Don Pansacola is the co-founder and CEO of NextPay. NextPay is a Philippine startup that brings big banking into the hands of small businesses by building and offering financial solutions for MSMEs.

👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

Aside from setting the vision and rallying the Team in that direction, I serve as the Chief Learner, Chief Questioner and Chief "Doer of Stuff," — which essentially means coding, setting up automation, drawing workflows and establishing key technology partnerships.

🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

I built the core ledger system that our platform runs on and left some easter eggs for our future engineers to one day stumble upon.

🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

Building NextPay from a scrappy little idea to what it is today. Who would've thought we would grow to a company of 70+ employees in such a short time?!

🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

No-code technologies mixed with AI. Once-complicated technologies are getting cheaper, easier to use, and overall more accessible to non-coders. Adding AI to this mix will allow people's visions to become a reality with very little effort.

Much like how the world experienced a sudden surge of WordPress developers years ago, I believe that no-code will also experience a massive surge. Millions of people worldwide will start creating useful interactive experiences with very little barrier to entry.

I predict that coding will eventually be relevant only for cutting-edge technology, while 80% of applications or interfaces can be achieved without writing a single line of code.

💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry?

Always question the status quo, and take a first-principles approach.

The finance industry is highly regulated, with many players in the space who have been around for decades. The "best practices" when operating a company in this space have evolved over time to become what they are today. You'll find that many things are done "just because that's how they've always been done." Or worse, "everyone is doing it, so it must be correct, and we should do it too."

Entering the industry without any preconceived notions offers an advantage in that you lean towards asking all sorts of questions about the status quo–questions whose answers may seem obvious to seasoned veterans. But sometimes, you'll stumble upon something that plainly doesn't make sense today, which is an opportunity for disruption.

Innovation can be found in highly-regulated industries precisely because most people don't even think there's any leeway for change.

🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours?

I can talk for hours about why society is the way it is, the history of how we got here, the game theory that influences this, memetics, and how this all relates to evolutionary biology. And also UAPs–now that the Pentagon has confirmed them.

🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show?

Edge of Tomorrow

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🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Chocolate or Coffee