Episode Summary
York IE CEO Kyle York joined Finside Chats to talk about the New England startup scene, the profitability of FinTech startups, co-founder relationships and more.
About Finside Chats
Finside Chats, hosted by Stavvy co-founders Josh Feinblum and Kosta Ligris, features interviews with top thought leaders on the most important and complex topics related to
FinTech, startups and mortgage lending.
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Key Takeaways
FinTech startup potential
“What I love about the
FinTech sector is that clearly there’s software to disrupt financial markets and bring financial software to markets. But there’s also the ‘SaaS-plus’ transaction fees and the ‘SaaS-plus’ trend that’s happening with the Stripes and the Shopifys, the Squares: where you’re building in economics, either on the [return on investment] side or on the money-making, take-a-fee side. That’s on top of platform fees and recurring revenue fees.”
Being accessible as a founder
“For founders — especially when you raise a lot of money, when you grow, when you get invited to speak on
podcasts — I think you forget that as your team grows, people think you’re inaccessible, even if you don’t think you’re inaccessible. You have to manufacture those environments to make it clear that you are and you’re willing to listen.”
Startup hubs
“Everybody is a little bit too parochial about Silicon Valley vs. New York vs. Boston vs. Miami vs. Austin. I built my startup to $100 million annual recurring revenue in New Hampshire and sold it to Oracle. I actually think you can build great companies in FinTech, in infrastructure, in consumer, in marketplace
anywhere you wish.”
Co-founder relationships
“You need alignment on vision, mission, core values, aspirations for the company, what type of company you want to build and your commitment to it. Those are a lot of things, honestly, that especially technical founders don’t talk about. They don’t align on them. That’s why you see so many breakups and so many buyouts and so many fledgling early-stage companies — because they’re bad at talking about it. That’s the soft stuff, but it’s the most important.”
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