Many of you know about my interest in B2B fintech, but I'm also passionate about solving issues for consumers. One of the biggest problems our society currently faces is the crushing financial distress that many families experience. Almost 40% of the population would go into debt to cover a $400 emergency expense. Often, that debt [...]
The Hard Thing About Easy Things
The 48-hour person A handful of times in my life, I’ve come across a class of people who are able to accomplish in 24 hours what would take most people 48. I call them 48-hour people. Maybe you’ve met one—he or she makes everything they do look easy, mastering concepts while making very few mistakes [...]
SaaS Companies Should be Payment Facilitators
Now that a wave of vertical SaaS companies include payments as a feature, the next wave of differentiation will come from those that become payment facilitators. Some brief education: historically, businesses that want to process credit card payments have to open a merchant account with something called an acquiring bank, which underwrites the fraud risk [...]
The Happiness Lessons I Learned Playing Doom
A good friend of mine, Chris Holmberg, often reminds me about the difference between success and winning. That distinction has been a guiding principle, and keeping them aligned has made me happy with the professional and personal choices I've made. I didn't realize it at the time, but I first learned about this playing Doom [...]
So What’s a Blockchain?
Blockchains are powerful tools, but they don’t require a computer science degree to comprehend. With almost limitless applications, let’s be thankful that the underlying concept is pretty simple. A blockchain is simply a sequential set of records that are very hard to change without the change being painfully obvious. It can be any sequence of [...]
Is it Time to Ditch the NPS?
Conceptually, NPS - the Net Promoter Score, is an objectively sound way to measure the potential for a product to achieve viral adoption. For the uninitiated, the calculation is simple. You ask your customers to answer the following question on a scale of 0 to 10: "How likely is it that you would recommend [our company / [...]