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2021: Year of Fintech Product Opportunities
A glimpse into the past, present, and the future. Fintech is a huge opportunity to consider if you are still deciding where to put your skills or money.
2008: Pecuniary amelioration
The fintech revolution began in the last decade around the 2008 financial crisis with companies like Affirm, Credit Karma, Betterment, Kickstarter, Avant, Kabbage, Square, Stripe, Venmo, etc. Recession, in general, is a good time to create startups. Whatsapp, Groupon, Instagram, Uber, Pinterest, Slack, GV, Cloudera were all founded between 2008 -2010 timeframes.
Fintech startups came with new ideas to solve existing problems, took risks, filled the vacuum of innovation in banks, and created products that had far superior customer experience than traditional banks. The pervasiveness of cell phones accelerated this growth in the years to come. Today banks are interested in Fintechs and are either trying to build or buy their capabilities.
2020: The vicissitude
According to Digital Information World, the United States is the global capital of FinTech, with 1,491 startups and a massive $58.8bn investment in the industry. There is a resurgence of investments in Fintech startups when compared between different quarters this year. We are in a time when many think they have the power to innovate a product and start a company on their own. It is much easier now compared to a decade ago to start a new fintech venture. Amazon Web Services brought all of this infrastructure as a service and has reduced costs and complexity. Startups can launch faster, cheaper, create new products quickly, and have less spend on IT maintenance when compared to traditional large financial institutions.
