Mick Unplugged - Daniel Kang’s Path: From Scholarships to Fintech Innovation and Scalable Impact

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Daniel Kang is the co-founder of Flobo, a fintech company focused on democratizing financial access for creators and entrepreneurs. With a compelling personal journey from a low-income immigrant family to a leader in the venture capital and fintech spaces, Daniel’s mission is rooted in making opportunities fairly accessible to all. He's also the author of The Super Upside Factor, which explores how individuals can apply venture capital’s asymmetric investing principles to accelerate personal and professional growth. Daniel is known for his innovative thinking, resilience, and commitment to leveraging technology and finance to create positive societal impact. Takeaways: Asymmetric Betting for Everyday Life: Daniel breaks down how venture capital's methods—betting big on outlier wins while managing risk—can be adapted by individuals to create outsized professional and personal results. Start Small, Stay Consistent: Success comes from executing simple principles with unwavering consistency, rather than seeking shortcuts. Daniel’s own story—winning scholarships, writing a book, and building a fintech—emphasizes starting where you are and building up momentum daily. Impact Over Mediocrity: Daniel’s drive stems from a fear of mediocrity and a strong desire to scale positive impact using technology, smart positioning, and persistent effort, rather than just working harder.  Sound Bites: "Budget for a 90% failure rate—success is about surviving long enough for luck to catch up." "Every bet should be positioned for outsized, 100x outcomes—even if you only win 10% of the time, your wins will outpace the losses." "Don’t fall into ‘intellectual obesity’—the real difference is made by executing a few simple principles, not by endlessly searching for shortcuts." Quote by Mick: "Sometimes you just got to get started with what you’re doing and understand that it’s a journey. The truth of the matter is, in almost everything we do in life, it takes time."    Connect & Discover Daniel: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsdankang/ X: https://x.com/itsdankang?lang=en Website: https://itsdankang.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsdankang Book: The Super Upside Factor   FOLLOW MICK ON:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mickunplugged/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mickunplugged/  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mickunplugged  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mickhunt/Website: https://www.mickhuntofficial.com                                                                                   Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mick-unplugged/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

or one of my biggest fears is living in mediocrity. I would rather live on the edge of possibility, trying to do what I think would be extraordinary rather than be mediocre. Welcome to MICK Unplugged, the number one podcast for self-improvement, leadership and relentless growth. No fluff, no filters, just heart-hitting truths,

unstoppable strategies, and the mindset shifts that separate the best from the rest. Ready to break limits? Let's go. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of McUnplugged. And today we've got a banger for you. Our guest is the co-founder of

Flobo, a finan- I'm sorry, let me start that over. He is the co-founder of Flobo, a fintech trailblazer reshaping how creators and entrepreneurs access capital, empowering the next generation to grow on their own terms. From idea to execution, from hustle to scale. He is the innovative, the driven, the game-changing, my guy, Mr. Daniel Cain. Daniel, how are you doing today, brother? I'm doing very well. Thanks for having me in for that flattering introduction.

I appreciate you, my guy. I appreciate you so much. So Daniel, on McUnplugged, we'd like to talk about your because, that thing that drives you that thing that's deeper than your why you know I love Simon Sinek and I love start with why but I like to go a little bit deeper so if I were to say Daniel today what's your because what's your purpose brother.

That's a that's a great question. I think the because that I'm going through right now is how do I think about having the greatest amount of impact related to making opportunities fairly accessible to everybody as possible? And I think it goes back to sort of how I grew up, right? So I grew up in a low income immigrant family and money was a big problem.

And one of the ways that I was able to get an education was actually through the generosity of many scholarship foundations. So throughout high school, I applied to about 120 different scholarships and was lucky enough to win a few of them so I could get an education. And that became the platform for me

to do many, many other things. So from then I did everything from microfinance to crowdfunding, all the way to, you know, things I'm doing with technology and finance today. And, and obviously with a book, I'm also trying to share some of my mental models and thinking so that hopefully at least a few people who are in my scenario can think about breaking through without risking everything and get to where they want to go. I love that dude. And I want to get into all of that.

You know, we've heard a lot, a big trend lately has been biohacking and that's been phenomenal. But I think what you're doing and reading your book a little bit, I'd almost call it financial hacking, right? Like it's how do we take the good parts and really understand what I like to say is financial literacy?

How do you understand what's going on in the world of finance and money? And I think you do a really good job of that. So let's go into that piece, man, like the super upside factor. Talk to us about, you know, why the journey of writing this book, who the audience is and what are some things people are going to get out of it? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So the book is centraled around this theme of asymmetric bets. It's how a unique breed of investors like to think about investing money. And that's the world of venture capital. So venture capital is a trillion dollar industry

but they make money despite being wrong 90% of the time and The way they're able to do this is because the few wins that they have have Extraordinary outsized outcomes and all of their losses are captain floored So an example of this is you know I used to work for a venture capital firm called Softbank Vision Fund and the founder Masayoshi-san became the richest man in the world for a brief moment using this, which is he invested $20 million in a company called Alibaba. It's a relatively well-known company. That 20 million became 100 billion. That's a 5,000 extra turn.

Even if he was wrong on 90 you know, 90% plus of his bets, that one would be sufficient to make up for everything covered at all. Exactly. So that's the whole premise of the book. And this has been proven out in a trillion dollar industry. This has been proved out for, you know, for founders, for investors. The premise is can I bring this and allow other people to make good career decisions using these asymmetric principles? And what are some of the conditions that must happen for this to play out in your life? And that's the premise of the book.

And I think it'll be really, really helpful for people who want to have a breakout in their career who feel stuck after following all of these signposts. You already went to the Ivy Leagues. You already did in the investment banking consulting or law or whatever, but you're like, you know, there must be more, there must be something more than just following directions. How do I think about making those big outsized bets?

I love it. I love it. So going a little bit deeper, you talk about the principles. What are a couple of these principles that, I'm gonna say the everyday person can put into their lives, right? Like that, maybe that person that's considering investing or, you know, you could be someone like me who has been an investor for a while. And while I'm not 90% wrong, I'm also not 100% right either.

Yes. So I think. When you need to be really careful about is little bit of knowledge is almost too dangerous. So when I talk about this, sometimes people immediately think about the lottery, right? So if you win the lottery, you get, you know, millions of dollars. And if you lose, you lost a 10 bucks or whatever. But that's not how the asymmetric principles work. As we know, the lottery doesn't really work for most people.

I'll talk about like three most important ones. Okay. The first one is to budget for a 90% failure rate. What that means is it doesn't matter where you're starting, you need to budget that you will fail most of the time. So a single failure shouldn't knock you out and you can start anywhere. So if you have a dollar,

you need to start betting in pennies, not in quarters, right? So that you can continue to play the game and you need to give luck enough chance to catch up. The second thing that's really important is about positioning the bets for 100X outcomes. And that usually involves using other people's infrastructure that's scalable. I'll give you an example of this. So I talked about how I was able to win scholarships and go to school. This was my first asymmetric bet. Minimum wage in my province in Canada at

the time was $10 an hour, while a single scholarship could be worth over $10,000. Meaning, if I want just one scholarship, it's the equivalent of me working a thousand hours part time. Right? So that's why I said I'll spend 400, I ended up spending 400 hours applying to 120 different scholarships. My hit rate was like 10, 15%. But that got me close to $80,000.

If I had spent the same 400 hours working a part-time job, that would have gotten me $4,000. That's like a 20x difference in outcome. And that's what I mean by position. Every single bet needs to be positioned for these large outcomes so that even if you win 10% of the time, you still outperform much of what you could have done. And then the final principle I'll talk about is this idea of creating a positive feedback loop.

So every single one of your bets should be informing the other 99 bets. So these aren't happening in vacuums and silos. And the probability of success isn't independent from each other, like a lottery ticket, right? So you buy one, same probability. They should all feed into each other.

And what you'll find is a nonlinear progression of getting better and tilting the luck in your favor so that you get those really big outsized returns. And an example of this is, you know, how my book came about. So I started writing one Saturday a month, about six hours or something. If I translate that, that's like 15 minutes a day. And when I first started writing, no one was reading my stuff. But in the back of all of that, I got a little bit better every time

I started writing. You know, every one of these, even this conversation would become fuel to talk about my next piece of writing or I'll see what people commented or what they highlighted or what they liked and I'll try to get better and better and better and You know after about a year of doing this I was able to you know, get a couple thousand followers medium.com reached out and asked me to give a talk and then in that talk was an acquisition editor from Wiley and Sons and that's how I got my book, The Super Upside Factor published. Right. And all of this wasn't, you know, this extraordinary amount of work. It was like 15 minutes a day of just writing, right. But it was just positioned in a really, really good way so that it's scalable, you know, through the internet, through like medium

and writing blogs. And I just got a little bit better. And you can see how, you know, this led to a book I recently, this book led me to speak at TEDx Stanford, and I'm sure that will lead to many other things. And you can see how by making these sort of bets, even in the everyday context, it can lead to really, really good outcomes. No, I love that. I love all the principles. I even love the theory from a personal development and even a leadership perspective. You're talking about the time. You understood what it was going to take, but you said, hey, I'm going to do 15 minutes a day. And then I'm sure at some point that 15

went to 20, and then that 20 went to 25 or 30. And then before you knew it, you had a book. And I think that same principle in life is really relevant to everyday people is sometimes you just got to get started with what you're doing and understanding that it's a journey. And I think where most people go wrong, I'd say even in financial literacy, is they want big results really fast. And the truth of the matter is, is they want big results really fast. And the truth of the matter is, in almost everything that we do in life, is there's a journey that takes time, right? Like Michael Jordan, my favorite basketball player

of all times, it was a journey before he was Michael Jordan, the six-time world champion, right? And I think, tying this back to you and the financial literacy piece, it's just understanding that things take time. You've got to look at historical performance to see what to do next. But no matter what, don't give up, right? Yep. And I think just to add to that, I call this intellectual obesity, where people try to understand the most optimal way of doing things, whether it's related to financial literacy or leadership or whatever, but really it boils down to how well you execute on a very simple set of principles. And I think the reason people are looking for the answer is they're looking for shortcuts.

How do we think? How do I get the best thing and get the best workout or get the best financial investment or get whatever? But if you've worked out at all, you know it's a very boring process of like a pretty set training set and you just keep doing it. Same thing with finance,

same thing with really everything. And I think just taking a few of these principles and really going deep on execution is what really matters. Yep, absolutely, man, absolutely. What's one piece of financial advice that you'd give to again the everyday person that's really Looking to start investing. What are some things that people can do? What are some things that they should look at or look for? I see. I'm just gonna qualify this shouldn't be taking this financial advice because I'm not authorized to give out financial advice, but

I think it starts with the boring stuff, right in the startup in the venture world Angel investing is very common people are like, oh, I'm gonna angel invest in this company It's gonna be uber or stripe or Airbnb My view is that angel investment should be a very small piece of your portfolio if anything at all It just really goes down to can you do the bare minimum and the basics of, can you put away like 20, 30, 40% in savings? Can that go into low cost index fund? Can you optimize for taxes

so that you're not paying all of these taxes? Can you look at QSBS? There's all of these things that are out there that's very, very boring, but I think that's sort of how you build the foundation. And then after that, you can be a little bit more creative, right? And I was actually recently at the last shareholders conference for Berkshire Hathaway.

It's the last one where Warren Buffett will be leading, presumably, I mean, definitely leading Berkshire. I don't know if we'll be leading the shareholder meeting anymore, but that's sort of what you were saying is like, hey, you don't need to be invested all of the time. You don't need to be very creative. It's it's it's about time. Can you just do the right things over and over and over and over again until these actions start to compound over time?

Yeah, yeah, really good stuff, man. Really good stuff. So talk to us about Flowbo, man, like the Fintech product software that you have. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so Fintech was an extension of what I wanted to do and of, you started with the why, and my big why was can I make access to opportunities a little bit fairer than what it is today?

And I thought one of them was gonna be around financial access. And I think whether it's finance or knowledge or mental models, it'll continue for the rest of my life. But Flobbo was about providing financial access and services to non-salary employees. So think freelancers, think creators. So we were able to enable a bunch of these creators,

for example, to launch their own business or provide funding to creators actually who started their own venture capital businesses, right? So the way we thought about it at the time was banks generally don't like freelance income for two reasons. The first is it's very volatile, right? It's like $1,000 today, $10,000 tomorrow,

and then it moves up and down. The second thing is the credit rating of the person who's paying is uncertain. So if I'm employed by Google, the bank knows that Google is like a double-A, triple-A credit rated institution. If I start working with you or Joe or whoever, the bank actually has no idea what the credit rating is.

So that's why it's even harder for them to finance it. And what we ended up doing is why don't we just take a look at traditional finance models for credit scores, but also overlay the social aspect of it. If we plug into YouTube's API, if you plug into sort of Patreon's API and say, we know how you've been growing since the beginning of it. If we plug into YouTube's API, if you plug into sort of Patreon's API and say, we know how you've been growing since the beginning of time, how much content you've been releasing, how much money you've been making per video, like all of these things, we thought we could do a much better job of giving them a credit score and on top of that, provide financial services. But I think this is like one of the many projects that I'm

working on. And hopefully, you know, along with the book and things, I can continue to sort of make good impact on this stuff. I love that, man. And you, one of your, I'm gonna say core values, and you're not saying it out loud, but I hear it, is you really wanna make an impact, right? I would say, you know, one of my mentors, Robert Irvine, he talks to me about that on a daily basis.

So, hey, Mick, if you're not making an impact, why are you even doing it? Right. And so I'd love to hear a little bit about why making an impact matters to you. I think this is a personal reflection that I've had a little bit, and maybe it's a little bit selfish, but I think my biggest fear is or one of my biggest fears is living in mediocrity. I would rather live on the edge of possibility, trying to do what I think would be extraordinary rather than be mediocre. And that's that's one of the reasons. mediocre. And that's that's one of the reasons. The second is you only get one life and you try to make the most of it. And a lot of impact is a lot about positioning and less about just work. So if I'm going to work just as hard as everybody else, and by the way, people who make more impact, I don't think necessarily work that much harder. I think it's really about how do they position

themselves so that I can leverage other people's stuff. Might as well sort of be in that position where I'm able to scale the positive impact that I have. And I think, you know, for example, technology is one of them, but we talk a lot about AI and democratization of AI from foundational models like chat GPT or like Gemini and whatever else. What that allows people to do is whatever you are today, whatever impact, whether good or bad, it just allows else. What that allows people to do is whatever you are today, whatever impact, whether good or bad, it just allows you to amplify that impact in a much bigger way.

And where I wanna be is in a node where I'm having that good positive impact, where I get to work with a lot of interesting people and you do a lot of good in the world, because I think that's probably the better way for me to live and far away from my fear of just pure mediocrity. Yeah, yeah. You just brought up AI. So what role is AI playing today in Fintech?

I'm going to have a follow-up question. Oh, yes. AI, like I said, everyone has their opinion. Here's my opinion. AI is going to be democratized in terms of the models that are provided, right? So, you know, whether it's, whether it's Anthropic or OpenAI or any of these large models and even open source models now, the models are getting better and better.

And if you've been following sort of the pricing for access to their API, it's been considerably getting lower and lower. And I think Sam Altman recently said that they expect the price to be cost plus from whatever the GPU costs are going to be and what the energy costs are going to be long-term. What that means is everybody now has access to this technology. So I think there's a couple of things that will happen.

The first is the winners are that are going to win with this is going to be organizations or groups that have unfair access to distribution. So can I reach people, capital, like can I put more money in than everybody else, or data, do I have unfair access to data so I can train my own models to go do things. And unlike the software era, like the B2B SaaS era,

a lot of large companies and incumbents like the Googles and the Microsofts, are moving quite quickly. So they are moving really, really rapidly to capitalize using their unfair advantage of distribution, capital, and data. And I think there will be a really, really big place for the incumbents, unlike just the software,

where all the startups started disrupting everything. On the other hand, I think the startups have a place, individuals have a place, because the cost of getting started became really, really low, particularly if you're a non-technical founder. You can now use these vibe coding tools like lovable, replit, and bolt or whatever, and pump out and test your ideas at a pace that's unprecedented. And when that happens, you can start building a niche for yourself where you build that distribution, you build that unique sort of user experience for a very niche group of

people and sort of grow from there, which is how traditionally startups have sort of survived. So I think the dynamics are going to continue, but the big player's gonna have a lion's share, I think, of the value that's being created with AI. I love that. So you saw me writing notes just now. I wrote down, so where do you think, if we were to fast forward three years,

and you look at Fintech today, versus where it could be in three years, where do you see it going? Like if you were to paint a picture of three years, what does that world look like? Fintech is such a broad, broad piece, but. Or choose one avenue of Fintech. Like what's the, I don't want to say low hanging fruit,

but what's something that everyone could correlate to? I see. I think an interesting piece that I'm thinking about right now, I don't know if it'll be the biggest piece, is one of the limitations of agents in the obvious one that's talked about is the inability for them to complete the transaction.

So suppose you have a personal agent, you say, hey, can you book a hotel in Okinawa or, I don't know, Seoul or something like that. It can get you all of the recommendations. It can even get you probably the pricing with the right APIs and search or whatever. What the agents can't do is complete the transaction for you. And I think that'll be in interesting play

where finance, if they can figure out a way to do this in a regulatory safe way, right now I don't think you can because of KYC and AML problems. Then I think agents will become extremely powerful and be very embedded into any of these sort of experiences. I think we start to see a little bit of this already. So, ChatGPT announced their partnership with Shopify. So, now in the search results, you get Shopify results and things. But what

if you can now execute the entire sales from all of this? So I think, um, if the payments can be implemented and agents become a large part of our day to day interactions, I think the interfaces that we're familiar with will start to disappear a little bit, unless it's for entertainment. So instead of me going to amazon.com searching for all of the things that I want, and then putting in a basket and then pressing checkout, hopefully it'll be an interface where I just tell the agent to say, this is what I want. You know what I want.

Get me what I want. And then there is no need for this interface thing. And I think the use for interface might disappear unless it's entertainment related. So I will watch this video not because I can't get this information, but I enjoy watching the videos and the hand moving or whatever. So that's what I expect that to happen. We'll see what happens in the future.

Hmm. Good stuff, man. Good stuff. So how do you personally, how does Daniel personally balance the innovative side of you? Because you're one of the most innovative people that I know. And then balancing the business you, because you're one of the most innovative people that I know, and then balancing the business owner, the you've got to run a team, you've got to develop. How do you balance those worlds, man? Because I think for most leaders and for most entrepreneurs in general,

like that's the big challenge that we have, right? It's like, okay, I know I've got to be the big vision, but there are times that I also need to step into the execution side of this too. That's a great question. I think one of the hard things about being an early stage founder is you need to have two very conflicting things in your head. You have to have this really, really big vision of like what it's going to be. And then you have to figure out what am I doing in the next minute to make sure that I get to these metrics and prove that I'm right.

And if I'm wrong, move somewhere else and pivot. And for most entrepreneurs, I think the level of strategic decision making, like the vision stuff, is going to be a very small sliver of what you do. And everything else is going to be about how to. Like, how do I execute this thing? How do I get to the retention numbers I want or the

acquisition numbers I want and so on and so forth. Um, and that's honestly most of my day writing has been a good outlet to balance that a little bit, right? So writing, I talk about, you know, how I cope with all of these failures and getting punched in the face every day, or, you know, the small wins or some of the small insights that I found that were super helpful for me. And I think that is a creative outlet for me to sort of balance both things and actually

taking a little bit of time to write helps me refresh the mind and then give a new perspective on even the execution part. So that's how I've been trying to balance these two things. Good stuff, good stuff. What's one tip, I don't wanna say trick, I don't believe in tricks. What's one tip or piece of advice that you have for the entrepreneur that's in that early startup phase to not just balance, but to really focus on

the growth side of everything. Because again, I also feel like a lot of entrepreneurs, especially when they're in early startup phase, the energy is there starting out, but then they hit a hiccup and it's like, oh boy, right? Like how do you, what's the one piece of advice you have for them to get over the hump and stay up? I'll probably come full circle back into what we started with, which is the why. Anytime a entrepreneur says they're going to start a venture backable company, not a lifestyle business, but truly one of these billion, $10 billion companies, everyone says

it's going to take 10 years, but nobody believes, no first time founder believes it's going to take 10 years. Myself included, by the way. I thought, you know, I'd be doing this for two, three years and I'd be the exception, right? I'd be the Brex that became Unicorn in three years or whatever. But it takes a very, very long time. And unless you have like the mission of, like I said, I want to make opportunities accessible in a fair way to everybody else as much as possible.

And it's going to be something I'm going to be working on whether it works or it doesn't, whether I have impact or not for the next 10 years. Pick something like that. Pick that and then you can have an iteration of that thing, right? It's a pretty broad way, you know, whether it's this book or my fintech company or whatever, it's a very broad way and a broad stroke of working towards this mission. I would just pick that and then continue to sort of do it. The other couple of things that I would think about is don't lie to yourself. So you can pretend

you work really, really hard or you can fake it, but you know deep down that whether you're working 100% or not 100% and the biggest regret is not going to be based on the outcome. The biggest regret is going to be, did I give it my all? And if you didn't give it your all and you give up or it doesn't work out, that's going to be the biggest regret ever. So those are like the two things I'd really consider when you start a company in your earlier stages.

I love that. I love that. I love that. Daniel, I know you're a busy guy. I appreciate your time. I'm going to do a rapid fire five quick questions before we wrap up. You ready? All right.

What's your favorite productivity hack or tool that you use on a regular basis? Sleep as much as you can. Protect your sleep and then everything else you're able to focus and be productive. I need to work on that, bro. I still, I try everything. I I need to work on that, bro. I still, I try everything.

I'm still four and a half, five hours max and my body just is like, get up. My mind is up and I got to roll. So I do need to work on that though. What is your go-to music or playlist? Like when you really need to focus? All right, I love Max Martin. He's like the number one pop producer of our time

or something close to that Ariana Grande's into you is like how it gets started and then the rest of the playlist just follows Okay. All right. I like it. I like it. What's one book or podcast that's really shaped your thinking? I'll do two really quick ones on this one James Clear atomic habitsomic Habits, if you haven't read it, it's great. The premise is simple. It's easy to read, go through it. The other one, most recent one was Buy Back Your Time. I think it was by Dan Martell or something.

I wish I would have read this a year sooner. It's really talking about how you optimize your time as an entrepreneur and build sort of productivity and leverage through other people. And it was a great one. I love it, I love it. What is one word that describes your entrepreneurial spirit? Resilience.

I'll just keep going. That's me. That's one of my pillars right there. And the last one, Dan, where can people find, follow, and connect with you? Anywhere with my handle, it's Dan Kang, I-T-S-D-A-N-K-A-N-G. It's dankang.com. I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Instagram, I'm everywhere.

So look forward to connecting with everybody and the super upside factor is out officially. So happy to share that as well. Let's go, the super upside factor. You definitely want that. I'm gonna put links to that everywhere. So it'll be in the show notes. I'll connect with you and share it with you on socials as well. Definitely a great book. We again, co-publishing together with Wiley. So we're part of the

Wiley family on that piece. Daniel, dude, honored to have you on. Honored for you taking time out of your day and thankful for the wisdom and tips that you gave the listeners and viewers, man. No, thank you. Thanks for your time. You got it. And to all the viewers and listeners, remember your because is your superpower. Go Unleash it. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Mick Unplugged. If today hits you hard, then imagine what's next. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and share this with someone who needs it. And most of all, make a plan and take action

because the next level is already waiting for you. Have a question or insight to share? Send us an email to hello at mickunplugged.com. Until next time, ask yourself how you can step up.