We look in detail at the state of marking recently-private-fintechs to the public market in mid-2021. Multiple industry segments have seen IPOs, direct listings, and SPACs transition fintech darlings into traditional stocks. How is performance doing? Is everything as magnificent and rich as we expected? Have multiples and valuations fallen or held steady? The analysis explores the answers and provides an explanatory framework.
In this episode, we connect with serial founder Ohad Samet, CEO of TrueAccord. Ohad has been working in fintech machine learning for a decade and a half, applying multi-dimensional mathematics to consumer finance. The result? A more empathetic approach to the traditionally gnarly problem of debt collection.
In this conversation, Will Beeson and I break down a few important pieces of recent news — the SPACs for SoFi and Bakkt, and Plaid/Visa falling apart.
SoFi is going public with a SPAC deal worth over $8 billion. A few things we touch on in detail: (1) this is still largely a lender, (2) there is a gem of an embedded finance play called Galileo that SoFi owns, and (3) the multiple is a little over 10x T12 revenues, which is not crazy expensive, but not cheap.
Speaking of Galileo and finance APIs, we transition to Plaid, and how it is is not going to be one of the networks in Visa’s network of networks. Who wins and who loses in the equation? And last, we cover the Bakkt SPAC of over $2 billion and our view on its future.
In this analysis, we explore an overarching framework for the M&A activity in the fintech, big tech, and crypto ecosystems. We discuss acquihiring, horizontal and vertical consolidation, as well as the differences between growth and value oriented acquisition rationales. The core insight, however, is about the arbitrage between the fintech and financial services capital markets, as evidenced by the recent transactions for Starling and Figure.
In this conversation, we break down recently published annual reports from Revolut, Starling and Monzo, three of the leading European digital banks. There are some fascinating insights to be drawn from the documents, especially in the context of the broader global fintech market. This is rich subject matter, and we surely didn’t cover everything.
This week, we look at:
How the music industry needed The Pirate Bay and Napster
Why J.P.Morgan is paying $1B in fines for allegedly manipulating the precious metals market
Whether DeFi is flirting with self-dealing and veering towards apathy
Why QAnon and 8chan are a bad example for global governance
And how the European Commission’s proposed crypto-market rules are highly productive for blockchain-based capital markets infrastructure
Square upgrades Cash App into a payment processing powerhouse, completing the loop between the consumer and merchant side of the house. Goldman Sachs acquires GreenSky, adding a lending business at the point of intent. This analysis connects these symptoms into a framework explaining the increasing integration between commerce and finance, and the increasing role that demand generation plays. That in turn explains how the attention and creator economies interconnect with financial services.
