This week, we look at:
An overdue analysis of the SPAC structure, reflecting on the $75 billion size and stage of the market
Economics and regulatory paths of going public via investment bankers, SPACs, and direct listings
The marquee teams in Fintech looking to do deals, and what criteria for target selection look like
This week, we cover these ideas:
The Acorns SPAC deal, including its valuation and detailed metrics
The growth levers and obstacles for point-solutions as they scale into the millions of users and hundred of millions of revenues
What a $50 billion fund should do to roll this stuff up
It is looking like a pretty good time to go consolidating individual financial product footprints. Leaving aside whether consolidated companies are good or bad for some particular reason, the simple observation is that there are just far too many point-solution brands out there. Too many to be left alone to operate. And now a number of them are going to be public, which means that a number of them are going to be up for sale.
The world is on fire with talk about Uber going public. First, let's talk about who makes money and when. It is becoming a truism that companies are going public much later in their vintage, and as a result, the capital that fuels their growth is private rather than public. The public markets are full of compliance costs, cash-flow oriented hedge fund managers, and passive index manufacturers -- not an environment for an Elon Musk-type to do their best work. Private markets, on the other hand, are generally more long term oriented with fewer protections for investors. This has a distributional impact. Private markets in the US are legally structured for the wealthy by definition and carve-out. As a retail investor, your just desserts are Betterment's index-led asset allocation. As an accredited investor, you get AngelList, SharePost and the rest. I am yet to see Uber on Crowdcube. Therefore, tech companies are generating inequality both through their functions (monopoly concentration through power laws, unemployment through automation), and their funding.
This week, we cover these ideas:
How market structure determines the types of companies and projects that succeed
A walk through Marqeta’s economics and business model, and how Square’s Cash App and DoorDash were needed for success
The emerging $10B transaction revenue pool on Ethereum, MEV, and the changes to mining and gas
Coinbase is going to go public.
The news hit Reuters, then Coindesk, and then the rest of the world. It feels like big news! The crypto broker is beating Robinhood, Acorns, Stash, Revolut, Betterment, and Wealthfront to the public markets. It's even beating SoFi, which is trying to get a national bank license (and who doesn't want to own a bank!).
his week, we look at:
There are two very large revenue pools in the crypto asset class — (1) mining, and (2) trading. There are some large revenue pools in crypto-as-a-software, too, but those tend to be less sensational.
This analysis will establish a 2021 baseline for the most regulated of crypto exchanges, Coinbase, including a detailed financial model building a $100B+ valuation case
We then consider the valuations and multiples of capital markets protocols in Decentralized Finance of Ethereum, now making up over $60B in token value
Lastly, we look at Binance’s $1B in profits, its $35B BNB token, and the activities on Binance Smart Chain
In this conversation, Max Friedrich of ARK Invest, Will and Lex break down Ant Group’s highly anticipated IPO.
Ant, a spinout from Alibaba and the parent of Alipay, one of China’s leading payments companies, filed papers to IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Max, Will and Lex dig into Ant’s business, from the origins to today, discuss growth opportunities and potential headwinds and explore the multi-faceted relationships between Ant and other big tech companies and national governments.
We cannot understate how impressive Ant Financial has become, connecting 700 million people and 80 million merchants in China, with payments, savings, wealth management and insurance products integrated in one package. The company also highlights the likely road for traditional banks — as underlying risk capital, without much technology or client management.
This week, we look at:
Chime, eToro, and Wise targeting the public markets through IPO and SPACs, and their operating performance
The overall growth in fintech mobile apps, their install rates and market penetration (from 2.5 to 3.5 per person), and whether that growth is sustainable
The implications for incumbents from this competition, and in particular the impact on money in motion vs. money at rest
Broader financial product penetration and an anchoring in how the technology industry was able to get more attention that we had to give
We look in detail at the state of marking recently-private-fintechs to the public market in mid-2021. Multiple industry segments have seen IPOs, direct listings, and SPACs transition fintech darlings into traditional stocks. How is performance doing? Is everything as magnificent and rich as we expected? Have multiples and valuations fallen or held steady? The analysis explores the answers and provides an explanatory framework.
This week, we look at:
The economics of Southeast Asia’s largest super-app and its $40 billion SPAC valuation
The industrial logic of building out financial features adjacent to the core business of transportation and delivery
Why this model has not worked for Uber, but has worked for Apple, and the broader impact on financial services.
