Plaid acquires This Week in Fintech — and both founders explain why

We'll talk to you soon. Have a good one. Let me tell you about Finn.ai, AI, the number one AI agent for customer service. If you want AI to handle your customer support, go to finn.ai. And let me also tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents. And without further ado, we're going back to back Zack. Oh, we got Nick.

I love having Zack. I was excited to go back to back Zack to Zack.

Look at this plaid on plaid.

But this is a beautiful background. This is a beautiful outfit. Introduce yourself.

Tell us how it's going. This is where I'm living now. It's good to see you guys.

Good to see you, too.

Good to see you, dude.

How you doing?

Just let's just start with a gong. Start with a gong. Let's start with a gong hit. I don't want to wait.

I don't want to wait.

Delay. The anticipation was too high for the last one.

Congratulations.

You know how long I've dreamed of that moment.

Take a photo for my mom.

Let's do it.

Got it.

Fantastic.

Uh,

very fun.

You can of course screenshot it. Yeah. But it's cooler. It's cooler. you later you will be able to screenshot yourself taking a picture which is and then say look [ __ ] mom I took this screenshot of me taking a picture for you

give us some background tell us the story of how you wound up in this particular situation uh just ju just just take us through it

well I'm excited to talk to you all about it because as pioneers of new media I feel like you'll understand this more than most people but you know we've been building this week in fintech as what started as a fintech newsletter and turned into more of a fintech media company over the last six and a half years and

the Plaid team approached us about five months ago.

Yeah.

And I thought we were going to talk about a partnership. So I came in there ready to sell a sponsorship, ready to sell a media deal.

Yeah.

And they said, "Actually, you know, we've been thinking a lot about how we can improve the conversation around fintech and we want to partner with you guys." And what that means is we want to acquire the business.

Yeah.

And they won. They outnegotiated me. So here I am. That's great. So, so what do you think stays the same? What do you think changes? Uh are you going to be working in their office? How does all this fit together?

Yeah. I went and did a little office tour this morning and I got a badge. So, they uh they haven't gave me my gun yet, but they did give me my badge. And so, after six and a half years working out of a home office, just seeing another person and that having a conversation in an office was a transformative experience for me.

Yeah.

We are going to keep things mostly the same from now and then we'll just keep adjusting as we go. I think probably the best comp for what we're looking to build is something similar to Bloomberg with Bloomberg Business Week where these are two really complimentary properties. There's obviously a parenting company. They share a name, but you can be a Bloomberg software customer without reading business week and vice versa.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Uh what is the state of fintech?

What are you I mean, you know, you've you've been six and a half years. You've seen the the boom, the the momentary bust, the the comeback. You've during that time there's been so many companies that have, you know, thrived throughout the entire uh period even as the market was was in turmoil overall. Uh but what are you most excited about today? Mhm.

Well, I I assume most of the half a billion TVPN watchers know Jord's background, but Jord's uh an exited fintech founder um who built Party Round and Capital. And so, you also had a front row seat to kind of the change in the fintech ecosystem over that period.

Um today, what I've noticed is you had this spike in fintech enthusiasm and funding in the venture community in 2021. Uh a lot of companies got out over their skis because of capital availability and I think there were sloppy decisions made and a lot of them took tough medicine. Um some of them didn't make it past the downturn in liquidity for fintech startups but a lot of them said look we're going to build real businesses now. We're going to take the tough medicine and we're going to come out the other side stronger. And so if you look in the top right corner and see Ramp like that's a great example of a company that has been around for a long time said hey we grew too quickly downsized and now they're better for it and are just kind of crushing and shipping on a weekly cadence and um you know really redefining this entire category. And so what we're seeing today is you have fintech companies we've been talking about this for a long time. You have fintech companies that are actually taking market share from incumbents. I know f companies have wanted to say, "Hey, like we're the challengers, but we're going to be, you know, the dominant providers of financial services one day." But now that's actually happening. And so, you know, thinking about this with my plaid hat on,

so much merch.

I love how you brought you brought the you you just came with the same the same you came prepared.

You understood the assignment, the same entertainment level as we bring.

Putting on put on your steel man, John.

Yeah. Um, we noticed that, you know, the tech media conversation hasn't really caught up to how well some of these fintech companies are doing and it's tough. Um,

technology media is really stretched and I think um there are a lot of different areas like AI, like crypto that, you know, command a lot of attention. And so you have really well-run companies like RAMP that are doing generally interesting stuff and shipping at this crazy rate, but nobody's covering them other than the TVPN. And so we're looking to really

Yeah, but even even we're not we're not we're not covering it on a level where if you're a fintech industry insider or builder, you're actually getting

alpha from our fintech coverage. And alpha comes into like, okay, what does infrastructure look like? what kind of what what bank partners are evolving with the needs of these companies like you know you guys are going like 10 10 layers deeper and have been for for so long I think it's it's uh it's super important.

Yeah. Last question for me. What uh what what media formats where like how would you describe where you are now and then what excites you because you know obviously the the the the newsletter list is over 200,000 subscribers. Congratulations. massive. Uh how many newsletters do you want to send a year? Do you want that to increase? Do you want to do more in events, video, interviews, audio? Like what what's interesting uh to sort of like uh zoom out and think about the next couple years?

Yeah. You know, our DNA has always been the community initiative. And so, um events are a big part of what we do. International is a big part of what we do because there's so much interesting innovation happening.

That makes sense. you know, American tech companies will go on stage at conferences in Mexico City and in, you know, Lagos, Nigeria, and talk about what they're doing, but then they actually start talking to people who are operators in Legos and Mexico City. And like the level of innovation there is often, you know, more advanced in fintech than you'll see in the US because these are areas that don't have the same level of financial services. And so, you actually have to build a lot more there. And that's been a big part of our DNA, too. And so, I think it's really double down on the community focus. um really deep, thoughtful writing um and continuing to grow the pie not just here but internationally as well.

That's awesome. Well, congratulations.