The View from the Office.

I met up with Mashfik Siddique, founder of startup Feastly, at Bryant Park. We were introduced by a friend and former colleague, Liz Goldenberg.

Mashfik grew up in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His father was in the computer business, so he grew up reading and talking about Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and other entrepeneurs. That was one of the reasons he applied to study in the U.S.

He came to America in 2016 after winning a full scholarship to study at Beloit College. He said the cold winters and small Wisconsin town (about 36,000 people) were a bit of a shock. He studied computer science and business economics.

He got interested in investing and opened a Robinhood account to trade US equity options. In his senior year he founded the school’s investment club and successfully lobbied the college to let the students manage a small portion of the endowment.

He graduated in May 2020 – smack in the middle of Covid – but managed to land a job in Orlando with Deloitte that focused on strategy and analytics. He spent three years in Orlando before moving to New York at the end of 2023. He enrolled at Baruch, where he is finishing a master’s in finance.

His idea for Feastly came from delis and small stores. He kept seeing crazy high card charges. He asked one owner how he tracked his business and learned the man’s only records were his credit card statements. Another had no records.

He started building a system aimed at helping them reduce those fees and stay on top of some of the financial flow.

The key he realized was finding a way to reduce credit card fees. Toast charges 3.09 percent plus 15 cents. Square charges 2.60 percent plus 15 cents. Mashfik wants to build a system that would charge less, about 2.50 percent plus 15 cents.

On the side, he has continued to trade. He said that he is finding more opportunity in prediction markets than equities because they are less efficient. Of course, there is also less liquidity, so he has focused on contracts, like bitcoin, where there is activity.

He taught me that the bitcoin contracts on prediction market Kalshi have very short expirations times of 15 minutes or so. Also, that they trade all day, seven days a week.

I don’t think we have fully grasped the implications of that kind of shift. To me, it suggests we will see explosive growth of prediction markets and continuous trading.

Mashfik is slated to finish school at the end of the year. Right now, he plans to work on his startup but also see what other opportunities emerge.

His dream job would be trading options at a big bank like JPMorgan.

So, if wants to forward this to Jamie Dimon, I’m sure Mashfik would appreciate it!

You can connect with Mashfik via LinkedIn or DM me for a warm intro.