Everyone's a fintech now!

Another long week. I’ve got to do a much better job at stabilizing my hours and ensuring that I don’t take work home. It’s difficult and I’ve been proud of what I’ve done but the last few weeks have been rough and stressful. It’ll be my focus in March as we have a difficult month to close out the quarter.

I’m headed to Portland tomorrow to visit friends, shop at the Nike and Adidas stores, and do some wine tasting. Hoping to get some good R&R and then use Sunday to catch up on life back home.

On to the next…

We’re very likely in a sort of fintech bubble. Big banks and companies have realized that the red tape really hinders moving fast and innovating. Instead, they have gone to their big coffers of cash to acquire fintech companies instead.

We saw Plaid get acquired for $5b by Visa and now Credit Karma was acquired for $7b by Intuit. Shareworks was bought by Morgan Stanley in the last few months as well. With big cash piles, we may see this trend go on for a bit.

Andreesen had a great article on everyone becoming a fintech. While I truly believe that nearly every company will be “fintech” in some capacity, it is also really interesting to take a step back and see everyone trying to get a piece of the fintech pie.

Infrastructure companies such as Marqeta and Galileo have made it very easy for companies to offer banking services and issue credit and debit cards. No longer reserved for large companies like airlines, companies like Uber have their own credit cards with rewards. Lyft is offering free banking for their drivers.

Everyone seems to want a piece of this pie and given the recent acquisitions I can see why. We’re at an exciting time in fintech. I’m happy to be part of it with Secfi.