Stephanie Mertz

May 29, 2024 | thisweekinfintech.com | Sophie Vo |Stephanie Mertz

Hey fintech friends,Synapse’s bankruptcy and subsequent wind-down has left many open questions about the path forward for its ~100 customers and tens of thousands of end users holding funds on the platform. It has also brought to light the complexities and risks involved in building Banking as a Service, and underscored the human cost of getting it wrong.  In the fallout of this collapse it’s important to learn from the vulnerabilities that led to this point.

May 19, 2023 | stephmertz.medium.com | Stephanie Mertz

A visual exploration of how we decided to change courseThe pre-product-market-fit startup journey has felt like going on a hike. As a team, we knew which hill we wanted to climb - complex operational problems in banking and fintech. We packed our bags (gathered target customers and users willing to give feedback), and set off to hike up the mountain hoping to reach the peak - Product Market Fit. However, we didn't have a map.

Mar 28, 2023 | stephmertz.medium.com | Stephanie Mertz

Startups are a journey to find product-market-fit (PMF) in a large enough market for it to be an exciting opportunity with a product that your team is uniquely capable of solving. We were working to find that fit in the intersection of the fintech and crypto market. It might be fair to say that late 2022 / early 2023 was a "bad market," and that bad market won. When building a product, there are two broad categories of experiences: "Push vs Pull."Pushing is advertising, selling, convincing.