When I started my journey in Fintech, it was easy to spot a FinTech. These were startups that made loans, moved money, did trading.
I’m simplifying a bit, but it was not that complex.
Now FinTech is anyone in:
eCommerce (Shopify, Etsy, Amazon)
consumer brands (Spotify, Google)
social media (FaceBook, Tencent)
exchange/trading (Coinbase, Robinhood)
real estate (OpenDoor, Compass)
retail (Walmart, Alibaba)
infrastructure (nCino, Q2)
and plenty more…
Now the startups of yesterday, Square and PayPal, are quietly surpassing the marketcaps of the largest banks in the land.
The incredible growth potential of technology has changed the game.
Global giants like Visa and ICE are looking to defend their opportunities, or gobble the next disruptor. Relative newcomers like Apple, Facebook, and Amazon want to be at the heart of everyday transactions.
We are all FinTech now.
My goal with this substack is to create clarity for myself and learn with a community of informed readers during the journey.
Writing…is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
-E.L. Doctorow
What are the topics?
FinTech deep dives. Exploring topics like payments, stablecoins, BaaS, lending, etc. Who stands to win or lose from disruptive technology or the latest headline? What’s substance and what is hype?
Crypto tech. I believe technology like Ethereum is radically changing payments, lending, banking and much more. Many of my friends in “TradFi” don’t understand this. I hope to be a bridge to translate and explain why ETH, Diem and other transformation is a big deal.
Competitive analysis. What are the unspoken motivations behind company moves? What are the hidden competitive forces behind the flurry of headlines. As a CFA, I admit I enjoy reading a good 10K/8-Q as much as the next. But, my aim is to uncover insights overlooked by traditional wall street research
Why me?
Some fun facts:
My first gig was working for my local community bank. I reconciled credits & debits on reams of dot-matrix printouts (Mind-numbing work! But $4.25/hr was great!!)
In college, my side hussle at was selling web-hosting services (I bought wholesale, and marked up to retail) during the DotCom explosion. The community bank I had worked let me accept credit cards for “internet” transactions. (Neither of us knew any better.) Only in retrospect did I learn the power and ease of “recurring revenue”. It paid a few bills!
After school, thru some luck, grit and kindness of others I managed to break into worlds that are wholly unrelated on the surface. Some of those adventures led me to building stat arb strategies, investing in distressed mortgages post-crisis, alternative investing (electricity arbitrage, anyone?), and finally launching my own fintech startup with world-class investors.
Along the way, I had a first-row seat to disruption, the power of regulation, markets (and mayhem), boom and bust cycles, leadership and business development.
There are some incredible stories and relationships developed along the way. I hope I picked up a nugget or two of wisdom from the journey and hope to share them over time.
If there is a unique “value add” here - it is applying the breadth of domain experience to connect dots and draw insights that are easily overlooked.
Why subscribe?
Community
Most of our readers here are execs at major FIs, VCs, Founders & Operators. The newsletter helps me stay in touch with everyone. Please share your comments - the brainpower on this distribution I am sure can solve any problem!
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I intend to post randomly (1x / every 2 weeks) with no set cadence.
Most writing will be triggered by a timely news event, or a topic that would benefit from a lot more clarity. Let me know what needs more attention!
