Essay · ~12 min read

Every Company Will Be a Fintech Company

Angela Strange · Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Free Intermediate

This essay explains the actual mechanism: when regulation forces incumbents to open up (for example, rules requiring banks to expose customer data), it unbundles a closed industry into modular pieces that new companies can build on. That is the pattern behind Plaid, and it is why a rule that looks like a burden for incumbents is often a market opening for someone smaller and faster. Read it to train the instinct of asking, when a rule changes, what just became a building block that used to be locked away.

• Regulation that forces incumbents to open data or unbundle a license turns a closed industry into modular pieces new startups can assemble.
• The classic proof: a data-access provision in US regulation is what made a company like Plaid possible, so a compliance mandate for banks became a whole business for someone else.
• The founder's move is to look for what a rule change unlocks or standardizes, because that unlock is usually the new market.