As The Diff author and all-around genius Byrne Hobart emailed me in a reply to a Not Boring essay a couple years ago: “For any fintech product the question always comes down to: do they have a sustainable advantage in low CAC?” 

With the proliferation of banking APIs in the two years since, and the fierce competition in the financial services... See more

Vertical markets are particularly good candidates for a SaaS+fintech business model. While customers in horizontal markets often try different software vendors, resulting in multiple winners in a market segment, customers in vertical markets prefer purpose-built software for their specific industry and use cases.

The point is context — by abstracting a core function and delivering it in situ, value is created. That is achieved by removing friction or utilizing unique data. Shopify is the canonical example. In recent years, the e-commerce platform has moved beyond integrating Stripe to offer a range of embedded products, including merchant lending that uses... See more