We’ve been taking a journey through the BNPL space, we looked at the history, the product, and the go-to-market. I’d like to close the series with a view on the competition and where I think the industry is headed. Warning speculative discussions and opinions ahead.
Continuing the deep dive on the BNPL players, the next thing I wanted to look at is their go-to-market strategies. How do they get their customers? Links to Part 1 and Part 2. A word of caution, all the research and numbers are from an outside in perspective and based on publicly available information. There is a possibility that I’m completely wrong in my analysis!
My simple mental model for go to market is,
“I’ve never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.” – Paul Harvey
We live in interesting times, the world around us seems to be constantly on fire – physically and metaphorically. It’s gloom and doom all around. Morgan Housel touches on this extensively in his latest book, The psychology of money. He makes a convincing argument on why pessimism appeals to our emotions more than optimism. We tend to be more fearful than optimistic as losses hurt more than happiness from gains.
Continue reading “Optimistic PM, Pessimistic PM”Sooner or later, everything old is new again
– Stephen King
The thesis expressed today is that financial services are no longer a separate vertical component in consumers’ life. Consumers are going to be better served where they already hang out. So the natural extension for business with a large number of customers is to start offering financial services to their user base. In this model, financial services transition from a vertical component to a horizontal capability that all businesses will offer to their users. Hence the popularity of the term embedded finance.
Is this thesis valid? I’ve been thinking about this for a few years and this post is an attempt to work out a mental model and answer this question.
Short answer – this thesis is wrong. Long answer- it’s nuanced.
Continue reading “Old ideas, new packaging – is embedded finance worth the hype?”
An antipattern that I see in startups constantly is Senioritis. This normally happens when the startup finds some success and wants to upgrade its product and engineering teams. Typically at this stage, new leaders are hired and there is a we need to grow up vibe. These new leaders typically are hired from established companies/startups and bring with them their approaches. Continue reading “Premature optimization is the root of all evil”
We need to have a great brand– Every startup
In the last few weeks, the tech world has been abuzz with GPT3. There has been a Cambrian explosion in demos that look super cool. A16Z has a great podcast that goes through the details that is a must-listen.
How GPT3 works. A visual thread.
A trained language model generates text.
We can optionally pass it some text as input, which influences its output.
The output is generated from what the model "learned" during its training period where it scanned vast amounts of text.
1/n pic.twitter.com/imM66oyTIC
— Jay Alammar (@JayAlammar) July 21, 2020
You start by providing GPT3 a few example questions and answers that prime the model. After priming you can ask it questions and it correctly (mostly) predicts and generates the right answer. You could think about GPT3 as a super generalized inference model for text. You now how a generalized text-based interface that can understand what you are trying to ask/do well! Continue reading “A seismic shift in product management | GPT3 is the abstraction we deserve”
Continue reading “Adventures in underwriting, competitive advantage edition”
Continue reading “Portrait of an arms dealer – a look at Shopify (SHOP:NYSE)”
When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact. – Warren Buffet
As I age in the business world, I have internalized this buffet quote. I superficially understood it early on in my career, but now I understand it! With fintech as the backdrop, this post is a view of my mental model on business models and gross margins in general. What makes a good high gross margin business?
Let’s start with a 30,000 ft view of what forms a business. Businesses exist to provide value to a set of customers via the products they create. A firm solves a need and customers pay them to solve that need. At its core, a company is a machine that takes raw ingredients (physical widgets, human capital, and intellectual capital) and transforms them into products that customers pay for. Raw ingredients cost money (cost centers) and customers pay money (revenue centers) for the finished product. A good business, in the long run, generates a consistent profit i.e (revenue – cost) is a positive number. Profit takes various forms such as free cash flow, EBIT or EBITDA – but the simple model holds, value creation only happens when what you get for the product is higher than what it costs to make it.
Continue reading “Good Business, Bad Business – Fintech edition”
