's why they're able to gain so much traction so quickly. So my first kind of tip or advice for a lot of these large existing organizations is if you have the right resources of support for your employees to inspire and empower these fractional founders that already exist within your own company, they become the next leaders in the next big product division or the next era of the company. But if you don't necessarily have the right levels of support for these fractional founders, they have no choice but to leave your company and go start their startup externally within the organization. And so the biggest disruptor to that existing large financial institution's own business is actually employees who are already in that organization and who understand firsthand exactly what the pain points are and what problems need to have solutions built for.
So companies are— they really need to be focused on watching the humans in their own habitat, how do you say, It's a human vision what you're looking for.
100%. And that's precisely what leads to these great startups, because oftentimes when we look at the startup, we say, well, they happen to have landed on a really good problem and are building a solution that has a lot of users or has been attracting a lot of revenue. And we kind of go, we don't know why. Well, we have to look at the founder of that company and where they came from. Oftentimes it's because they were an employee within these large organizations, they lived and breathed these problems firsthand for so long. They know exactly where the pain points are, and so they're able to leave and build an effective solution. So we really do have to apply a very much human-centered lens to identifying where the next opportunities are.
And beyond improving operational efficiency, how can you— how can exponential technologies transform the financial sector? their role as a driver of social change in the whole world?
I love that question because, you know, especially in Silicon Valley, we like to apply a technology-oriented lens to looking at issues. But I think you're broadening the lens to say, well, how do we look at this making a bigger impact, you know, socioeconomically around the world? And I think the best way to think about this perhaps is just applying a very much problem-oriented lens. What are the biggest problems we need to solve? And with that particular problem, what are the best technologies that can form a part of the solution? And then we approach it from there. Because I think when you are saying, well, let's use AI, it's very easy to try to apply AI to everything, whether or not it's the most efficient solution. But really, the right way to look at it is to apply a problem-oriented and problem-centered lens to say, well, let's define what specific problem are we trying to solve, and is AI the right tool for this? Perhaps it's not AI. Perhaps we just need a simple database that we already have access to. Or perhaps it is getting different databases that used to sit in silos to talk to each other so we have the right insight. Or perhaps it is that we need an altogether different technology like blockchain so that we can apply and combine information that exists in the digital world with information that exists in the physical world and then apply this lens so that we can look at data in a more holistic way. So I think it depends on what specific problem we're solving.
So we were talking about this human side, and what do you think, what kind of mindset should finance professionals adopt today to stay relevant for maybe Over the next 5 to 10 years?
Yeah. So the biggest mindset shift, in addition to what I already shared about fractional founders, is really, I think, being able to evolve our roles from that of problem solvers into that of problem explorers. What I mean by that is, I think as everyday employees, oftentimes people are in the mindset of how do I solve this one specific problem? Because that's my job, that's my job function, and my job is to do that. should tackle this one specific problem. But I think some of the most future-proof and future-ready organizations encourage their employees to think one step beyond and to think about, well, how do I explore this problem further so I can solve tangentially related problems as well? So one of my favorite quotes is from the former Secretary of Education in the US, Richard Riley. He said that we are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist, using technologies that haven't yet been invented. In order to solve problems, we don't even know our problems yet. So being able to evolve our roles into that of problem explorers help us stay curious and explore a problem area further so that we can continue to build solutions that are relevant. Because most of the problems that we're trying to solve for the future don't currently exist. So how do we continue to get there and evolve? And I think in order to do that, just on a very practical level for anyone listening out there, whether you're a business leader or an individual trying to stay on top, I would love for you to pick up one new habit. If there's any one thing you pick up, it is just hopefully one new habit. This could be something you do on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, or even a monthly basis. Something you do to satisfy one curiosity you have. So it could be, hey, you know, from listening to all the sessions here today, I'm really particularly curious about future finance. Yeah. Subscribe to a new newsletter, follow someone new on LinkedIn, Follow this podcast, follow a new channel on YouTube, whatever that one thing might be, pick up one new habit that you persist with on a timely basis so that over time this becomes an incredibly powerful tool because now you are sitting on, you know, 5 years, a decade worth of knowledge of just following what's going on in this space. And oftentimes it is the information that you're picking up that you didn't think was useful at the time that ends up being super useful for exploring a problem later on down the line. So if you can just pick up one new habit, I think that will be an incredibly powerful tool in the long run.
Thank you so much for your time, for your wisdom, and welcome to Paraguay.
