20VC: a16z's Angela Strange on Why Every Company Will Be A Fintech Company, How Founders Should Think About Niches and Optimal Insertion Points, How To Transition To Become The System of Record & Are We Entering A Period of Bundling Or Unbundling for Fint

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2020

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Angela Strange is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the leading venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Facebook, Github, Slack, Airbnb, Asana and more. As for Angela, she largely focuses on investments in financial services and is currently a board member of Addi, SynapseFi, and Tally. Prior to a16z, Angela was a product manager at Google where she launched and grew Chrome for Android and Chrome for iOS into two of Google's most successful mobile products.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Angela made her way into the world of venture and came to be one of the leading fintech VCs with Andreesen Horowitz?

2.) Why does Angela believe that every company is going to be a fintech company? What is driving this shift? How does removing the barriers to entry for more products change both product quality and cost? How does Angela think about the role of regulation here?

3.) How does Angela think about what makes the best insertion points? How big does the initial wedge into the market have to be? When do you need to be able to prove you can transition from the insertion to the wider market? How does Angela fundamentally assess market size today?

4.) How does one transition to being the system of record? Do you have to be the system of record from day 1? Which examples are most striking for Angela on becoming a system of record? What are the biggest challenges in making this transition? Which metric tells you if you have become it?

5.) Does Angela think we are in a period of bundling or unbundling? What are the leading indicators of each? How does Angela assess the Fintech M&A market today? Will we continue to see large consolidatory moves in the form of Credit Karma, Plaid etc etc?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Angela’s Fave Book: Investing: The Last Liberal Art

As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and wow am I excited for the show today.
0:03.8	I've been such a fan of this guest's content for a long time.
0:06.5	She made headlines with her piece, why every company will be a fintech company.
0:10.1	It's one of my favourists, and so giving it away there.
0:12.4	But I'm very, very excited to welcome Angela Strange, general partner at Andriesen Horrors,
0:16.6	one of the leading venture firms of the last decade, with a portfolio including the likes of Facebook,
0:21.3	GitHub, Slack, Airbnb, Asana, and more incredible companies. As for Angela, she largely focuses
0:27.4	on investments in financial services, and is currently a board member of Addy, Synaps, Phi, and Tally.
0:33.0	And prior to Andreessen, Angela was a product manager at Google, where she launched and grew Chrome
0:37.0	for Android and Chrome for iOS, into two of Google's most successful mobile products.
0:41.8	I'd also have to say a huge thank you to Nicol Basutravetti, Jason at Talley, Santiago at Adi and Frank Chen at Andresen for some fantastic question suggestions today, a real team effort.
0:51.6	But before we move into the show today, I want to take a moment to mention HelloSign, a great example of a company that found success in building a product
0:58.3	focused on user experience. HelloSign is an effortless e-signature solution used by millions to
1:03.8	securely send and requests legally valid digital signatures and agreements. They raised a total of
1:08.7	$16 million in funding and recently got acquired by
1:11.5	Dropbox for an impressive $230 million. Check out HelloSign.com forward slash 20 VC to join the
1:18.3	thousands of companies and founders who value fast, secure and simple e-signatures. And I do have to
1:24.2	mention another incredible product-centric business, Digis. Digits have spent the last two years building this incredibly powerful financial engine for businesses.
1:32.5	Now they're ready to show you what they can do with it.
1:34.7	Back in April, they announced a real-time dashboard to help you manage your company's expenses for free.
1:39.6	And recently, a little birdie told me they have some incredible announcements coming up.
1:43.3	They've raised almost $33 million from benchmark and GV, and the team behind digits is just
	...

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