This week I discuss SpaceX, and its Dragon rocket carrying American astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time in 9 years. The 20 year old company is a testament to the incredible iron will and absolute insanity of the most visionary capitalist alive -- Elon Musk. We walk through various attributes of the company and recent launch to derive lessons for the financial industry and the entrepreneurs rebuilding it.
In this conversation, we chat with Adam Hughes – the Chief Executive Officer at Amount, a technology company focused on accelerating the world’s transition to digital financial services via its digital retail banking platform, world-class digital authentication & fraud prevention tools, and ecommerce point-of-sale financing technology.
More specifically, we touch on digital lending industry Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), as well as the trends of working with large banks and enabling their digital transformation to access some of these themes as part of embedded finance and banking-as-a-service.
This week, we put on the Goldman hat and go shopping for companies. We buy a little bit of Folio and sell some Motif. We look at Personal Capital and the $1 billion it wants for its $12 billion of assets. We examine the private markets with Addepar / iCapital and SharesPost / Forge, and then move over to the banking sector. Should we buy Wells Fargo, as rumored, or some digital wallet apps? Read on for how to acquire a best-in-class Fintech.
I've got a gentle, data-backed story this week inspired by a great distinction made in this Techonomy article by the Chief Digital Officer at Schneider Electric. The thesis tracks three key lessons from attempting to bring large companies into the 21st century: (1) transform the core of your business instead of fumbling around at the edges, (2) digitize your processes and separately figure out a distinct digital model, and (3) catalyze a digital ecosystem from the new model. You can think about the distinction as either taking the existing business and slowly swapping out parts from human to machine (e.g., like RoboCop), or building the robot from scratch utilizing the latest platforms, markets, and artificial intelligence (e.g., like Terminator).
In this conversation, we talk all things embedded finance, platform banking, and APIs with Simon Torrance – one of the world’s leading thinkers on business model transformation, specializing in platform strategy, breakthrough innovation and digital ventures.
There’s an enormous gap between the financial needs of humanity and what the financial sector is able to deliver there. This gap is being filled by tech-savvy solutions and embedded finance plays which are putting into question the role of a bank in this new ecosystem.
The fintech industry is coming up on the tipping point of funding, revenue generation, and user acquisition to rival traditional finance with $20 billion in YTD fintech financing, the several SPACs, and Visa’s $2B Tink purchased. Defensive barriers have eroded.
Let’s take a moment to compare capital. While it is not the money that wins markets, it is the transformation function of that money into novel business assets that does. And while the large banks have a massive incumbent advantage with (1) installed customers and assets, and (2) financial regulatory integration (or capture, depending on your vantage point), there is a real question on whether a $1 generates more value inside of an existing bank, or outside of an existing bank — even when it is aimed at the same financial problem.
In this conversation, we chat with Rhett Roberts, the Co-Founder and CEO of LoanPro – a new breed of software company that is API-driven, cloud-native and easily scalable. Rhett and his co-founders created the company out of necessity when they ran an auto lending business as they could not find anything flexible enough to suit their own needs.
More specifically, we touch on all things around the lending industry, the auto lending industry and how everything there works, and of course, why LoanPro is such an awesome company, and so much more!
I examine the unbelievable transformation and restructuring happening in high finance. Global bank HSBC is planning to lay off over 10% of staff, looking at reductions of 35,000. E*TRADE is being acquired by Morgan Stanley, integrating its 5,000,000 accounts and $360 billion of assets into the Wall Street investment firm. Legg Mason and its $800 billion of assets are being folded into Franklin Templeton for $4.5 billion, less than what Visa had paid for fintech data aggregator Plaid and half of what Robinhood is likely valued privately. How do we make sense of these developments? How do we appeal to the heart?
