Hi y’all, Cokie here. I am a generalist. And these are my confessions.
I can’t build you anything, but I can manage product. I’m not a sales person, but I can do business development with ease. I’m not in marketing, but I know how to steer messaging and secure brand. I’m not your COO, but I understand how to optimize your operations. All of this is to say, I’m extremely flexible.
Let’s back up a bit. A generalist is traditionally considered a bit of a Renaissance person -- a jack of all trades, but a master of none. They are people who can pick up here and there, tend to be good at putting pieces together, and are often fabulous multitaskers. Honestly, sounds pretty good, right? However, a generalist can be incredibly hard to market to a company. “What do you do?,” they’d ask and we’d say something like, “idk… everything?” Even in startups, it’s very hard to find an appropriate role unless it is *exactly* what the company needs at that *exact* moment. Shopping around for roles like this can be a fruitless trail of devastating rejections of, what always seems like, your whole being.
This definition is changing with the economic gravity of the last two decades. In the last twenty years, the US has faced three major economic crises: the September 11th attacks, the 2008 financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. In tandem, prices are rising while salaries remain more or less stagnant, not growing beyond inflation for most Americans. America’s answer has been the gig economy: be a TaskRabbit, an Uber driver, or a Handy cleaner. Deliver whatever services you can to supplement your income or constitute the entire thing.
So what does any of this have to do with generalists? In response to COVID-19, I was laid off. So I did what every generalist does… I started consulting. During the course of the last six months, I have built a reasonably fire business and come to the following conclusions:
Working a full-time job has its benefits... literally (health insurance I miss u sm). But relying on one employer to provide me with both security and satisfaction seems honestly unattainable. That’s too much pressure for both the employer and the employee. It’s up to me to make sure I supplement my full-time role with satisfying (and hopefully lucrative) side projects.
Generalists are particularly well-suited to having several income streams -- we multitask well, we switch gears with the ease of my Mazda, we were built for variety.
Company loyalty is changing, we’ve known that for a while. The days of working for the same company for 37 years are far behind us. This shift is not to be confused with hustle culture, instead we’re going to start working like guys in the NYC dating scene: play the field and never fully commit. That’s not hustle, it’s diversification.
The ethos of the gig economy is permeating into the traditional 9 to 5 structure, to the benefit of employees everywhere.
Not to fully be an anti-late stage capitalism thinkboi but... disrupt the 9 to 5, baby.
Today’s playlist is entitled “wish i was in mykonos” because approximately 87 people have directly sent me photos from Scorpios this week.
I’m off, time to go celebrate my boyfriend’s 30th birthday! See you next week ;)
FTT’s very own Julie VerHage is going to be doing a live panel with some great VC’s to talk about the effects inflation is going to have on the US economy in the near future. With the amount of capital central banks and governments have put into the economy, there’s bound to be effects. What will be the inflationary issues that may crop up, and how will they ripple across the ecosystem?
FTT’s Julie Verhage talks to Slow Ventures’ Jill Carlson & Will Quist, and QED’s Frank Rotmanon Monday, August 24th, at 7pm EST.
We only have 50 spots left, so sign up quickly! It’s bound to be a good one. And subscribe for FTT+ to watch it later if you miss it.
The News: by Cokie Hasiotis and Parker Jay-Pachirat
I know we usually talk about US fintech, but you have to know by now that I love tea. The Wirecard scandal seems to be coming to a conclusion, as it was announced this week that the UK business will be bought by Railsbank. This will give Railsbank supremacy in the UK by supplementing their own customers with Wirecard UK’s.
Wirecard UK has approximately 70 customers, including Curve and Pockit (note: Revolut was previously a customer but given the nature of their announcement during the height of the scandal, it became apparent they weren’t all that reliant on Wirecard anymore). By supplementing Wirecard’s 70 customers with their own, Railsbank has likely achieved BaaS market supremacy in the UK and Europe. Fortunately, Railsbank will also be acquiring a number of Wirecard UK’s employees. Railsbank is committed to their global reach, as well, with their recent expansion in the US, as a Credit-as-a-Service provider, and Southeast Asia, where they deliver traditional financial services.
Also… Wirecard’s former COO Jan Marselek has been added to the Interpol Most-Wanted list.
It seems that pay cards are becoming more and more ubiquitous. Samsung launched their Pay Card on Tuesday, a Mastercard debit card. The card will be powered by London-based fintech Curve, a fintech working to re-bundle various financial products. Samsung’s Pay Card allows users to consolidate existing bank cards into a single card and wallet, self-describing as a digital payment solution that will give Samsung customers “greater flexibility and control when managing their finances by offering a single view of spend, whilst also enabling a simple and secure way to pay”. Like curve, the card promises the ability to “sync multiple loyalty and bank cards in one place”. It would appear that the card is a bid by Samsung to compete with Apple Wallet and Apple’s credit card launch. The card is currently only available in the U.K.
Fundraising News by Cokie Hasiotis and Parker Jay-Pachirat
Moov announced its $5.5M seed round, led by Bain Capital, with participation from Canapi Ventures, Commerce Ventures, Gradient Ventures, RRE Ventures, Uncorrelated Ventures, and 27 influential angel investors. Given the number of angel investors, obviously the industry is super stoked about Moov. And for good reason. Moov is an open-source embedded banking platform built with a dev-first approach.
Wade Arnold & Bob Smith spent the last decade building new technology platforms on legacy banking infrastructure, including building into 40 different core banking systems, in late 2018, started the “Moovment,” creating a developer-first open source community focused on financial infrastructure components. These components empower SaaS companies, digital banks, and fintechs to directly embed financial transaction capabilities within their product offerings, or use Moov to power additional infrastructure not provided well or at all by legacy offerings.
Now let’s celebrate them for their real achievement:
Robinhood announced on Monday its third fundraise of 2020, a Series G raise of $200m from D1 Capital Partners. The company didn’t provide specifics on how it plans to use the $2m beyond stating that the money will be used to improve products and customer experience. This round brings Robinhood to a valuation of $11.2b, a$ 2.6b increase from last month’s valuation of $8.6b. Robinhood has faced hyper-growth in these past few months in the wake of the pandemic, adding 3 million funded accounts in the first four months of the year and doubling their revenue this second quarter at $180m.
Robinhood has faced criticism for generating income from order flow -- a controversial practice that involves selling trade orders to be executed by third parties, like Citadel Securities. It's been reported that about half of Robinhood’s revenue comes from practicing order flow. Despite the scrutiny, there’s been speculation about Robinhood going public in the coming months, especially after the announcement of their Series G raise. Robinhood’s founders, Baiju Bhatt and Vladimir Tenev have long pledged to pursue an IPO, and it seems that pursuit may be way as well underway.
For more tea, I recommend that you subscribe to FTT+ to see Julie VerHage’s series of deep-dives on Robinhood.
Tweets of the week
