A very basic but non-obvious fact of adult life seems to be that there is no ideal time to pause, to take in one's surroundings and cogitate. Sure there are those Sunday afternoons and commutes back from the city but unplanned reveries are to true reflection as the lighting bug is to lighting. 

I wanted to briefly cover a topic I have been discussing often with friends and colleagues, which is: The feeling of being a novice.

If there is another very basic but non-obvious fact of adult life it is that we begin to learn—and at different paces, accept—that a tacit sense of utter ineptitude in one's functions, the quiet but ever-present notion that we are flailing wildly about without the singlest idea of what it is we are doing, is not a temporary condition but rather the permanent state of flux in which the adultus humanus exists. The main difference among of us is whether we choose to attempt to ignore this truism or relent and learn to live comfortably maladjusted in its acceptance.

Of course we have seen and been forced to adapt to constant change before 22. It is a natural component of growing older. But there is a safety while at school knowing that ahead is a neat, four-course semester, a safety that quickly fades once in The Real World when it becomes plain that responsibilities are not a terminable set of check boxes but rather endless to-dos, draft e-mails, half-finished applications, and well-intentioned but oftentimes unfulfilled promises that mount and pile up in the corner of the room and tend to give you dirty looks, especially when you are trying to take a load off on Sunday afternoon. Pass the Bud, right.

There are different approaches to the lifestyle shift. Some prefer to try and dodge the 'adult paradigm' for as long as possible. Others choose to embrace it. In any event it is true a couple of years out of college that an increasing proportion of the conversations I have with friends and colleagues circle around or at least reference a nagging discomfiture to the schemas of growing up.

The discussion almost always follows the below dialectic:

1) Young Adult A: "Your progress is almost exclusively your own doing and no one is going to make it happen for you".

2) Young Adult B: "Perhaps, but we are all just winging it anyways and it probably doesn't even matter in the long run".

Both are right, of course, which makes it confusing as to what the resolution, if any, of the conversation should be besides the acquisition of another twelver of Bud. 

And so the solution it appears to me is not to futilely attempt to reconcile the zealot and the nihilist but rather to engage in a couple of strategies that help moor us somewhat in adult life and shake off the ‘wow I have no fucking idea what is going on’ feeling a bit.

I often broach two distinct but self-reinforcing initiatives: Creating content and building a community. I will outline them briefly here.

1. Understand your subject matter deeply

   • Select a topic you are truly interested in. Ideally the topic will select you.
   • Focus on quantity over quality. The idea in the beginning is to comprehend the existing landscape. Remember, you are not part of it yet. 

2. Automate information exchange

   • Set up a data aggregation system. 
   • Select content leaders, follow them closely, and note their sources. Track their interactions and observe their presentation styles.

3. understand the ecosystem deeply

   • Leverage content to generate additional information exchange.
   • Identify community leaders and study their engagement efforts. Become familiar with their approaches and timing.
   • Think through ways in which you might be helpful.

4. develop a differentiated view

   • Focus on quality over quantity. The idea now is to isolate noise in the existing landscape. Remember, you do not want to be part of it.
   • Connect to content and community leaders with unique thoughts or novel frameworks. 
   • Demand feedback and require that most be critical.

5. Begin curating content

   • Appreciate that in the beginning you are not primary material but rather a purveyor of fine primary goods.
   • Be thorough and consistent. Become known for shipping Grade A product. Demand for your view will increase.

6. engage opportunities but be selective

   • Volunteer to organize a seminar, meetup, conference or call. Expect and require nothing in return. 
   • Collaborate with leaders on materials or events. Help them build their visibility but be careful to retain your unique brand.

7. begin creating content

   • Appreciate that now you are the primary material and others will purvey your fine primary goods. 
   • Make promises and learn to keep them. This helps adhere to deadlines and fuels motivation. It also produces reputation and social capital to exchange later on.

8. Serve as a connector

   • Create and maintain a database of knowledge. Serve as the central point of access to the repository.
   • Foster serendipity through symbiotic introductions. Be mindful of your reputation capital.
   • Understand when to make asks and how to plan for them in advance. Be mindful of your social capital.

9. begin building a community

   • Invest in relationships for the sake of it. Do not seek immediate returns but value your time appropriately.
   • Become an expert on available resources, consider who might be interested in what, and provide them at no cost.
   • Be a friend to leaders and novices alike. Recognize that in due time the difference between them will blur. 

10. remember: nobody knows what the hell they are doing

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]]>Bruno WerneckSun, 03 May 2015 18:10:22 +0000http://www.brunoswerneck.com/thoughts/2015/5/3/i-love-fintech-and-so-can-you54c3b9fde4b0dec48bc2b50d:54c3bc66e4b0d95d7955d4f9:5518bfc1e4b06fca1717759cMeetup

About a month ago I met up with a few fintech geeks at Hogwash during a quick trip to San Francisco and could not help grinning to myself as I nursed a couple Dale's Pale Ales and listened in on conversation.

To my left was Vincent Turner, CEO of Planwise and co-founder of SF Fintech waxing poetic about startups to Rachid Grimes and Kevin King of Pylon Loans. To my right was Ben Brown, innovation scout for First Annapolis and Twitter fintech maverick chatting with zeroDB founder and Wall Street expat MacLane Wilkison.

Earlier I had spent some time with the team at FT Partners, an investment banking firm focused exclusively on the financial technology sector who counts both multinationals and new ventures in its burgeoning client Rolodex and a bitching transaction database.

The day before was coffee with Brad Leimer, Head of Innovation at Santander Bank and a chat with Cashflower founder and Innotribe senior adviser Mike Sigal at SC Studios Innovation Center.

Me? I had Tweeted a few dozen times about fintech--brashly inserting myself into conversations with veteran VCs and entrepreneurs where I had no business being--and written a half-decent Quora post about New York startups that for some reason people found useful.

You see the point here? One of these things is not like the other.

TWITTER 

A few months earlier, in December of 2014 I had scrapped my old Twitter, launched a new handle (tactically including my middle initial to differentiate myself from the insolent LA-based graphic artist who has systematically monopolized all 'Bruno Werneck' tags on social media) and started berating people online about the recent Lending Club IPO. 

I latched onto the buzz EquityZen created with its Path to IPO post and for the following several days forwarded the piece on Twitter to bigwigs in the marketplace lending world: Renaud Laplanche (Lending Club), Aaron Vermut (Prosper), Dan Ciporin (Canaan Partners), Peter Renton (Lend Academy), and the like. 

I had been following the peer-to-peer lending space for a couple of years after stumbling upon LendingMemo but had remained a passive observer up to that moment. My Tweets received a tepid response at best but I was hooked. I began toying with Twitter, optimizing the content, structure, and frequency of my Tweets and familiarizing myself with the more visible users on the platform.

The process took a few weeks but with the help of several Twitter lists, an automated Buffer queue, and Hootsuite for real-time engagement I was off to the races. Two Retweets became twenty (still tepid, I realize) and the obsession expanded.

I enjoyed the immediacy of Twitter dialogue but what it provided in responsiveness it lacked in content permanence. I needed a platform that offered the virality of Twitter but allowed for more stable presentation of material.

Quora

Quora solved both issues in one fell swoop and my obsession flared up again, even stronger this time. 

I subscribed to every relevant question regarding financial technology on the site and began methodically crafting answers, beginning with the most followed queries to the least. I strategically published posts on Tuesday mornings and Sunday afternoons when I knew netizens would be most likely to pause and read the material. I Tweeted at users I could see were following the question and followed up with Direct Messages and e-mails afterwards asking for thoughts and introductions.

The hit rate on responses was surprisingly high and grew as my network did. People were interested in discussing, promoting, and collaborating, especially as I was increasingly able to reference previous work and interactions. Two months on Quora led to 50 thousand views across 28 posts with three top answers to boot. Lukewarm, but heating up.

Medium

Cross-pollination between Twitter and Quora Twitter accelerated momentum and I began moving from content aggregation to creation. I started slowly: First, a list of fintech investors with Marc Bernegger. Next, a piece with Bernard Lunn on the New York ecosystem.

As my Evernote folders and call notes piled up I became intent on producing longer pieces, ones based on personal opinion and analysis not just regurgitation of others'.

A call with Yann Ranchere of Anthemis--whose site is a fintech repository of knowledge--stoked inspiration. He had two central pieces of advice: a) Write for yourself, and b) seek criticism.

TekFin, Yann's online blog persona, had been finely crafted after years of hustling yet his domain expertise came not necessarily from deep technical training (though he certainly earned his chops at Kurt Salmon) but from continued curiosity and proactivity.

And so I followed Yann's suggestion and the age-old adage: There's no substitute for practice. 

I wrote 'Finentropy and the next big thing' on Medium about the need for more robust financial data and infrastructure, including the expanding use cases of XBRL taxonomy. The post counts a strong four 'recommends' as of today (hoping for five by year end) and rattled around the Twittersphere for a couple of days (including a thumbs up from Yann).

But more important than the immediate response was the sense that--though far from an expert--I had the potential to meaningfully contribute to the fintech community in some small fashion.

Fintech Fanatic

I became a full-blown fintech fanatic and took to labeling myself as such. The sobriquet never stuck but the recognition began to.

I attended every Meetup in New York I thought might be marginally applicable and reached out to the 21 People in the New York FinTech Scene You Need to Know About through a mix of introductions and cold e-mails (currently batting .333).

In the course of six weeks and through planned serendipity I was asked by the founder of Empire Startups to help run the FinTech Startups Conference and now proudly support the Innotribe Startup Challenge as a judge and Techstars' Barclays Accelerator as an informal mentor.

Though I have not yet earned my FinTech Mafia t-shirt and will not be found on the Absolute Ultimate Guide of Who's Who in FinTech for the forseeable future, I hope to surreptitiously sneak into the fintech literati in the years to come.

Let me be clear: I was and remain an utter neophyte in my understanding of financial technology, the greater financial services landscape, and emerging trends in the space. Tweets and Quora posts cannot supplant experience, hard time, and a well-built network.

But the beauty of the fintech community in mid-2015, besides the visceral excitement of its members, is the number of avenues by which outsiders can access the ecosystem and develop relevancy and cachet in relatively quick fashion.

And, hey, Fidessa wasn't built in a day.

Reuben's salient points are:

• Number of originators continue to grow (he estimates 600+ currently) and are expanding beyond consumer and small business
• Institutional investors are targeting the marketplace loan space in mass and are interested in deploying capital across multiple platforms
• Technology must evolve to fulfill increasingly sophisticated needs, which include: enhanced performance reporting, streamlined trading, and consolidated account views

I have discussed these phase II--what Reuben calls 'second-order'--players and argue that the continued success of crowdfunding platforms is heavily contingent on robust infrastructure buildouts. What would the stock market be without the NYSE or Bloomberg, for example? Orchard Platform is in the pole position here and smart money agrees.

The larger point here, however, is not about the growth of marketplace lenders but a rather simpler notion:

*Headscratch* Well...duh.

Let's think through this for a minute, though. Ten years ago I might have had a checking account at Bank A, a CD with Bank B, and a brokerage account at Wirehouse C. If I were a little on the crazy side maybe I had some money in private investments too.

Fine, a bit laborious but I could count on a combination of my accountant, tax specialist, and investment adviser to sort through the figures and tell me: This is what you made last year. This is what you owe the government. This is how you much you should save or reinvest.

The picture looks a lot more jumbled now.

I might have a Bitcoin wallet at Coinbase which I use to fund loans on BTC Jam alongside investment accounts at LendingClub, Zopa, and CreditEase (note the several jurisdictions here) with participation in a couple AngelList syndicates to boot.

*Headscratch*

Yeah, not so easy.

What of the multinational corporation with exposure not only to a multitude of different sovereign currencies but also various local crypto-currencies? How does one construct an accurate personal or, even hairier, company balance sheet in this world? What does GAAP or IFRS mean in this context?

The question Reuben implicitly asks here--and which I find fascinating--is fairly plain, though the solutions to it are far from:

Fred Wilson asks a similar question in a post regarding digital money accounting. As Fred notes, it would be hugely helpful to have a Mint.com for all digital money services with a centralized, real-time dashboard of one's many accounts.

A few upstarts are mentioned in the comments section: Tapeke, LibraTax, Bitcoin Taxes. These companies are innovative and provide useful data aggregation, analysis, and visualization functions on the front end. On the back end Yodlee and Fiserv are proven information providers and have greatly simplified communication between platforms in recent years.

Yet I wonder whether the piping--and, more importantly, the data flowing through the piping--is robust and dynamic enough to keep pace with the accelerating complexity of the financial ecosystem.

This consideration undergirds Bernard Lunn's fervent advocacy of XBRL and his concern with its premature demise. Though adoption of XBRL was mandated by the SEC for all publicly-listed companies and the rollout for US stocks is now complete, uptake of the new standard has been pathetically slow.

As Bernard notes, XBRL remains a hidden technology and it will perhaps take another country or a plucky small-cap CEO to utilize and popularize the taxonomy. Yet whether it is XBRL or OFX or some other as-of-yet unheard-of or uncreated data-stream format, this much is clear: The necessity for improved standardized reporting for financial information is pressing.

There is a lot of work to be done here and a lot of dollars, euros, bitcoins, etc. to be made.

As with the net neutrality issue, advancements in the space will move more quickly and effectively under the aegis of a dedicated coalition of government representatives, incumbent players (i.e. financial institutions), and upstarts. It remains to be seen if entrenched interests will be as slow to move.

And so to bring it back to Reuben:

Continued infrastructure buildout is a must if we are to harness and benefit from the expanding finentropy during this fintech Cambrian explosion. That means ensuring we have the proper data available and the right piping to move it.