Ignite Partners: What Every VC Needs to Know About Compliance Risk with Ravi de Silva | Ep182

Ignite: Conversations on Startups, Venture Capital, Tech, Future, and Society

Ravi de Silva is the founder of DeRisk Partners and a seasoned compliance expert with a global track record, having led financial crimes compliance at Citi and held senior roles at JPMorgan and American Express. With deep experience navigating regulatory environments across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, he now helps banks, credit unions, and fintechs build scalable, strategic compliance infrastructures. In this episode, he shares what most founders get wrong about compliance, where AI can trip you up, and why sanctions are a bigger deal than you think.

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

00:01 Intro and Ravi’s background

01:04 Early career journey and transition into compliance

02:38 Lessons from Citi and JPMorgan

04:11 Founding DeRisk Partners

05:27 Why startups delay compliance

07:39 The AI audit gap in fintech

09:24 Risks in sponsor bank partnerships

11:20 Sanctions compliance and secondary exposure

13:42 Global expansion to Switzerland, Dubai, and Singapore

15:35 Using AI in compliance workflows

17:34 Challenges of selling compliance globally

20:10 Compliance red flags for VCs

22:05 Regulatory trends: MiCA, VARA, and global crackdowns

23:31 U.S. crypto regulation and the Genius Act

25:08 Balancing speed and compliance in early-stage startups

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