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Shiran Shalev, Lior Mallul  |  June 8, 2021
The Fintech “Endgame”: New Fintech Super-Companies Build Value by Combining the Best of Software and Financials

Money is the ultimate commodity (ironic, coming from a venture capitalist).

So if that’s the case, how can fintechs–which sell money, move money, or sell insurance against monetary loss–build products that remain differentiated and create lasting value over time? And why are so many software companies—which already boast highly differentiated offerings and serve huge markets—moving to offer financial services embedded within their products?

It’s allliiiiiiivvee—a new category emerges between software and financial services

As we discussed at our “Fintech: The Endgame” virtual conference and accompanying report, a new and attractive hybrid category of company is emerging at the intersection of software and financial services, creating buzz in the investment and entrepreneurial communities. These specialized companies—in some cases, software companies that also process payments and hold funds on behalf of their customers, and in others, financial-first companies that integrate workflow and features more reminiscent of software companies–combine some of the best attributes of both categories.

From software, they design for strong user engagement linked to helpful, intuitive products that drive retention over the long term. From financials, they draw on the ability to earn revenues indexed to the growth of a customer’s business. The powerful combination of these two models is rapidly driving both public and private market value, as investors grant these “super” companies premium valuations–in the public sphere, nearly twice the median multiple of pure software companies, according to a Battery analysis (see graphic above).

There’s a near perfect example of this phenomenon in Shopify, the company that made its name selling software to help business owners launch and manage online stores. Despite achieving notable scale with this original SaaS product, Shopify today makes twice as much revenue from payments as it does from software by enabling those business owners to accept credit card payments and acting as its own payment processor. The combination of a software solution indexed to e-commerce growth, combined with a profitable payments stream growing even faster than its software revenues has investors granting Shopify a 31x multiple on its forward revenues, according to CapIQ data as of May 26.

How should we value these fintech companies anyways?

Before even talking about how investors should value these hybrid companies, it’s worth making the point that in both private and public markets, fintechs have been notoriously hard to value, creating controversy and debate in the investment community.

On the one hand, fintech businesses come with certain advantages when compared to traditional software companies. By way of example: If one were choosing customer-service software, one would likely compare a number of platforms and try to understand their specific capabilities; how they integrate with existing systems; and how they’re priced. Then the potential customer would make a decision. But if that same customer were in the market for a loan, the situation would be very different: If one provider could offer competitive terms and a quick close, it would likely get the business. This dynamic has enabled many fintechs, particularly those with a knack for digital marketing and data-driven, real-time underwriting, to grow revenues at least as fast or even faster than best-in-class software companies.

That being said, there’s still a good argument for why pure software companies trade at a premium to pure financials. In terms of margins, a software company will typically keep 60-90% of its revenue, whereas in financials—taking a lender as an example—these margins then need to account for the interest expense of capital, fraud, and credit losses. Further, while software companies can, with some help from their friendly cloud providers, theoretically serve an infinite number of customers, financial companies are constrained by their respective balance sheets and capital bases in the amount of product they can extend at any given time–a limitation we’ve recently seen extend from lenders and insurance companies to include even stock brokerage Robinhood at the height of the recent GameStop saga.

So it’s fair to say that when you’re selling money, it’s easy to grow quickly–but growth is not the only important metric. Public markets often correlate valuation to growth in the case of software companies, and valuation to profitability in the case of balance sheet-heavy financials, like banks. But how should fintech companies incorporating aspects of both models be valued?

Software + finance = BFF(s)!

Part of the reason tech companies receive such high valuations in the first place is that they can tap massive markets independent of geography; have high barriers to the competition challenging them; and scale their revenues over a relatively fixed cost base, creating highly profitable margins–and value–over time.

To see how that rationale applies to different types of fintech companies, I’m excited to introduce the Battery Fintech Framework–hopefully a fintech entrepreneur’s “BFF” in understanding how to think about the value of his or her business model, and in understanding how a company might be valued by investors.

The BFF classifies different fintech companies into groups, based on business model, and then compares their median revenue multiples. This comparison yields some interesting conclusions, including:

  • At the top of the BFF chart, we see our vaunted hybrid SaaS + Financial companies. These companies enjoy the best of both worlds: They collect subscription fees for ongoing use of their service (often with strong customer retention over time), as well as earn fees for offering financial services to their customers that scale with their customers’ volume.
  • In the middle, we see the fintech spectrum. This group ranges from payments companies that collect fees from their customers’ payment volume–essentially, like the SaaS + Financial category, less the subscription fees–to short-duration lenders like the BNPLs, whose short credit exposures are slightly more “fee-like” and require less balance sheet capacity relative to long duration lenders.
  • At the bottom of the BFF, we see the lenders. These companies rely on interest income from loans, are heavily balance-sheet dependent, and typically don’t have a recurring purchase pattern.

The conclusion? The more you can rely on subscription or transaction fees over interest income to generate revenue, and the less balance-sheet capacity your model requires, the higher your valuation.

In building a business that lasts the test of time – look to both software and traditional financial services for lessons.

So what can you, the aspiring fintech entrepreneur, do to bring some of these characteristics to your business and increase value? I think we can look to both software, and traditional financial services companies for inspiration.

Own Your Business Process

One of the things software companies figured out long ago is that the more embedded you are in your customers’ people and processes, the harder you are to replace. If we look at the software companies that have stood the test of time–CRM giant Salesforce being a prime example–they are so integral to the functioning of an organization that regardless of how outdated they might look, or how much frustration they might cause to their users, they’re very hard to replace.

There’s a learning here for fintech: If you think about a traditional bank, or an insurance company, their customers treat them as necessary utilities. However, something I expect the very best fintechs to do is change this relationship and enable customers to both run their process (for instance, tracking accounts payable / receivables) and take financial action (transferring money), creating the best of both worlds.

Embrace regulation

On the other hand, many software companies getting into financial services stumble because they don’t understand the importance of regulations—something banks and insurance companies deal with in all aspects of their business. The “move fast and break things” ethos of software doesn’t fly when you’re dealing with multiple regulatory agencies with the power to fine you, or even force a freeze in your business until they feel you’ve addressed their concerns (assessed at a typical governmental pace).

The takeaway: Learn to play by the rules or find a partner from financial services to help you.

So where is this all going?

All in all – fintech is poised to revolutionize financial services, both through reinventing existing products, and driving new business models as financial services become more pervasive within other sectors. With the U.S. financial services sector worth an estimated $6.2 trillion, there is an enormous amount of value creation to be had. Just don’t forget your BFF 😊

This article originally ran in TechCrunch

FinTech: The Endgame Report… by Battery Ventures

This material is provided for informational purposes, and it is not, and may not be relied on in any manner as, legal, tax or investment advice or as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any fund or investment vehicle managed by Battery Ventures or any other Battery entity. 

The information and data are as of the publication date unless otherwise noted.

Content obtained from third-party sources, although believed to be reliable, has not been independently verified as to its accuracy or completeness and cannot be guaranteed. Battery Ventures has no obligation to update, modify or amend the content of this post nor notify its readers in the event that any information, opinion, projection, forecast or estimate included, changes or subsequently becomes inaccurate.

The information above may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or expectations. Predictions, opinions and other information discussed in this video are subject to change continually and without notice of any kind and may no longer be true after the date indicated. Battery Ventures assumes no duty to and does not undertake to update forward-looking statements.

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