The startup community is facing a mismatch of venture debt supply to their demand - digital lenders are stepping in.
Fintech is expensive. Fintech is everywhere. If you are a thinking about starting a financial services company, and it does not have technology at its core -- don't. You will lose to someone similarly positioned building a more augmented business. Fintech is the global competition for regulation, talent, and macroeconomic supremacy. Fintech is the trade war between the US and China. Fintech is Facebook and Amazon. Fintech is the next bubble to burst. Fintech has burst already.
Instead of modifying decades-old transaction infrastructure, Spade provides better fraud protection by creating a new system. Customers like Sardine, Mercury, Unit and Ramp have improved their fraud models by more than 15% using Spade's real-time merchant intelligence for the card ecosystem.
Today we're joined by Brett King, founder and executive chairman of Moven, one of the world's original digital banks, and Lex Sokolin, global head of fintech at ConsenSys. Lex and I discussed Moven's recent announcement to shutter its B2C business on episode 170 of Rebank. And we're happy to have the opportunity to connect with Brett directly to discuss the decision in more detail.
While VC funding to Latin American startups saw a year over year decline, the fact that it is stabilizing offers hope to the industry.
We look at why venture capital investors are slowing down, and the dynamics of how their portfolios work under duress. We talk about the incentives of limited partners to derisk exposure, the implication that has on cash reserves, new deals, and fundraising. We also touch on how the various Fintech themes are responding to an increase in digital interaction while seeing fundamental economic challenges. Shrewd competitors will be able to consolidate their positions and gain share during the crisis, but that will have to come from the balance sheet, not intermittent growth equity checks.
Deployment of capital may be down this year but VCs have shifted gear, bringing extra focus to founders and their ability to adapt.
A new report from company builder and venture group Team8 shows it’s a good time for fintechs to pursue unicorn status, provided they do the groundwork.
This week, we look at:
What it means to ask questions and find answers
From asking simple questions that result in neobanks and roboadvisors. Who will win — Schwab or Robinhood?
To asking macro questions about the finance / high-tech competition. Who will win — Goldman Sachs or Google?
To asking profound questions about the nature of the work, and the art of finding your own questions.
We can't formulate the questions for you. But we can give you a framework of needs for both the individual, and the organization.
The questions that you ask are the answers that you will get.
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.