About Spout Finance

Spout Finance is building a DeFi prime brokerage that lets you borrow against your tokenized US stocks at 0% interest, and lets lenders earn yield. Loans are funded by a disciplined, per-asset covered-call strategy rather than by charging borrowers interest. We are a team from traditional finance, engineering, law, and design, building at the intersection of TradFi and DeFi.

Team

• Marc Ryan — Co-Founder & CEO
  Former tech investment banker at HSBC covering fintech, software, and hardware, including the Arm IPO. Mathematics at Vanderbilt with research on the Black-Scholes model, and a long-time options trader. Founder of FlipVault, an Aptos-funded decentralized P2P exchange, and angel investor in Theoriq, PIN AI, and GAIB AI.
• Paul van Mierlo — Co-Founder & CTO
  Smart contract developer and ZK researcher with a Master's from Erasmus University Rotterdam. Multiple-time award winner across global hackathons, specializing in privacy protocols, payment systems, and secure DeFi.
• Paul Jan Reijn — Co-Founder & General Counsel
  Legal counsel trained at Erasmus School of Law, with years of experience in software, having architected legal frameworks for international B2B SaaS and private equity portfolio companies. Owns the regulatory architecture behind Spout's tokenized equities, from entity structuring to onchain compliance.
• Ramy Chatbi — Lead Protocol Engineer
  Cryptographer and Solana engineer specializing in zero-knowledge proofs. Founder of Styx Protocol, a post-quantum privacy and payments layer for Solana with a native on-chain STARK verifier. Previously full-stack developer at Thales. Master's in cybersecurity from Epitech.
• Ishan Lakhwani — Infrastructure Lead
  Full-stack blockchain developer with 7+ years shipping at scale, engineering at SendAI. Rust and Solana protocol work across DeFi and mobile apps reaching 10M+ users. Top contributor to IntentKit, a 6.5K-star open-source AI agent framework.
• Moby — CFO
  Spout's autonomous CFO, an AI agent we designed, built, and trained in house to run finance end to end. Moby keeps the books, closes each month, forecasts runway, models dilution, and assembles board reporting on demand, giving a lean team the rigor of a full finance department at machine speed.
• Ashish Yadav — Head of Design
  Founding designer with experience at Headout, Aquanode, and Rancho Labs, building scalable design solutions for products at consumer scale. Deep expertise in design systems and brand identity.
• Saksham Tyagi — Product Engineer
  Full-stack Web3 developer building across Move and EVM chains. Previously full-stack developer at Rewardsy and UI designer at iknowspots. Hackathon winner across Aptos, TON, and QuickNode, and recipient of an Indian government grant under the MSME 4.0 Ideathon.
• Onuorah Gabriel — Marketing & Growth Lead
  Growth operator scaling go-to-market engines for web3 products from zero to one. Led community systems and partnerships at Santa Browser and Digital Era Bank, and spearheaded GTM strategy at GemXBT. Runs Spout's points program and acquisition strategy.
• Mira Emelis — Head of Socials
  Social media strategist and SheFi Season 16 alum with a Business Ed. background, helping blockchain companies grow their social presence. Supported Popula (NEAR Protocol) through social campaigns and community-driven product insights.

Advisors

• J. Christopher Giancarlo — Regulatory & Policy Advisor
  13th Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, where he oversaw the first regulated market for bitcoin derivatives. Independent director of Nomura, board member of Paxos, Chair of Polymarket's Advisory Board, and senior advisor to Jefferies. Co-founder and Executive Chairman of the Digital Dollar Project.
• Neil Amhis — Quantitative Strategy Advisor
  PhD, UCL. Former quant analyst at BNP Paribas and Natixis; now Lead Researcher at Zann Capital.
• Saiprasad Raut — Product Advisor
  Chief Technology Advisor for Crypto at Worldpay (FIS); Co-Chair of the Hedera Council's Technical Steering & Product Committee.

Angel investors

• J. Christopher Giancarlo — 13th Chairman of the U.S. CFTC; director at Nomura and Paxos; Chair of Polymarket's Advisory Board
• Anatoly Yakovenko — Co-Founder of Solana Labs
• Dean Swennumson — Co-Founder & Head of Operations at Superstate; formerly Compound Labs
• Eric Chen — Co-Founder & CEO of Injective
• Paul Taylor — Former BlackRock Private Equity; #1 most active crypto angel investor in the US (2024)
• Shane Qiu — Founder & CEO of Bitway
• Saiprasad Raut — Chief Technology Advisor, Crypto at Worldpay (FIS); Hedera Council Co-Chair
• Anna Yuan — Founder of Perena; former Head of Stablecoins at the Solana Foundation
• James Parillo — Former General Partner at Figment Capital
• Stefano Glauser — Partner at Polymorphic Capital
• Steve Schoonebeek — Business Development Executive at Triton One
• Whales Lee — Co-Founder of CollegeDAO; ex-Head of Product at Solayer
• Riley Wild — M&A / Corp Dev / VC at Figment

Backed by

Solana, Anchorage Digital, Draper Dragon, Solayer, 2Square, Perena, Bering Waters Group, Vessel, Taisu Ventures