Episode #246: How to Stay Innovative at a Fintech Startup Turned Global Financial Services Behemoth with Mike Todasco

Mike Todasco is the Director of Innovation at PayPal responsible for increasing the creative output of employees across the company. Prior to that Mike spent time at PayPal in Product Management, Product Marketing, Product Launch and Product Analytics roles.

Before joining PayPal he was the Founder and CEO of the eCommerce marketplace, Sketch Maven. Additionally, Mike spent over four years as the Director of Strategy, heading up mergers & acquisitions and strategic planning at NewPage, a portfolio company of the private equity firm, Cerberus Capital.

He has an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley, Haas School of Business and a BS in Finance from the University of Illinois. Mike has filed over 100 US patents since 2013 covering payments, online and offline commerce, beacon/BLE technologies, biometrics, and many other areas.

We discussed a number of topics in this episode including:

• PayPal’s objectives and challenges
• PayPal’s global innovation labs
• What’s behind PayPal’s stock price doubling in the past 12 months
• How PayPal goes from ideation to experimentation and commercialisation
• How PayPal momentarily lost touch with its entrepreneurial roots and what it has done to recover
• Blockchain and cryptocurrencies
• The value of innovation champions in large organisations
• Mike’s previous business, SketchMaven

Show notes:

Twitter: @todasco

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/todasco

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