The venture capital business has had an interesting couple of years. Deals were done with a speed that was previously unimaginable and without any face-to-face meetings. Plus the entry of huge amounts of money from private equity and investors with deep pockets caused an unprecedented increase in valuations. Now, the world has changed again.
My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Matt Harris, partner at Bain Capital Ventures. This was recorded at Fintech Nexus USA in New York last month when I interviewed Matt on our keynote stage. You can also watch the video (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKXvvPzv7HQ) of this discussion.
Matt pulls no punches in this discussion and describes in pretty stark terms the challenges that fintech entrepreneurs will face over the next 12-18 months. We end with Matt's thoughts on the future of money and why decentralization is such a key part of this future.
In this discussion you will learn:
• Why the state of fintech today is fantastic for the end users.
• Why Matt believes the run-up in fintech valuations was a toxic situation.
• How Zoom changed the venture capital business for Bain.
• The percentage of all money invested in fintech that came from VCs.
• Why fintech public market valuations say more about public markets than it does about fintech.
• Why Matt thinks the public markets are broken.
• How the venture capital business compares today to pre-pandemic times.
• Why there is a narrow window in the very short term to get deals done.
• Matt's thesis on the future of money that he wrote in Forbes (
https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewharris/2021/10/22/a-complete-revolution/?sh=2badec53f3a1) .
• What is inevitable about the move to decentralized finance.
• What finance will look like in 20-30 years.
Connect with Fintech One-on-One:
• Tweet me @PeterRenton (
https://twitter.com/peterrenton)
• Connect with me on LinkedIn (
https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterrenton/)
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes (
https://fintechoneonone.com/)