The Human Edge: AI, Trust, and the Future of Connection
episode
One Vision Podcast — Fintech, Banking, and AI with Theodora Lau
33 min
2 speakers
7 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
How did Anthony Sar end up founding FinTech Week Hong Kong and what inspired the early vision?
Hello everyone, welcome to a brand new episode of One Vision. This is Theo, your host for today's episode. Joining us all the way from Hong Kong is Anthony Saar, the co founder and CEO of Finiverse. Welcome to the show, Anthony.
Thank you for inviting me too.
So all right, I need to know 'cause I'm dying to know and I think it's absolutely fascinating. You are in Hong Kong. You've been in Hong Kong for how long now? More than a decade, definitely.
Fifteen years.
How did ch fifteen years. All right. How did you end up in the city?
Um basically long story short, I've had my ABA program uh fifteen years ago taking place in Changhai and I can't I almost fell in love with the city. I I I found the China is fascinating. And I wanted to do something there. Um and after some time we kind of became logical actually for me to move to Hong Kong because being a foreigner was and that very speaking land there in uh was not visible to actually appear it's a Uh in Shanghai. So yeah, I ended up in Hong Kong. So I used to say my heart belongs to Shanghai, my mind belongs to Hong Kong, but eventually I Uh and once I I learn more about Hong Kong stuff to leave I actually find it uh that is it essentially became my home.
Okay, easy. So I was born and raised in Hong Kong. This was like a long time ago. We're not gonna go into how many years that was. Um, but I've been living in the States for the last thirty something years. I do come back often. Um, I still find the city hard to navigate. Now this coming from someone who who was born and raised there and I speak Cantonese. I do not speak Mandarin. Um, I went to Shanghai once. I had so much problem because everyone was yelling at me. They just kinda expected me to speak Mandarin and I couldn't. I just look at them like I had no idea why you're yelling at me, but all right. Um, but Hong Kong is um I I like to tell people it's like a um a mix of San Francisco and New York and a little bit of London.
It's crazy, is exotic, is loud. is full of life and is full of chaos. But it has so many different sizes of the city. So I love it.
What were the pivotal moments that grew FinTech Week from 300 to 45,000 attendees?
But It's also like, you know, it it's one of those. You you love it or hate it. I often find it interesting. That's why I ask you like, you know, how did you end up in the city? Um It's it's a it's it's an interesting place. And along with that, you have co founded Finiverse and this was back more than ten years ago. I knew you from FinTech Week Hong Kong, um, 'cause you've been the organizer for the event since twenty fifteen. You are celebrating ten years? This year?
Yes, um actually it was technically last year, but yeah, we keep celebrating. Yeah.
Keep celebrating. That's a good thing. So I was at the event last year. It is huge, is busy, which is amazing. And it wasn't until afterwards that I looked at the stats that I think you guys had over forty five thousand people that were at the events as like a few days events. I remember there were a lot of people. There were a lot of different stages. There were a lot of different speakers. I had friends from the UK, um, who were with me and then I have friends locally in Hong Kong. I wanted to ask you, looking back in um, you know, the last decade. What are some of the special moments that that you had? Things that you were like, wow, this is really cool and I want to keep going. I wanna double down on it.
Um, or, you know, has everything turned out the way that you thought it would?
Yeah. No, it was uh it was amazing ten years. It's it's very eventful. Uh definitely We didn't really s think of that scale. of the physics week will ever become. I remember a conversation after first or second event we had with my colleagues and that back then we had like five people. And we were in Sabar uh celebrating our second event. And I told them, look, um In a couple of years we will have five south of people. And it will be packed and ULC will be one of the top um invaders and they were laughing. It it felt like super A surreal, even think of that number. It was just the beginning. Um but yeah, uh I didn't expect that we would be able to grow to these numbers.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
How did Anthony Sar end up founding FinTech Week Hong Kong and what inspired the early vision?
0:05–2:46
2
What were the pivotal moments that grew FinTech Week from 300 to 45,000 attendees?
2:46–7:04
3
How does the AI networking agent Samantha work and why is it built on WhatsApp?
7:04–9:46
4
What lessons did the pilot of Samantha at Genesis Festival reveal about AI‑driven matchmaking?
9:46–19:17
5
Why do traditional event apps fail and how does Samantha solve that problem?
19:17–27:49
6
How will the 2026 FinTech Nexus theme bridge global and Mainland markets?
27:49–33:08
7
What does the future of live events look like when AI handles introductions at scale?
33:08–33:42
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from One Vision Podcast — Fintech, Banking, and AI with Theodora Lau
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