Fintech Insider Podcast by 11:FS
00:32:40 · Maia Bittner
[00:32:40] S3: How cool. I mean, I view this very similar to our Huntington story, which is that this is a growth and customer acquisition play, specifically by moving earlier. And everyone knows that the hardest part of fintech is frequently customer acquisition. And so they're trying to get new investing customers before they're investing and early on. I think the community and education angle is is really cool. I think that has been one of the advantages of the Internet for a long time is that you can be connected with people like you when those people might not go to your school or live in your town or be accessible otherwise. You can sit in your bedroom and calibrate with people who are like you. I think with money specifically, it's actually really, really valuable. There's another tool called Status Money that was doing something really similar where it lets you benchmark. Okay. For people like me, how much are they paying in student loans? How much is their car payment? How frequently do they get raises at work? And it really help... Helps people sort of ground themselves and understand, am I doing okay? Do I have, like, too fancy of a car given how much money I make? Should I be trying to save money on going out to drinks with my friends, or am I doing this a normal amount? You know, I think those are very, very normal questions for people to have about their finances. The finance influencers also always give people that kind of benchmarking. They will say, you should only spend up to 25 or 30% of your income on housing. You should only spend up to this amount of money on discretionary spending. And so, you know, I think people are really hungry for that. Acorns has actually done quite a lot of acquisitions. I think they've done almost nine. And so they must have a playbook. Like, this is working well for them. Right? They have a playbook. They are shutting down the French platform. And so I think it's less about keeping that community going and more about how can they bring that community into the Acorns platform, how can they add education and community to Acorns and sell the existing Acorns product suite to that group of millions that that Frint has collected.
00:35:00 · Laura Watkins
[00:35:00] S0: Wow. Thank you. Yeah. There's a... I mean, there's a lot to to unpack in here, but that that kind of peer to peer kind of comparison of financial habits is is certainly interesting. Pav, what's your take on on that? Does that sort of encourage better financial behavior? Does it introduce risks if like, you know, the the the loudest voice is actually the most wrong? Like, what is it... And what do you think of of that approach?
00:35:27 · Pav Gill
[00:35:27] S1: I mean, think it's a very savvy acquisition. You have basically acquired 1,600,000 potential customers, is that community size. And if it's run-in a responsible way, you know, with the right moderators and the right parameters, then of course it's great idea. I think it goes back to what the point that I was saying earlier, which is Gen Zepho, you know, which is primarily this market, They do support each other, they do listen trends, follow them, you know, we've seen crazy trends from before, which were very positive on TikTok, but I think this one could be made very positive. My my bigger question would be, think the risks cannot be avoided. I'm not trying to like be always like the doom and gloom guy as a lawyer, but the risks are definitely there, right, because from my perspective, it's it's an Instagram generation. So there is naturally that flaunt aspect to this, and because of that, there's a need for validation as well, and the risks would be how are people comparing, because someone who's just had, say, $10,000 as earnings could have 20,000 in debt, which is undisclosed. So how is it being positioned? What are the guardrails? Is it going to create competition in an unhealthy manner? Or is it gonna be a gamified experience? I don't know. Is it just just purely like a very chill, yeah, you know, I invested in this, I did this, I saved this amount. If anyone wants to know, they can DM me for further info. Because the risk with all these things is it then becomes some kind of like investment fraud. Right? Which one of these guys is trying to like whip up. So that's just where I'm coming from, but of course, like, as a business acquisition, I think it's extremely savvy.
00:37:17 · Laura Watkins
[00:37:17] S0: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean... Yeah, and to your point on the the sort of what is and isn't disclosed, like, you know, in The UK this year, we've had this sort of crackdown on quote unquote finfluencers promoting financial products illegally. So there's definitely a a sort of a risk factor in here and a kind of security concern for for those sort of maybe oversharing some of their financial situations as well. But there's, yeah, there's definitely something to be said for Acorns making an acquisition of this kind and sort of immediately just taking on 1,600,000 customers that they didn't have before at a young age that will hopefully mature within the rest of what of what Acorns has to offer. I mean, Vijay, you, you know, you mentioned in your previous role you were a CMO. Like, would that have to hunt? Like, what do you think of the... Of a... Of an acquisition like this?
00:38:11 · Vijay Konduru
[00:38:11] S2: I think it's definitely very interesting. Right? Social engagement, even through influencers, has been shown to work out for different businesses at scale. Again, we've got a couple of massive fintechs in America that have grown to that scale because of their inclusion of social media campaigns and influencer campaigns into their marketing playbooks. So definitely useful. From the eighteen sixty six studio's perspective, at least from the onset, the approach that we're taking with that community and social engagement is by having exclusive content within the platform that's available to the users of the product, but then having a part of the content actually be about sharing business owners' stories. So that way, we're trying to make sure that the situation that Pav talked about, which is the, hey, status and flaunting, etcetera, does not really play out within our value chain. But that business owners can maybe, through those stories and content, see themselves or the context that's playing out for them and get some valuable insights on what to do. So that's how we are thinking about social engagement and and community and content, at least within the context of the product when we launch it.
00:39:33 · Laura Watkins
[00:39:33] S0: Wow. That's... Yeah. That's really interesting, like, kind of combating the kind of unnecessarily flaunting and telling, like, the real truth, I think, is is really interesting. Maya, we we sort of talked about, like, the kind generational play that that Acorns is making. Obviously, there's the acquisition of GoHenry. They've got the sort of early product for the very, very younger users. This sort of sits maybe somewhere in the middle, and then they have the the the kind of quote, unquote normal savings and investment product. What what do you think is that, like, kind of game here around conversations around money when through the generations as their customer base sort of ages and grows with them, I guess?