Builders Summit, Complete
Happy Friday, Fintech Takers!
Well, wow.
I’m not even sure what to say.
This week, we hosted 50+ fintech and banking folks in the mountains outside Bozeman, MT, for the first-ever IRL Fintech Takes event: The Builders Summit.
It went really well. Better than even my most optimistic imaginings (and I have one hell of an imagination).
Today’s newsletter is a quick reflection on the event: the ideas that were presented, the conversations and debates those ideas sparked, and what this event has taught me about the future of community and culture in the financial services industry.
- Alex
First of all, what is a “Builders Summit”? Copy anchor linkCopied
Great question!
We wanted to build an event for folks who aren’t on the conference circuit. Folks who are too heads down, talking to customers or building products, to waste a week in Las Vegas.
But what do you offer to those builders?
Our answer: A couple of days of deep conversations about the most important unsolved problems in our industry, with peers in a beautiful and remote location that forces everyone to unplug and be present.
That’s what the Fintech Takes: Builders Summit was.
Wait, you held it in the mountains outside Bozeman, Montana … in November? Wasn’t the weather horrific?Copy anchor linkCopied
Nope. We got incredibly lucky.
The weather was heavenly. Blue skies, sunshine, fresh mountain air, and highs between 55 and 60 degrees.
Shit, we even had the Northern Lights!
I normally try to act as the Montana Anti-tourism Bureau here at Fintech Takes, but in this one case, I cannot lie to you — this state is ridiculously beautiful, and it was on its very best behavior this week.
What were the big problems that were discussed?Copy anchor linkCopied
I’m so glad you asked!
We built the Summit around three deep-dive presentations, which were given by three of the most curious and thoughtful humans I know: Jane Barratt (Chief Advocacy Officer at MX), Mike Hsu (former Acting Comptroller of the Currency), and Frank Rotman (Founding Partner at 37Maru and former Chief Investment Officer at QED Investors). I asked Jane, Mike, and Frank to each pick a big, unsolved problem in financial services that they are personally obsessed with and build a presentation that would help Summit attendees understand the problem and provoke conversations about how it could be fixed.
I’m going to be collaborating with Jane, Mike, and Frank over the next couple of months to create additional content (essays, podcasts, research reports, follow-up events, etc.) that delves even deeper into these problems (and their potential solutions). However, for now, here is a quick summary of each of their topics:
The Future of the Data EconomyCopy anchor linkCopied
Jane’s presentation was on the future of the data economy, which is a subject that she is massively overqualified to talk about.
Her core thesis can be summarized by this slide:
Data is now an off-balance sheet asset for value creation.
That is an extremely interesting and provocative insight.
For most assets, there is a very defined way for companies to account for them, value them, and buy, sell, or otherwise extract value from them. That structure creates a level of transparency, and it is usually paired with or supplemented by laws and regulations governing the use (and potential misuse) of those assets.
Data is an enormously valuable asset to companies, and yet, in the U.S., it is seldom accounted for or regulated that way. Instead, it’s just treated as a byproduct of the assets that the market and regulators can more easily understand (like the exhaust coming out of a car’s engine).
This current state of affairs is super beneficial to the companies that are able to bottle up and repurpose that “exhaust”. However, as Jane argued in her presentation, it often leads to harm for humans and can, if left unchecked, warp the competitive dynamics of various markets.
This is a topic — broader than any of the specific fights we are currently seeing in open banking — that is starting to get some attention (see this article from Linda Jeng as an example), but it is deserving of far more.
The GapCopy anchor linkCopied
Mike’s presentation was on the gap between the practice of banking and finance and the regulation and supervision of banking and finance.
The core problem, which this slide from Mike’s presentation expresses well, is that the gap is getting bigger:
A lot of the challenges we have faced in financial services recently, from the Synapse debacle to the fights over Section 1033, can be traced back to this core insight: banking is getting significantly bigger, faster, and more complex, while the resources and capabilities of those charged with regulating and supervising banking have stayed mostly fixed (or, more recently, have shrunk).
This is a tough problem to solve (that was a theme across the entire Summit, actually … I wanted us to look the hardest problems right in the eye!), but Mike’s suggestion was to focus on the right side of the equation.
Can we level up regulators’ capabilities using technology (particularly LLMs)? Can we reduce the complexity that regulators deal with through the creation of industry standards?
These are questions we need to wrestle with.
Financial NihilismCopy anchor linkCopied
Frank’s presentation was on the growing trend of financial nihilism, which he boils down to the belief that people (particularly younger generations) have that the probability of winning the game of life (i.e., ending up with a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle) is zero:
Frank’s observation, which I think is spot on, is that when people feel like they have no chance of winning, they will make decisions and take risks that appear, on the surface, utterly irrational, such as investing in memestocks or spending all day betting on prediction markets.
Frank’s presentation led to a very spirited discussion among all the Summit participants about the causes of this P(win) = 0 mindset (Is it rational? Is it the result of social media and the marketing of casino operators? Perhaps a bit of both?) and what can be done to counter it.
What was the most surprising part of the event?Copy anchor linkCopied
The discussions.
I knew the presentations from Jane, Mike, and Frank would be compelling. That was guaranteed as soon as I secured their participation.
The part I didn’t know was how the conversations around these presentations would go.
We left A LOT of semi-structured and unstructured time for discussion, including Q&A sessions after each presentation (facilitated by the talented trio of Jason Mikula, Kiah Haslett, and Jason Henrichs), and breakout table topic discussions on big subjects like customer loyalty and the relationship between business models and product quality.
Would folks engage in these discussions? Would they feel comfortable sharing their opinions and experiences (even under the Chatham House Rule) with others in the room, many of whom they had never met before?
The answer was an unequivocal YES.
The level of engagement throughout the event was phenomenal, and I credit that entirely to the attendees, who went through quite a bit to get to Bozeman (despite all the airport disruptions!) and who cleared their schedules and kept (for the most part) their laptops closed and their phones in their pockets.
What was the most fun part of the event?Copy anchor linkCopied
Ohh man, I don’t know. Can I answer with a seven-way tie?
Throwing axes at wooden targets is both harder and more fun than I thought it would be. Line dancing is exactly as hard and as fun as I already knew that it was. I did not expect to see the Northern Lights this week. Meeting folks whom I’ve known for a while, but have never met in person, is an eternally awesome experience. Watching ideas physically ripple through an audience, as a group discussion progresses, is maybe the coolest thing I’ve ever seen at an event. Getting to combine two of my passions (talking about fintech and acting as an unofficial Bozeman tour guide) was an unexpected delight. And let me just end with this: if you’ve never seen Shaul David lead a group of fintech nerds in a karaoke performance of “Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus, then you haven’t seen Shakespeare the way it was meant to be seen.
Will you be doing more events like this in the future?Copy anchor linkCopied
Yes. Yes, we will.
The team and I already have lots of ideas for future events, building on what worked well this time (the small curated group, the intentionality and focus on deep discussions, etc.), and continuing to make refinements and improvements.
If you are interested in helping to shape these future events, please reply to this email and let me know. I’m feeling incredibly inspired right now, and I want to start brainstorming ASAP!
MORE QUESTIONS TO PONDER TOGETHER
Big news for the endlessly curious (yes, you): I’m collecting your fintech questions on a rolling basis.
What’s keeping you up at night? What great mysteries in financial services beg to be unraveled? Think of it this way, if a stranger is a friend you just haven't met yet, your question is a Fintech Takes conversation waiting to happen.
One that could headline a Friday newsletter or be answered in an upcoming Fintech Office Hours event.
Drop your question here, whenever inspiration strikes!
Thanks for the read! Let me know what you thought by replying back to this email.
— Alex
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