Alex Johnson, Creator of Fintech Takes — The Creative Process and a Fintech 2023 Rapid Fire
In today’s episode, Andrew Janssens sits down with Alex Johnson, Creator of Fintech Takes, a biweekly newsletter bringing thoughtful takes and deep dives on the industry.
Alex Johnson has been working in the fintech industry for 15+ years and is respected as one of the industry’s most thoughtful commentators. As well as publishing Fintech Takes since 2019, Alex has worked at FICO (the credit scoring bureau), Mercator Advisory Group and Cornerstone Advisors.
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Firstly, a special shout out to Alex for answering our cheeky request to join us on the podcast via Twitter! If you don’t follow Alex there, you should.
In this content-packed episode, Andrew and Alex discuss:
- Whether he’s still writing Fintech Takes as a coping mechanism
“I definitely started the newsletter as a coping mechanism. As I said, I was trying to kind of keep up with everything that was happening in FinTech. And it was just moving so fast that I was like, “Okay, if I don’t force myself to have an opinion about all of this news, and new announcements and new VC rounds that are being raised, and new product launches, and partnerships, like if I don’t force myself to have an opinion, I won’t be able to keep up with this.”
So that was my original thought process for the newsletter, it has definitely evolved. I guess I’ve learned how to cope with FinTech just sort of naturally, it’s kind of in my DNA, and the rhythm of my week is just sort of keeping up with everything. So that’s less challenging for me. And now, I think my greater challenge is to try kind of like a VC would, I suppose, sort of continually formulate, and then break down and then build new hypotheses for how the market is evolving, right?
Like, I’m always trying to sort of at a 30,000 foot level understand, you know, well, what’s a good thesis for what’s happening over in this space? Or how is this market evolving? Or like, what are the dynamics here and going back and going, oh, you know, I thought this six months ago, but I think I was wrong. And here’s why. And just constantly being kind of introspective and almost academic about, like a view into the FinTech space and how it’s evolving. And that’s where I think most of my sort of mental energy these days goes and what the purpose of the newsletter for me is.”
- On the merits of an outside perspective and being willing to ask the dumb questions
“[I definitely have]an outside perspective, right… I’ve been doing this now through the newsletter for coming up on four years, I’ve worked in financial services for, you know, 15 plus years, but I feel like I’m still asking a lot of dumb questions about how things work, right? Like how does this part work and kind of coming up to speed on that, and at the same time, coming up to speed on sort of the life of an early stage startup and what that looks like, and some of the things that go on in there — I didn’t know whatOKRs were for a really long time.
There’s just these things that you don’t know, from an outside perspective. Same thing with banks, banks are these fascinating, monolithic companies. And I’ve worked around banks for a long time. And I feel like I know them fairly well now. But you know, I went to a community banking conference earlier this year, and was just dazzled by the like, number of like words and acronyms that I was like “Oh, my God, I don’t even know what this means.” So I think for me, my path in FinTech has been defined by sort of trying to figure it out from the outside.
And I think there are a lot of challenges to that. And certainly, if you read my newsletter list on my podcast, you won’t have any trouble finding the parts where it’s like, oh, he doesn’t really feel like he knows what he’s talking about there. He seems to have a lot of questions about this. But I also think that having that outside perspective can be helpful and can sort of make things more accessible to others.
And I think one thing that happens in FinTech a lot is we all sort of pretend like we know everything that everyone is talking about when reality is like, we each know probably one or two things really deeply and super well. And the rest of it, we’re just kind of making up and kind of nodding our heads. And so I try to be open about the things that I don’t know and ask dumb questions. And hopefully others get value out of that.
It’s something I learned actually when I was going to college and I went to school to become a teacher. So my background is in education. And I student taught at a local high school here and spent some time in the classroom with bored teenagers who look at me like you know, they hate me and can’t wait to get away. And one thing I learned doing that is that there is a trick to getting people to understand things are to explain things and a big part of it is being vulnerable and saying the things that you don’t know we’re going hey, that’s a good question. I’m actually not sure. So I think that’s kind of been the defining characteristic of my journey and fintech self.
- The evolution of the Fintech Takes newsletter, and why it always pays to follow your curiosity
“It’s evolved a lot if you go back, and you can still go back to my old substack, where my old posts are, and look at the ones from July 2019 And September 2019. And those are different than what I do today. Right? Definitely a lot rougher, shorter, you know, and much more just sort of like, it was almost kind of like the newsletter version of like, quote, tweeting, in the sense that, like, there’d be a piece of news and I would add my like to second opinion on top of it. And then I really wouldn’t like venture my opinion, much more than that.
And I think it probably took me a good six months, maybe kind of experimenting with the newsletter originally. And this was, in the days when no one read it. I think my parents were maybe the only subscribers to it. I wasn’t really sharing it on LinkedIn or Twitter. And I was just trying to get sort of a feel for like, what’s my voice? What do I want to say? What’s my unique contribution to the FinTech space from a content perspective?
And what I figured out was that, for me, the only things I’m really good at writing about are things that I personally am interested in. And so I very quickly sort of disabused myself of the notion that, hey, FinTech takes is going to be a place where we always have the hottest take, or we always have the most popular post on whatever hot topic is happening right now. That just never worked for me. And I think it was because even when I would try my hardest to write about, you know, whatever the hot topic was at the time, like Neobanking three years ago, or would buy now pay later started exploiting Buy now pay later, whatever it was, is that my sort of quick takes on those topics that were more sort of driven by like a desire to get clicks or desire to sort of be a part of the conversation that was happening on Twitter. They never ended up working because I don’t think my heart was really in it. And I feel like one thing that and you probably found this too at the podcast, too. It’s just really hard to fake enthusiasm or interest. Right?
And audiences, maybe if it’s even on sort of a subconscious level can kind of tell when you’re sort of phoning that in. And so what I ended up doing and kind of pivoting to with the newsletter, and I think what is kind of its defining characteristic today is I just follow my own interests, and I’m kind of a generalist. I’m pretty interested in a broad range of different things within fintech. But I’ll write about stuff that I shouldn’t have like no audience for it at all right?
Like I did a real deep dive into the mortgage servicing space, which is horrible and niche. And there’s only like 15 people who even understand how it works. And like, it’s just awful. There’s no reason anyone should be interested in it. But I sort of became fascinated with it as a consumer and like, the experience is kind of terrible. And like, why is paying my mortgage so painful, this is ridiculous. And I just sort of kept pulling on that thread and pulling on that thread and pulling on that thread. And I ended up writing a couple pieces now about the mortgage servicing space and getting to sort of dig into that space, I got to know pretty much all the FinTech founders who are building in the mortgage servicing space, there’s not many we have like a little club where we all get together and talk about how terrible our lives are. But like, it’s fun to like, get to meet those other people.
And, you know, it was a really good piece, and it actually performed really well. And so what I’ve learned is to just sort of follow my curiosity wherever it may go. Sometimes it hits sometimes it doesn’t. But usually, at a minimum, I walk away having learned something, and if no one reads it, no one cares. But I still feel like I learned something. It was a good time.
How VCs can actually help promote diversity in the fintech ecosystem
“I’m so glad you asked about this. It’s the most important piece I’ve ever written by far. And it basically points out that the reality of the situation is, if you’re a person of color, or you’re a woman, and you’re raising funds to fund an early stage FinTech company, you basically have no chance in hell of raising any money. And particularly if you’re a woman of color, like, just forget about it, right?
I mean, like, the stats are so laughably bad, there’s just no chance you’re gonna be able to raise money. And, you know, obviously, there are success stories, there are lots of great diverse founders out there who have persisted through this. And so what I wanted to write about in this piece was, what was their experience, like, and to your point, like, I’m a white guy, I’ve never had any problems with any of this stuff.
The industry’s been totally accessible to me. And I was painfully aware of that. And so I wanted it to slowly be reporting on the experiences of those people who’ve not had that experience, and who’ve been more challenged and raising funds and getting access to these networks that are so valuable within fintech. And they shared their experiences with me, I definitely encourage everyone to go back and read that article, it’s still pinned at the top of my Twitter account, if that’s the easiest place to find it. And the point of the article was to basically ask, you know, VCs are always saying, you know, let me know what I can do to be helpful. Okay, well, we will let you know, what can you do to actually be helpful for founders of color and female founders, when trying to sort of break past this barrier, and actually get funding. ”
- A Fintech Rapid fire including Alex’s thoughts on:
- — How rising interest rates will affect the fintech ecosystem
- — Why fraud is so prevalent in Fintech
- — Which Banking-as-a-Service model he expects to do best in the next few years
- and a whole lot more!
Check out the Episode on the platform of your choice here
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About Alex
Alex Johnson publishes Fintech Takes, one of the leading newsletters in Fintech, twice a week, and regularly teams up with Jason Mikula (and others) on the monthly “Fintech Recap” podcast.
Alex has spent his whole career in Fintech including stops at Zoot Enterprises, Mercator Advisory Group, FICO and Cornerstone Advisors.
About Fintech Takes
Fintech Takes is a newsletter covering some of the most interesting (and niche) topics in Fintech. Each Fintech Takes newsletter includes a long take (a deep-dive into a specific topic) and three short takes.
About the Author
Andrew Janssens is a second-year MBA Candidate at The Wharton School, where he is part of the Wharton FinTech Podcast team. He has a passion for the nerdy corners of financial services, venture capital, and all things FinTech. Don’t hesitate to reach out with questions, comments, feedback, and opportunities at ajanss@wharton.upenn.edu.
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