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Happy Friday, Weary Fintech Travelers!

The end of the Fall fintech conference season has officially arrived, and my trip back home from Fintech NerdCon has been quite eventful. So, it feels like a good time to reflect on the last couple of months of travel (and this week, in particular).

Today’s newsletter will be on the lighter side. If you are looking for more heft, check out yesterday’s sponsored deep dive essay on agentic AI and risk decisioning. It contains one of my favorite analogies of all time.

- Alex 

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Since the beginning of September, I have (by my count) attended 13 industry events in 7 different cities.

At the start of this journey, I looked like this:

After two weeks of multiple events in a row (mid-September was BRUTAL), I looked like this:

At the midway point, facing down the gauntlet of Money20/20, I looked like this:

At the Fintech Takes: Builders Summit, I temporarily looked like this:

Right now, after having trekked all over Westeros, I look like this:

And by the end of today, after having been awake for 40 hours straight, I expect to look like this:

All of which is to say: it’s been a long, tiring journey. And I am very much looking forward to the next couple of months of no travel.

However, lest my Jon Snow memes suggest otherwise, I also want to say how grateful I am to have had the opportunity to participate in these events. It’s a privilege to attend, speak at, and (occasionally) organize and host industry events, and I never want to take it for granted, no matter how tired I am!

I also think I have a relatively unique perspective on what makes a good event in the financial services industry, and I figured it might be useful to share some observations on that front in today’s newsletter.

A few years ago, I hypothesized that financial services conferences have a lifecycle. Roughly speaking, the stages of that lifecycle are:

1. Garage Band: New event. Takes risks and tries new things. Rough around the edges, but attracts a few early “true fans”. 
2. Up-and-Comer: The event sands off some of the rough edges. Starts attracting more mainstream attention, which leads to better speakers and bigger sponsors. Some of the initial “I liked them before they were cool” charm dissipates. 
3. Must See: A large portion of the industry attends the event. People and companies plan their year around it. All the best speakers and sponsors clamor to be involved. Some folks travel to the event, but don’t buy a ticket, just so they can be in proximity to the event and meet with those who are attending. 
4. Vegas Residency: The event becomes too big and/or overmonetized. The quality of the content and the networking start to suffer. The cool kids (attendees and sponsors move on), but the older/less cool fans stick around for a while.
5. Utter Irrelevance: The end. Lack of interest from a critical mass of sponsors and attendees renders the event nonviable. It gets acquired or shut down.

This is the lifecycle that all events go through … except one. There’s always one exception, as I wrote:

Interestingly, there’s always one event that manages to rise above this lifecycle and claim the “you just have to be there” throne. This is the event that everyone in the industry attends (or at least hovers around). It commands premium prices from attendees and sponsors, and it has the flashiest (if not always the best) content. The event that claims this position is usually one that has gotten to step #3 in the lifecycle, but not every event that gets to #3 ascends to the throne. There’s some luck involved. You have to be ready to seize the throne at the same time that the industry is ready to move on to a new lead event.

Obviously, Money20/20 is the event that has had the “you just have to be there” throne for years now. However, as I observed after my last pilgrimage to Las Vegas, the vibe at Money20/20 has changed:

The exhibit hall seemed less crowded. It was as if the walking paths between the vendor booths had been widened to give the impression of busyness, kinda like how we all used to increase the margins in our word processors so that we could hit the required number of pages for our school essays (To the kids reading this and not understanding, this is how we cheated in the days before ChatGPT.) 

I also noticed a significant increase in activity outside the event, particularly in the Venetian, Palazzo, and nearby hotels. This “LobbyCon” strategy has been a thing forever, but it felt more pronounced this year, which probably has something to do with the inflation in Money20/20 ticket prices ($4,000 is a lot of money!) It also probably explains why Money20/20 has gone to such extreme lengths to control all of the restaurants, suites, and pool cabanas at both hotels. If you wanted to rent out any place for people to sit in either the Venetian or Palazzo, it seemed like you needed to go through Money20/20.

I don’t know. Overall, Money20/20 feels overmonetized at this point, as if the Powers that Be are determined to get a cut of every tiny bit of revenue that the show indirectly helps generate. If Money20/20 ends up relocating from the Venetian to the Las Vegas Convention Center at some point (This has been a very persistent, but unconfirmed rumor at the event for the last few years), it will likely be because of this intense desire to control and monetize every facet of the event.

With the benefit of a bit more hindsight, it feels like we are at the end of an era. Money20/20 may be starting to lose its hold on the throne. 

I don’t know if there’s an event that’s ready to seize it (Fintech Meetup, maybe?) Or, perhaps, we are about to enter a different era altogether, one that is defined by a swarm of smaller, more focused events rather than one big one.

On that note …

The Fintech Takes: Builders Summit had about 50 people in attendance, which was a limitation imposed by the incredible venue that we chose for the event. However, one of my learnings was that 50 people was the perfect size for the types of conversations that I wanted to provoke. If we’d had 300 people or 1,000 people or 15,000 people, it wouldn’t have worked. This was confirmed for me by an attendee who, when I asked him what I should change about the event, quickly said, “No, don’t change anything!”

I don’t think he meant that there wasn’t stuff we could improve. There were lots of rough edges that need sanding down. What he meant was that we shouldn’t change the essential nature of the event. We shouldn’t try to displace Money20/20 and become the conference that 15,000 people come to every year (if I managed to accomplish this feat, the good citizens of Bozeman would shoot me).

What this tells me is that there’s a proper “mass” to every event; a number of people who make the format and the agenda work. And when you change that mass too much, the essential nature of the event changes. It’s like astrophysics. The smallest a star can be and still achieve nuclear fusion is, theoretically, 0.1 solar mass (i.e., one tenth the mass of our sun). The largest a star can be (i.e., blue supergiants) is about 150–250 times the Sun’s mass. Any bigger and the pressure created by radiation forces the sun to shed some of its mass.

The same general dynamic applies to events.

The Fintech Takes: Co-working Day that we did in Washington, D.C., in October worked well because there was only a handful of us. It was 100% about the informal conversations. The Builders Summit blended a few content sessions with thoughtful, topic-focused group discussions, which was the perfect format for 50-ish people. The MX Money Experience Summit and LoanPro Salt Flats Summit had hundreds of attendees, which suits the “work hard, play hard” vibe they have both worked to cultivate. Fintech NerdCon capped its total number of tickets at 1,000 for similar reasons.

Once you get above 1,000 attendees, you get into the Finovate/Fintech Meetup/Money20/20 range, which can be very profitable. However, you start to flirt with that “blue supergiant” size, in which your sheer size starts to drive some attendees away.

In the world of content creation, events are, by far, the product that has the best profit margin. To paraphrase a famous fintech phrase, every media company eventually ends up being an events company.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with this. Events are profitable because people value in-person experiences (content, networking, etc.) extremely highly. If a company can earn the right to start and grow an event, they deserve to reap the rewards. At Fintech Takes, that’s certainly what we are trying to do.

However, there’s a word of caution that I want to offer to anyone who runs an event (or is considering starting an event): the event doesn’t belong to you.

When they work well, what makes events special is the alchemy that happens when people and ideas smash into each other at high speeds. And that doesn’t happen without sacrifice. The people have to take time away from their jobs and families to be there. The ideas require intellect and honesty to manifest. None of it happens by accident, and no event organizer, no matter how smart and productive they are, can do it by themselves. It takes a community.

So, be humble. Don’t hog the best speaking and moderating slots for yourself. Don’t use mainstage time to pitch your company or its products. Don’t allow yourself to get annoyed by those who play the LobbyCon game. And don’t try to squeeze every single dime out of this thing you helped create.

It doesn’t belong to you.

Every event pretends that the most important and valuable thing that it offers to attendees is the content. In my experience, this is very rarely true. Unless the event makes 100% of its revenue from ticket sales or it is unusually disciplined in recruiting the right sponsors, the content won’t be universally top-notch.

And you know what? That’s fine!

Different conferences serve different purposes. Some are all about networking and generating sales opportunities. Some are all about putting the right mix of people in the same room at the same time, content be damned. There’s nothing wrong with that!

But it’s important, as an attendee or sponsor, to know what type of event you are going to and what value you expect to get from it. There are few things as annoying as going to a conference expecting great content and discovering that the content isn’t a priority.

I’m an old person in a young-ish body, so forgive me for this rant … but can we please care more about the acoustics at events?!?

I don’t fault my friends who organized Fintech NerdCon and Stablecon (which took place in the Spring of this year). Both events were held for the first time this year, and there’s always a lot of stuff that goes wrong in the first year, but the acoustics at both events were less than ideal. Speakers on stage couldn’t hear each other. Attendees trying to network during the breaks had to shout at each other.

Let’s get some carpeting and some heavy drapes to section off the mainstage. Or, better yet, let’s quit doing these “open floor plan” events where the stages are in the same physical space as the exhibit hall and the networking areas (Money20/20 is guilty of this, too). What happened to buildings with walls and separate rooms?

And, while we’re on this subject, can we stop holding the evening networking events and happy hours at clubs with DJs? I can’t fucking hear what anyone is saying!!!!   

OK, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

I remember asking the founders of Money20/20 why they always held the event in Las Vegas instead of moving it to locations that are more compatible with human sanity and happiness. 

Their answer boiled down to convenience. Vegas is easy-ish to get to (everyone in the U.S. has to travel to get there, but no one has to go too far). It has ample hotel rooms and conference space. It has a plethora of good restaurants and fun attractions. Put simply, it’s built to host conferences.

That makes sense, but here’s a different way to look at it: Las Vegas allows for the lowest common denominator. 

If it doesn’t take much work to get to your event, everyone will come … including a lot of people who don’t care that much about being there. People who will fly in for half a day and then fly back out. People who will skip out on day 2 to go to the pool or go shopping.

That might be fine if your goal is to simply pull in (and monetize) the biggest possible crowd. 

However, if your goal is to create a high-quality event with great content and conversations, then a place like Vegas works against you. You don’t want the lowest common denominator. You want the highest common denominator. You want to make it inconvenient to get to because the people who self-select for inconvenience are the ones who really care about being there. The ones who will block their calendars, close their laptops, put down their phones, and actually engage in the event.

This is why we hosted the Builders Summit in the mountains of Montana (where we had no cell reception and spotty WiFi). It’s why I always hold the Fintech Takes: The Court 3x3 basketball tournament on the Sunday morning of Money20/20 (even though most folks don’t typically arrive until later on Sunday). The inconvenience is the point.    

The first time I moderated a panel at an event, it was a disaster. So much so that it still haunts me to this day (Editor’s Note — If anyone out there ever wants to hold a small conference on card-linked offers and give me a chance to redeem myself as a moderator for a session, please let me know!)

It’s not easy! It feels like it should be, but it’s not. 

Like anything, it’s a skill that takes a lot of reps to get good at.

So, here’s my plea to event organizers: choose moderators thoughtfully. 

For the important mainstage panels and fireside chats, recruit the best. Folks like Jason Henrichs, Jason Mikula, Kiah Haslett, Simon Taylor, Nik Milanovic, Ron Shevlin, Jim Marous, JP Nicols, Karen Webster, Peter Renton, Miguel Armaza, Greg Palmer, Rob Blackwell, and the many others I’m sure I’m forgetting.

For the breakout sessions, help cultivate a new generation of outstanding moderators by giving less experienced (but eager) folks opportunities to practice and get better.

Also, apropos of nothing, lawyers are not nearly as good at moderating discussions as they think they are. Tread cautiously in this area.

I moderated a panel a few years ago that was actually very well-attended. We had between 150 and 200 people in attendance.

But it didn’t feel that way.

You know why?

It was held in a room that could have comfortably fit 2,000 people.

Perception matters. Being in a room where people are standing in the back because there aren’t enough empty chairs makes you feel like the session you're watching is important. In demand. And being on a stage in a room like that makes you, as a speaker, feel important too. And that feeling translates into a better experience for all involved.

The American Fintech Council Policy Summit, which I spoke at this week, has done a good job of this. It’s a bit annoying to navigate such a crowded room, but I like the feeling of being in a crowded room. I don’t think I’m alone in this.

I love the combination of drinking and talking more than almost anyone I know. To be honest, I’m not really a Jon Snow. I’m much more of a Tyrion Lannister.

That said, there are way too many happy hours and not nearly enough activities and sit-down dinners.

You know what’s a great way to get to know people? Playing basketball together. 

(Editor’s Note — If you want to organize a basketball game at a financial services event, please have the courtesy to talk to me first. I’m not proprietary about much, but that’s my thing.)

Ditto for axe throwing, golf, silversmithing, glass blowing, horseback riding, hiking, pickleball, racecar driving, board game playing, cooking, distillery touring, record shopping, going for an early-morning run, screening an old movie, and literally any other human activity! There are so many to choose from!

And then, after the fun and bonding, go grab an actual dinner together. I can’t tell you how many times I end up STARVING at the end of the day because all I had was a couple of quick snacks at the conference and whatever appetizer looked most palatable at the happy hour.

This is an area where banks have it right and fintech has it wrong.

Scanning badges is soulless and transactional. That LinkedIn QR code thing is dumb. Asking for a phone number is far too forward in a business context. 

Business cards are great. They are an opportunity for you or your company to exercise a little creativity. They are fun to exchange. They are a tactile reminder of the next steps after you get home. Truly, I think they help me better remember the details of the conversations I have with folks.

Kiah and I just got Fintech Takes business cards, and they are glorious.

MAKE BUSINESS CARDS COOL AGAIN!!!!  

Many event ideas flop. And the flops can feel excruciating.

But I have come to really appreciate event organizers who try new things.

The industry is, I think, starved for novelty when it comes to events. It’s worth risking a few flops here and there if you can uncover a new idea — a non-traditional speaker, an exotic location, a content format that no one has tried before — that really hits.

Here are a few from this Fall fintech conference season that I’ve personally loved:

• A panel on generation differences featuring panelists from each generation (shoutout MX!)
• An event held on the Bonneville Salt Flats (shoutout LoanPro!)
• A micro event for locals organized as a co-working day (shoutout Rachit Khaitan and the Fintech Takes Network!)
• A keynote presentation, fireside chat, and Q&A session all merged into one (shoutout me!)
• Making video games the aesthetic theme for an event and giving me an excuse to play (and narrowly lose at) Super Smash Bros (shoutout Fintech NerdCon!)

We can just try stuff. And we should!

MORE QUESTIONS TO PONDER TOGETHER

Big news for the endlessly curious (yes, you): I’m collecting your fintech questions on a rolling basis. 

What’s keeping you up at night? What great mysteries in financial services beg to be unraveled? Think of it this way, if a stranger is a friend you just haven't met yet, your question is a Fintech Takes conversation waiting to happen. 

One that could headline a Friday newsletter or be answered in an upcoming Fintech Office Hours event.

Drop your question here, whenever inspiration strikes!

Thanks for the read! Let me know what you thought by replying back to this email.

— Alex  

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