The Fintech Takes: Builders Summit
Happy Friday, Fintech Takers!
Today’s newsletter is different. It’s about something new that we’re trying at Fintech Takes, and I think it’s a big enough deal that I wanted to take the entirety of today’s email to explain what it is and why we’re doing it.
Intrigued?
Keep reading …
- Alex
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Years ago, I spoke with a young, aspiring fintech founder. After introductions and some obligatory discussion of the weather in our cities, he got to the point:
Aspiring Founder: I want to start a fintech company.
Me: Great! The more startups in fintech, the better. What problem are you going to go after?
Aspiring Founder: I don’t know. What do you think?
I think about this exchange a lot. Specifically, I find myself asking this question:
Why would you want to build a fintech company before knowing what problem that company would solve?
There are two different answers to this question because, fundamentally, there are two different types of fintech founders.
And not to sound hyperbolic, but I believe the future of the financial services industry depends on finding ways to encourage one type of founder while discouraging the other.
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The first type of founder optimizes for outcomes. They view tech startups as a path to wealth and fame. They believe that shortcuts are always smart business and that building their personal brand is always good for the company. They often start angel investing before becoming founders or achieving a big exit (which has always struck me as really weird? But I digress …)
In short, they are dilettantes.
And the reason that we’ve seen a lot of them in fintech over the last 15 years or so is because fintech, as an industry, has been really hot during that time.
2021 was, of course, the high-water mark. One out of every five dollars invested by a venture capitalist in a private company globally went to a fintech company. This was nuts. I felt like I was losing my mind in 2021, watching this type of founder pour into fintech and just constantly muttering to myself in a Logan Roy voice, “You are not serious people.”
Thankfully, when interest rates went up and VC investment in fintech went down, a lot of these unserious founders jumped from fintech to AI or robotics or AI-powered Robots-as-a-Service or whatever.
And many of them were happy to leave fintech behind because their brief careers in our industry impressed upon them an indelible lesson: building in financial services is really fucking hard.
There are walls in financial services that you cannot bulldoze your way through. There are rules that you cannot break. There are market dynamics that are so pervasive, unchanging, and ineffable that we might as well consider them physical laws of the universe.
These constraints are deeply frustrating to this first type of founder.
However, they are strangely attractive to the second type of founder.
The second type of founder optimizes for process over outcomes. They like building in financial services because it’s hard. They understand that value often hides underneath boring and complex edifices. They are allergic to shortcuts and deeply suspicious of wasting their time on activities designed to stroke their own egos. They may want to found a startup, but they may equally prefer to build and launch kick-ass products from within larger established companies.
In short, they are pragmatic problem solvers.
As you might guess, I absolutely love this second type of fintech founder.
These are the folks who keep stubbornly trying to build the perfect personal financial management app, even though PFM is perhaps the biggest graveyard for startups in fintech. These are the folks who figured out how to make banking-as-a-service work long before BaaS became a household term. These are the folks who have kept building, heads down, in crypto, even during the most brutal crypto winters, because they see something promising and fundamentally unique in the technology.
When the first type of fintech founder asks, “What problem should I solve?” what they’re really asking is, “What problem will help me rake in the most VC dollars and lead to a big exit?”
When the second type of fintech founder asks, “What problem should I solve?” what they’re really asking is, “What problem will be the most challenging and important to solve?”
I want to help that second group of fintech founders, which is why I am hosting the Fintech Takes: Builders Summit.
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Let’s start with the details.
The Fintech Takes: Builders Summit will take place on November 12-13, 2025.
We’re hosting it at a ranch in the mountains outside Bozeman, MT, which is going to be just as amazing as it sounds.
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The event will be held under the Chatham House Rule, which means that participants are free to use what they hear at the event, but are asked not to attribute it to the person who said it (or the organization that person works for).
The purpose of the event is to bring together 50 exceptional fintech builders into one room. There will be some current or exited startup founders, but there will also be experienced bank and fintech operators in product management, risk & compliance, operations, engineering, and business development. We may even have a few regulators there.
We’re not aiming for specific roles or titles so much as we are a specific psychographic profile — that type 2 founder profile; the pragmatic problem solver.
I know you know who I’m talking about.
We are putting those builders together with the smartest fintech thinkers I know — industry experts who can spend hours breaking down the industry from first principles. The type of people who you bring a notebook and pencil with you when you’re meeting them for dinner. Folks such as Mike Hsu (former Acting Comptroller of the Currency) and Frank Rotman (Co-Founder of QED Investors).
I have asked each of these experts to pick one problem in financial services that they are obsessed with. A problem that keeps them up at night. A problem that they desperately want to see fintech founders try to tackle over the next 5-10 years.
During the Summit, each expert will give an in-depth presentation on their problem. Those presentations will be followed by full-group Q&A and discussion sessions, where the builders and industry experts will have the opportunity to work collaboratively towards potential solutions.
There will also, of course, be plenty of breaks for fun.
Given our setting, you can expect the activities to have a distinctly Western theme. Same for the merch (custom Fintech Takes flannel shirts, anybody?)
It should be an amazing event, but in order to ensure that, I need your help!
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The event is, by design, small and highly curated. We are looking for that Type 2 fintech builder that I described. It’s invite-only, but I want to make sure we are inviting the right people!
If that’s you, please apply to attend!
If you know someone who you think would be a great fit to attend (Ask yourself this question: Who do I most want to see found a fintech company in the next 10 years?), please forward this email to them, drop them the link to the event landing page, or encourage them to apply!
We’re not 100% set on the problems that our experts are going to present on yet, so if you have thoughts on the biggest unsolved problems in financial services, hit reply to this email and let me know! Also, if you think there’s an industry expert who just has to be included as a presenter, let me know. We might be able to fit them in!
And finally, if you work for a company that would be interested in meeting some incredible fintech builders (and letting them get to know your company), please reply to this email and let me know. We have some really compelling sponsorship options for the event, which I would love to share with you!
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!
INPUT REQUESTED!
I’m working with Dilly Labs and the wise and powerful Tom Johnson on a little research project and I am looking for folks who work at a consumer lending company (bank, credit union, non-bank lenders, etc.) and who have experience buying/implementing/working with credit decision engines to fill out a quick survey.
Credit Decision Engine Vendor Survey
I promise it won’t take long! And it will be extremely helpful! So …
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(Editor’s Note — If you work at a technology company that sells a credit decision engine, feel free to pass the link to the survey on to your clients. That’s perfectly fine. However, if you attempt to fill out the survey yourself, a terrible curse will befall you and your company. This isn’t a joke. The curse is real.)
Thanks for the read! Let me know what you thought by replying back to this email.
— Alex
