Confessions of a FinTech Junkie

As a longtime fan of Alice and her Adventures in Wonderland, I can’t help but draw upon the well-known imagery from time to time.  And it just so happens that I find it appropriate to use for this post so feel free to smile like the Cheshire Cat and read on.

At QED, we pride ourselves on being operators disguised as investors with a keen focus on the FinTech sector.  From time-to-time we’ve found great businesses outside of FinTech that we thought we could guide, and (surprisingly) the entrepreneurs behind these companies seem to be happy with the advice and hands-on help we’ve provided.  Our experiences at building/managing businesses combined with our collective skills that range from customer origination to data analytics to managing complex, annuity oriented businesses have proven to be valuable to our non-FinTech companies.

So while it would be easy to stick to what we know best by taking the “blue pill”, we’ve gained the confidence that branching out into new sectors ripe for disruption was worth considering.  The result?  We’ve taken the “red pill” and started to learn as much as we can about two new verticals that are tangential to the FinTech space.  And what we’ve found is that the more we learn the more we like what we see.  It feels like we’re about to head down the rabbit hole which is scary and exiting at the same time.

The first?  Insurance Tech.  It didn’t take much digging for the QED team to come to believe that the Insurance sector is ripe for innovation much like the banking side of FinTech was ten years ago.  You can check out an interview with my partner Caribou Honig on this topic here.

And to do our part catalyzing the innovation, we’re pleased to be founding sponsors of an upcoming conference, www.InsureTechConnect.com.  It’s designed to bring together entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders from the industry incumbents.  I’ve procured discounted admission, $200 below the early-bird pricing, for the first twenty FinTech Junkie readers who register through this link.  Questions or sponsorship inquiries can be sent to Caribou Honig at: caribou@qedinvestors.com.

The second?  I’m going to leave that for another post with additional detail. Those of you who know me probably can guess what my “second addiction” has become, but rest assured that my core focus is still and will always be the FinTech space.  But, once an addict always an addict….so stay tuned.