In this episode of Lykken on Lending, David Lykken welcomes Donn Healy, music producer turned fintech innovator, to explore how AI and blockchain are reshaping financial access. From empowering artisans in developing economies to redefining mortgage lending with microfinance and decentralized systems, Donn shares his vision for a more inclusive future. Listeners will hear how technology can create fairness, transparency, and opportunity across industries—and why mortgage professionals should be paying close attention to these emerging models.
[David] Listeners, we’re in for a real treat again as we talk more about innovation that’s happening in the marketplace. I have as my guest today Donn Healy. He is a music producer, turned Founder and CEO of Havona. The reason you go like what does a music producer have with a podcast that’s in mortgage finance. Well, I’m a music major and I’m here and I’ve been doing this for 51 years and I’m always excited when I get to meet creatives guys that are doing very innovative things. He has traveled the world extensively. Donn was also on Sony’s AI team as a music producer before AI hit the consumer market. He’s very knowledgeable on topic. He’s currently occupied with rolling out Havona’s technologies to the market across numerous territories and I’m really excited about sharing this because, Donn, you’re doing some things that are so innovative and listeners, this should just start striking your mind as to what is possible with AI. Donn, good to have you here, friend.
[Donn] Thank you, David. That was a cool intro. I appreciate that.
[David] Yeah, well you’ve got an extensive background and you’ve got to tell me we’re talking to you from Amsterdam and you’re on a houseboat, so we’re literally talking to you on your boat from Amsterdam, and I love the miracle of technology. It’s a wonderful thing.
[Donn] It is, it’s beautiful, yeah. The real Amsterdam houseboat experience is what’s going on.
[David] Yeah it really is. It’s just so exciting and, folks, we’ll have to put Donn’s Facebook page in here and his website. We’ll have all those links so you can go check them out and all that. But Donn tell us a little bit about yourself, your journey to where you’re at today, and touch on the music side of it, because that’s really where you saw some opportunities, that where things were not going as you would think, say not going the way they could or should.
[Donn] That’s a nice way to put it, it’s true, well, you put it all very well there, thank you. So I’ve been a music producer basically my whole life and that went into a lot of different formats as a professional. So I had my own gigs, I was doing my own music, but I was also producing music for clients and the pathway led me down to working with Sony’s AI team, which was very exciting because it was before anyone knew anything about AI. That wasn’t actually working in the field. So everyone was discussing blockchain and I got brought into this AI situation that to me, had just been referenced in movies and that was about it, right, and I got exposed to this, the process of software development right, they were like working on models at the very base, formulas in text, heavy documents all the way through to advanced UI interfaces, and it was music production software with AI under the hood. So I was making music and experimenting with the models and seeing what I could get them to do and how they could maybe improve things, and I’d produce pieces and the manager, was always looking for ways that we could, you know, push the AI to do things that would create something new that people hadn’t seen before, that was the thinking was not replace musicians, but enhance musicians. Right, that was very much Sony’s angle, which was cool. And, yeah, I over time just got to learn what AI was capable of and how software was made. And then one day the only way I can put it is I had a vision just explode in my mind and it was the early days of COVID, and I couldn’t unsee what I saw and I just had to go full into it.
[David] It’s classic language of an entrepreneur who, because you and I are both entrepreneurs, we see things more than get it in our head and logically think through it. It’s a vision thing, and I wonder how many listeners are here saying I got that same thing. I see things, what do I do with it? So you started seeing something. What was it and how did you put it into reality to where we’re at today with Havona?
[Donn] Well, that was quite a journey because I had no prior experience. I mean, I had done businesses that were very much my own sort of freelance work, but I had never actually built a team or built anything in tech, and it was all brand new to me anything in tech and it was all brand new to me. But when I saw it and I saw what it could do for the internet, for the people of the world and for artists, I just I had to go for it. So I just had to learn by doing, which I believe is the best way to do things right. It’s nice if you have some knowledge to lean on in the background, but, but learning by doing, if you stay with the process, you will figure it out, whatever it is. And if you have a vision that’s compelling enough to you, that it excites you and you feel like you can commit yourself over time to it, then the chances are pretty high that other people will feel similarly right, So if you feel excited by something, there’s usually another person that that’s going to resonate with, if not more. So, yeah, the essence of it was I saw that, with the right implementation of AI, we could invert the current mechanics of the way business models and marketing is working on the internet, so that you could, rather than have an extractive system that is basically taking creators and when I say artists, I’m a musician. I’m not talking about only musicians, I’m talking any type of creator in the value chain across all fields. So it could be in fashion, it could be the farmer that’s growing the cotton is also as much seen as a creator as a musician. So it’s a full widespread ecosystem of makers right at any stage of the chain. The idea is to give them sovereign autonomy where they’re an expert at what they make. The current model is, generally speaking, is taking its profit from them trying to reach their audience and trying to build their success. But AI gives us an opportunity to invert that dynamic and by the AI studying what someone is doing, it’s able to support their success building process, and then you could have a system that’s taking its profits by building the success of the person that you’re seeking to support. So it’s basically 360 support backed by AI. It’s not only AI, it’s on-chain, it’s the full, basically on-chain portfolio. There is no central home base for artists on the internet. If you think about it, we’re scattered across lots of different platforms. Some parts of us on Instagram, some parts on Spotify, some parts on, you know, facebook, on twitter and all these different platforms that represented, like an angle on us, but it’s not our world the way we want to convey it to our audience. You have to build a website to deliver that. But if you build a website, you have another place that you need to drive traffic to, that’s a standalone that you have to take care of. So, to deliver a platform that is a holistic, 360 support for the creators that is then using AI to build their success. That’s the essence of it. Over time, as we started to study different business cases and understanding different verticals different business cases and understanding different verticals, what, where this would be applicable and in what way we discovered a another way to open the impact of the system, which is in supply chain management. So you have below the factory level of production. So I’m talking like artisanal suppliers, of which there are millions around the world working with brands as a counterpart. There’s no supply chain management system at all for them at present. They’re using bits and pieces of different apps to conduct different parts of the process, and we studied this use case because it was in a variety of different industries and we saw that the main baseline issue is that they don’t have a very high level of technical literacy. So we’ve built a social media interface which most people in the world have access to and are familiar with, and we realized that we could build a supply chain management system inside it, put everything on chain and then through that, give them the efficiencies of having market access. The whole production process can be managed. You then have true, verifiable production stories at the end of it and you have the ability which is what we’re primarily going to talk about today to offer up additional financing solutions like alternative ways of supporting people financially that are at different stages of that value chain in real time according to the process that they’re going through. So it’s a holistic support ecosystem for the makers.
[David] Yeah, I mean listeners. When you’re listening to this, think about this. We have a new system. We had the music system that was, and now we have a new system. A guy like Don n was watching the inequities of people who are talented but are out in third world countries trying to bring products to market and had no means to do so. That matched up very closely to another person very near and dear to my heart, pavan Agarwal of Angel AI, and you connected with him and now take us to what is coming to fruition, if you would.
[Donn] Yeah. So I met Pavan in Texas and loved the guy. We really clicked and particularly as we started to discuss the rollout of what’s possible here, we realized that we have a really beautiful synergy between the systems. So Pavan has been innovating in terms of opening up financial access for people. Right, it started inside the mortgage world and through angel ai he’s been working on disseminating that out further, automating all the parts of it and making the system as fluid and automated as possible. Yes, and he in his heart of hearts wants to. He’s seen what it’s done for people when someone can go from not owning a home to owning their own home and having that stable sovereignty, and how that can affect their whole lives and you’ve mentioned this to me before as well. That same effect can obviously be extrapolated out throughout humanity, even outside of just owning a home. But in the financial support of their projects, if they’re working on a business and they can get early access to capital, there’s a lot of leverage that people can work with there. So, Pavan would like to decentralize access to finance for people that are potentially going to be able to work well with that and through our system we give access to people in rural Afghanistan and India and Africa all kinds of places that have really meaningful, really beautiful businesses that could do with some support to be able to operate more efficiently and expand what they’re doing and bring it to the world in a way that’s more complete for them and give them their power and sovereignty back. And that’s what we’re here to do. So with Pavan now what we’re doing is we’re integrating Angel AI across the whole supply chain management system and it’s going to be looking at the different moments where a brand could receive some microfinancing, or a farmer or a supplier or an artist at different moments, like if an artist is booked for a few gigs later in the year but they don’t have any gigs right now, they could get microfinancing against that and all. It’s like a gig economy being supported by microfinancing and all the chain.
[David] I think it’s so exciting the possibilities that you say, like, okay, Lykken, connect the docs for us. How does this work for mortgage finance? We have new distribution channels. We have seen Angel AI already have a dramatic impact on the mortgage industry and how things are done, new products coming to market. I think, listeners, what I’m wanting you to hear here is there a way to connect you more effectively to the consumers, to the marketplace that you are wanting to get to? We’re seeing all the traditional ways. They’re very expensive, they’re cumbersome. You got to be an expert and Pavan and Donn have teamed up to bring this into artisans and you say, well, aren’t? Yeah, I’ll say this, say this if you’re a mortgage lender, you’re an artisan, you’re bringing the art of finance to someone. Think about, as you listen to this, how that might be changing, and that’s what I’m sensing here. As much as anything, it’s giving our listeners a chance of what could be down the road. So what other role would ai play in this effort? Donn?
[Donn] I think I just want to touch on a little point and open it up. You just said that you started to open something for the mortgage lenders that are artisans. It’s the next wave of where the internet can take us and where the technology is going is, instead of these conglomerates that run the whole market, is the individual becoming sovereign and becoming its own access point, and then it’s like a web of interconnectivity going on. Yes, so it’s peer-to-peer, it’s much more peer-to-peer where this is going. So owning your own data, owning your own IP, and then the business that you’re conducting is happening directly and it can go global as well, right, so? it’s an individuation and an expansion of peer-to-peer. So we’re that’s what we’re going to be facilitating. But, yeah, so AI, there’s a lot of different elements that can be supported by AI. Right, because the AI is able to recognize different trigger points in conversations. So it’ll be an ai assistant in the background studying the conversation between two people that are conducting a job together or discussing potentially doing a job together. So it will see if there’s a delay happening in a job. It could suggest microfinancing to the person that’s being affected by that delay. Or it can find someone that’s the correct type of person, categorized against the service that you offer or the business that you wish to propose to the market. It’s able to study your product and then study the interests of people and make matches based.
[David] There you go, now we’re that that’s the part that gets exciting. All of a sudden, we’re starting to create customized products that are tailored to the individual’s needs and their financial system, rather than trying to cram everybody through the square pegs and the round holes that we’ve been doing as an industry for the 51 years I’ve been in it and a lot longer, I mean. This is opening up innovation and what type of financial services we bring to market. So talk a little bit more about how you ease access to microfinancing and how you’re supporting people running their businesses. Again, listeners, listen to what could be for you.
[Donn] So the microfinancing, the primary essence of it, is to look for the moments it’s real-time microfinancing in the production process and the sales process of a business. So when they’re going through the cycle of collaborating with someone else on a product, the initial proposal of the job, the acceptance of the job, then we have all the terms being automatically built, which is also another AI service so that they go through the discussion of a job, they agree on the terms the AI has been watching the conversation the whole time and then it can build a smart contract in the background and then it can suggest to both sides that it’s agreed to based on the following terms they can both agree to it or suggest changes, and then it can mint that on-chain. So the AI is able to do all the smarts in the background so the people can just concentrate on what they want to get done. They don’t need to go building the contracts anymore. They don’t need to go through all the laborious steps that they used to have to go through. The AI is able to basically streamline those processes. So it also means that it gives access to people that are not so technically literate or not so savvy on these fronts, but have their specialties in the craft that they do right, gives them access to new types of business opportunities. Then you have micro financing being suggested to a supplier that may or may not need it, but at the beginning of a job they now have money that’s been promised to them on the delivery of a certain set of work, so the microfinancing can facilitate that. Sorry, the microfinancing can facilitate them opening up what their business is able to take on Right, so they can now do more and they can activate more people in their team, even though the money may not already be handed to them from the job Right, the money may not already be handed to them from the job right. Then if there’s a delay in the production process, the brand may need access to financing to support their team while they’re waiting for the product to come that they’re then selling on to the end consumer. So that’s one example in, say, in a fashion supply chain for an artist, like I said, they could have gigs booked that are not yet paying them, but they know that the money is coming so they can get financial support while that’s going on, so they can invest into their marketing or they can invest into other areas of their businesses. Basically giving people the ability to grow on demand rather than being stuck to the rigid timelines of where their finances are dictating that they’re going to be getting funds and sometimes they don’t know exactly when in time that will happen. But the microfinancing can smooth out all those processes for everybody.
[David] I get excited when I say Allan Weiss is a dear friend of mine and I’m involved in several of his businesses with him. He thinks about things in a different way. Again, one of those individuals that lives in the same Puerto Rico market than where Pavan lives. And there’s just an idea, of so many ideas. One of them is microfinancing of equity of homes, and this creates an opportunity to do that. Where you can fractionalize, sell equity, investors can come in and buy up the equity, so you don’t need to refinance that real low interest rate that you have. If you need financing, this is one of those ways. So, listeners, I’m just trying to tie some of these dots together for you as we listen to this. Where do you see this all going in the future? Again, you’re an innovator. You went out of Sony AI music and now you’re creating the ability to bring artisans together with financing sources. Where is all this heading Donn?
[Donn] I see it as us building an ethical form of capitalism where it’s less extractive and more holistic.
[David] When you say extractive, explain what you mean by extractive.
[Donn] Extracting. Someone with market access extracting as much profit as they can from let’s say a number of entities along a chain that are all contributing equally in value to the production process of a given product, but they’re not being taken care of because what’s happening is the people not always, but in a lot of cases the people with the market access take advantage of that position and take an enormous amount of the profits. And then the people at the early stages of the chain are not being taken care of the way they could and should be yeah right. So it’s about realizing, as a species, that we’re better if we all take care of each other and we work together, the tide rises, right. Everybody rises with the tide. So if we can nurture each entity all the way along the chain, we end up with a healthy, holistic ecosystem where everybody’s able to survive long term and do well right. So ultimately, it’s about individual and group sovereignty, their data, their businesses being taken care of and being nurtured by the system as much as possible. Obviously, if you’re not very good at what you do, that’s still what it is right.
[David] The consequence of not doing what you do well is the free enterprise system, part of that. That part is still alive and well, always will be and should be.
[Donn] And it’s a meritocracy at the end. I see it as being something that just becomes more of a fair market, a meritocracy, a fair market, but one that’s made easy to work with for everybody as well. So it’s easy to access peer-to-peer. And you pointed out the fractional investment opportunity, which is another element of the system, because once you have these on-chain portfolios of people’s work, then you have the ability to fractionalize ownership of that and then you can build that into yield operating systems underneath it as well, and there’s a whole world of things that you can do with NFTs and blockchain underneath that to add additional layers of support and engagement and new forms of investment for everybody, you know. So, it’s new revenue streams, new access.
[David] There are challenges to all of this what are they? And let’s get in talking about what. One of the reasons I wanted to have you make you people aware of what’s possible, but one of the challenges is…
[Donn] Oh, there’s a few. But I would say as we go through different stages of the process, there’s obviously getting word out. There is always. So what we’re doing we are, our solution to that is that we’re working rather than doing loud marketing where we’re working with people that we have direct relationship, access to, that are basically ready to be engaged with the efficiencies of the system. Because, remember, we’re not just doing the individual sovereignty and data point. What we’re doing is we’re working on establishing efficiencies for them inside the industry that they’re working with, so the business processes that they’re going through are becoming more efficient, and then we, underneath that, we establish the ethical frameworks that we’re talking about. So we’re starting with businesses that are already in need of those efficiencies and bringing them on board so that we have the network effect of that happening. So we’ve got some really key relationships in place, particularly starting in the fashion industry, and bringing them on board so that we have the network effect of that happening right. So we’ve got some really key relationships in place, particularly starting in the fashion industry, where brands and artisans that are working together don’t have any supply chain management system. We’ve got key partners there ready to onboard and we’ll be doing that over the next six weeks and then we can do the network effect of that and then, once that’s in place, we can start to show people what’s really going on, and then you can roll it out, because it’s all about showing people how it can work. So we’ve been building it all in the background, establishing the right relationships, and now we’re plugging people into the system as of next month.
[David] Well, it’s getting exciting, but it requires capital, and you’re in search of investment capital. Talk about what you’re looking for.
[Donn] Well, we’ve just opened our seed round today, actually, as it happens.
[David] And we’re recording this on September 10th. So today is September 10th. You’re just opening the seed round.
[Donn] Yes, that’s right. So we’re raising a 2.5 million euro seed round and the minimum tickets we’d like it to be around 200K, and then, that’s it. We’re, open to finding the right kind of partners. We just want people that understand the vision, that are excited by it and, ideally, can also help us to make it real and, in some way and you know, not just provide capital, but also partner with us in making this happen, because there’s a real potential for changing how things are done in the world by doing this, you know.
[David] Well, what’s so fun working with you as you can network. We network within this community that we have. You were on, Kelly Resendez texted me yesterday that you were on a call with her. She is an innovator. She’s looking at all these opportunities that are coming along. It was. I mean, it’s really fun to get in this community of innovators, especially for a 75 year old man like myself. I just love what you guys are building and I want to be. I created a platform through this podcast and I want to help people get the. I want to help get the word out and get people thinking how and get people thinking how can people reach you, Donn. What is the best way for making, whether making an investment, understanding this or just having you on their platform to continue to increase the word.
[Donn] Sure, I guess our website or my email. I can give you my email.
[David] Yeah, what is your email?
[Donn] Don D-O-N-N at Havona H-A-V-O-N-A dot global. So you can reach me there and I can share the materials with you. We can get on a call. We can talk in more detail about the project if you’re interested.
[David] And yeah, I mean it’s probably the best way to do it.
[Donn] Yeah, that’s why it’s just simple. Everyone can access the email.
[David] Yeah, it’s so much fun talking to someone international, with a vision and, having had your background that you have had, it’s really exciting to see it and now that it’s just been a joy to get to know a really decent human being who’s trying to help others. That’s what Pavan is about. I think that’s where you and Pavan really synced up.Is your common goal to make it better for the average person out there.
[Donn] Yeah, because that and that’s what’s getting us out of bed every day, and the same with my co-founders. You know it’s like the. It’s not an easy road to go down. There’s easier ways to make a living in life than building startups that are tackling global issues. But doing something like this, where we can see the kind of people that we’re getting this in the hands of, and you know we’re protecting traditional ways of people making clothing in rural Afghanistan that’s been handed down through many generations, and if we don’t deliver this kind of system, these people are losing these ways of doing things and they’re amazing what they do. You know they’re really high quality, amazing stuff, and you know we’re supporting their livelihoods directly. And then it’s going out into the communities around them. And you know I myself, as an artist, I get excited by what we can do for artists, but I’ve become even more excited by what we can do by spreading this out deeper into the, the, the further reaches of humanity, and really supporting people’s livelihoods, you know.
[David] Very excited. It’s very exciting. I’m honored to have you, honored to get to know you, Donn, and do encourage people to follow your success and, for those that are so inclined, invest make an investment in this. I enjoy meeting people who are innovative and doing exciting things, and it really helps when they’re good people behind it, even more so, Donn, thanks so much for being on the podcast today. Hopefully, our listeners you heard something new. You’re hearing some things. It just gets a glimmer, it gets tucked into the back of your creative brain. We all have that. We all have our creative brain. Many of us are not using our creative brain. We’re not exercising that part of our being. It’s there in you. Listen to this and start thinking about what is possible. It’s a new world. AI is bringing it to us. Donn, thanks for being here friend.
[Donn] Yes, thank you, David, appreciate the opportunity. I’ll speak to you soon.
Important Links
- Press release about Japanese investor bringing AI powered innovation
- SunWest Mortgage website
- Angel AI website
- LinkedIn – Pavan Agarwal
Pavan Agarwal is a renowned leader in the mortgage lending industry and a pioneer in bringing artificial intelligence to the financial markets. Agarwal serves as the President and CEO of Sun West Mortgage Company and Celligence International, LLC.