Why are high valuations bad? You've heard me talk about how the trend of Fintech bundling, and the unicorn and decacorn valuations led by SoftBank and DST Global, are creating underlying weakness in the private Fintech markets. Of course, they are also creating price compression and consolidation in the public markets (e.g, Schwab/TD, Fiserv/First Data) across sub-sectors. But public companies are at least transparent and deeply analyzed. Private companies have beautiful websites, charismatic leaders, and impressive sounding investors. Often when you look under the hood, it's just a bunch of angry bees trying to find something to sting.
Feelings and emotions at industry events matter. The narrative at the more traditional conferences is that Fintech innovation is just incremental improvement, and that blockchain has struggled to bring production-level quality software and stand up new networks. This isn't strictly true -- see komgo, SIX, or any of the public chains themselves -- but the overall observation does stand. Much of Fintech has been channeled into corporate venture arms, and much of blockchain has been trapped in the proof-of-concept stage, disallowed from causing economic damage to existing business.
SoFi recently partnered with WeWork to offer discounted student refinancing to WeWork employees and members; the move is part of a broader strategy for the company to move beyond their initial target market of alumni from top universities; offering student loan repayments as a workplace benefit is a new trend as companies look to help young employees get out from under the mountain of student debt; “The bigger story is that the student loan pay down as a benefit is a massive industry that hasn’t even got going yet — every Fortune 500 company is going to have this as a benefit in the next year or two,” said Peter Renton, analyst and founder of Lend Academy, to TearSheet. Source.
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·Chlöe Swarbrick, a 25-year old climate MP was presenting her climate change case to the New Zealand parliament, and was heckled by an older audience member. Without missing a beat, she acknowledged and dismissed the challenger with a pithy “Ok, Boomer.”
The recording has since gone viral, inspiring everything from merchandise to Vogue articles. While the incident isn’t the source of the phrase “Ok, Boomer”, today it is the most well known manifestation. So what does the phrase mean? If you are inclined to more colorful language, see Urban Dictionary. But the meaning is obvious on its face — Gen Z is dismissing utterly and without consideration the judgment and protestations of society's elders on multi generational issues like economics, climate change, and social norms.
Digital banking startup Revolut has come to an agreement with WeWork to allow their business customers to gain access to...
SoFi will make student and personal loans available to WeWork’s 3,000 employees and 175,000 customers at discounted rates. Source