10 Things We Learned at New York FinTech Week

New York is back and better than ever for the startup scene, particularly in FinTech. We spent time with about fifty investors and founders during New York FinTech Week last week and walked away with a better understanding of the NY ecosystem and outlook on venture at large. Read on for a quick take on what we learned.

1. ​​Younger west coast entrepreneurs have been consistently migrating to NYC over the past 24 months but the FinTech community still feels tight-knit and relatively small.
2. At-scale founders and operators at NYC companies like Alloy, Public, Ramp, Plaid, Socure are active members of the FinTech community, regularly angel invest, and make themselves accessible to first time founders. The collaborative mindset for builders is stronger in NYC than it is in SF.
3. Several NYC start-ups have mentioned that having an in-person first office culture has helped them recruit younger talent from Big Tech companies that are remote-first across the country.
4. Series B and onwards is very quiet. Growth stage investors are still taking meetings but the threshold to invest has increased meaningfully.
5. Investors don’t want to hear that they are in an auction process and/or that they need to win on price. We’re hearing of many instances now where founder demands on price have scared away a majority of investors from even submitting a bid.
6. Founders are beginning to look elsewhere. At least 3 growth-stage enterprise FinTechs discussed raising an interim round from bank/processor/card network customers that are less price sensitive than traditional financial VCs.
7. Deals are still getting done, but are taking about 2x as long as they did in 2021. Startups are being asked to provide data around cohort growth, attrition, unit economics etc. at the Series A (how crazy!!) for the first time in 12–18 months.
8. For all but the highest performers (who are seeing no difference in pricing), prices are still high relative to 2019, but solidly ~30% below those of last year.
9. Many FinTech funds are turning towards their portfolios to deploy opportunity funds and /or continuing the trend of moving earlier and writing smaller checks while the dust settles in the market.
10. FinTech native funds continue to be long-term bullish on the category and, while several have spun out crypto-focused groups, all seem to indicate that traditional payments/banking/lending /insurance will continue to be their primary focus.

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