I have been following the markets and financial technology since 2018. My passion comes from years as a kid investing in the stock market. My career in the space started in early 2020 when I was a college ambassador for Titan, an online investment management platform (and my favorite startup).
During the bull market of post-covid, fintech had an elite run. In 2023, most of these startups really started to fade away and fail to find product market fit. The market was bloated and saturated, this pull back was needed.
I believe the market is entering a new era right now and will break down the areas I am watching below. For a quick summary, I continue to believe in the retail brokerage market, the personal finance space, modern wealth management, and overall operations.
The TLDRs:
Back in the mid 2010’s, Robinhood launched and absolutely revolutionized the brokerage market. With a mobile first application and no fees, they were the ones to set forward a new way to trade. What Robinhood did most was influence the retail market to trade more. Now everyone who was 18 and had a phone was able to buy a stock in under 5 minutes.
Fast foward to 2020/2021, and Robinhood became came under scrutiny when retail markets exploded and the platform cut off trading. This time shaped Robinhood’s future. From this point, I believe Robinhood became known as the place for retail trading. To put it lightly, for many, this platform is where you might trade and gamble from ages 18 to 22. I have seen this with my own eyes, but after college, people log off of Robinhood and get serious with their investing. They don’t gamble and pick single stocks anymore; instead, they buy ETFs and mutual funds, with a few small bets on the side.
In light of this, I think there is a gap in the market. People don’t want to be serious investors on Robinhood, but then they are restricted to the “same old brokerages” that their parents used it has them feeling a need for a mix of modern and sophistication.
The market still has an opening from my perspective and will continue to grow as more Gen Z’s learn about investing and graduate from Robinhood toward more new and sophisticated platforms.
One of my favorite lines nowadays is “everyone and their mother has a net worth/budgeting app”. And it’s true. Ever since Intuit shut down Mint (dumb decision by the way), everyone has been promoting and marketing their new app and why it is better. To my knowledge, no one has clearly won this race yet, though Origin is the closest.
People nowadays are finicky with their money, some don’t ever like to see it, while others look every single day at their finances. Building an app for both is very hard. And building an app that does everything is even harder.
That is what this space needs, an everything app for personal finances. Buying assets, setting up retirement, learning, taxes, everything. Once again, this is very hard to build, but someone will eventually do it right.
Going off of personal finance riff, modern wealth management (WM) is a space that has, and will continue to explode with new products. Actually, on that note, both personal finance and wealth management will benefit immensely from the rise AI and incorporating it into products. More on that in the AI section.