Blog

Larry Fink’s lesson for all fintech founders

“Our acquisitions are not about getting bigger for the sake of being bigger. They are about getting stronger, adding new capabilities, and helping our clients achieve their goals” — Larry Fink, BlackRock co-founder and CEO

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Generative AI in fintech: Do the benefits outweigh the risks?

How might generative AI play out in fintech? Financial services is a highly regulated field, and we think the impact of generative AI will, in the short term, be limited largely to providing better customer service and faster onboarding.

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Our Investment in Nearshoring

With its strong manufacturing-based economy, proximity to the US, skilled workforce, and existing USMCA trade agreement, no country is better positioned to benefit from nearshoring than Mexico.

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Cross-border (fintech) at a crossroad

“Are we likely to face the future where the US dollar is no longer the global reserve currency? And what can we do as American citizens to attempt to shelter ourselves from what’s beginning to look like the beginnings of de-dollarization?”

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Looking Ahead to Fintech in 2023

If you experienced flight delays and cancellations during the holiday season, you are not alone. As reported, more than 90% of US flight cancellations during the December holidays were Southwest flights — with over 15,200 total flights canceled in a week. What happened?

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Reinventing Healthcare Payments

Haymaker Ventures is excited to announce its investment in the €6mm pre-series A round of hi.health, a payments provider that is building a digital solution to the claims reimbursement process in Europe.

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Investing in Workers’ Financial Wellness

Haymaker Ventures is excited to announce its investment in the €10mm seed round of Rosaly, an earned wage access platform that aims to be the leading provider of payroll-initiated banking services in Europe.

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Financial Intelligence in an Omni-Channel World

Haymaker Ventures is thrilled to lead the $15m Series A in Brightflow AI, a SaaS platform that provides financial insights to small and medium-sized businesses in the D2C omnichannel commerce space. The company has also secured $100m in debt financing for small business owners from i80 Group.

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Where are we in this cycle?

From June 2009 to February 2020, the US economy recorded its longest-ever business cycle expansion — 128 months, surpassing the previous record of 120 months from March 1991 to January 2001. According to NBER research, the US economy has officially entered a contraction phase, which indicates the beginning of a potential recession.

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The Return to Durability

Negative headlines have dominated the market this quarter as central bank tightening reduces excess demand — and the threat of recession looms. We expect decreasing revenue multiples and declining deal counts to continue through the remainder of the year and early next year as companies utilize existing capital or internal bridge rounds to grow into high valuations from the market peak of 2021.

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The weaponization of finance

Mounting geopolitical turmoil over the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a deterioration of China’s relationship with the West have focused the global Eye of Sauron on the importance and interconnectedness of the world’s financial systems.

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Are Web3/De-Fi/NFTs here to stay?

In five years, from 2010 to 2015, the US went through the greatest ramp-up of technology adoption in history — from 20.2% of people being connected through smartphones in 2010 to 59.4% in 2015 (by 2020 it was 72.7%).

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The rise of hyper-specialized fintech

About a month ago, the Financial Times explored an interesting trend — the recent hyper- specialization of consumer fintech. As more service providers have exploded on the scene, lowering the cost of card issuance, processing, clearing and settlement, banking, underwriting, etc., it has become easier and faster to start a consumer fintech company.

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Banking is necessary, but banks are not.

25 years after first making this claim, the world is learning that Bill Gates was correct. Fintech app downloads outperformed banks more than 10x as the pandemic continues to shake consumer finances.

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Verticalization, B2B, and real estate

2021 UPDATE: Only a few weeks into 2021 and our Q4 2020 update must already be updated for 2021 developments: The successful IPO of fintech Affirm (co-founded by Peter’s PayPal co-founder Max Levchin) almost doubled in value to $23 billion on its debut January 13th.

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Fintech’s moment

One of our manifestos for fintech is democratizing access to financial services by lowering fees and barriers for adoption. However, despite massive investment and innovation around fintech, the US still shows the highest transaction costs for financial services among developed countries.

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News

Vienna-based insurtech hi.health scoops up €6 million to expand across Europe

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FLYR Labs Lands $150 Million in Series C Funding Led by WestCap

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SoFi founder Mike Cagney’s already well-funded new startup is raising another $100 million

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This startup lets workers access their wages as they earn them. Check out the 13-slide pitch deck Rosaly used to raise 10 million in seed funding.

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Mexico trade financing startup Mundi raises $15M

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CircleUp Acquired by Brightflow AI

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Routefusion raises $10.5M round to simplify cross-border payments

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Brightflow AI aims to spotlight small business cash flow

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