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Nik MilanoviÄ (@NikMilanovic) is the general partner at The Fintech Fund and the founder of This Week in Fintech.
Not many people have either a) scaled a newsletter to 150k readers and b) raised a venture fund.
Heās done both.
Iāve known Nik for a few years, and heās one of the more impressive and modest people I know.
I brought him on to talk about converting a media brand into an investment firm, the opportunity zones for fintech over the next decade, and some non-consensus bets that heās placing.
Letās get into it.
P.S. If youāre looking for more investor talks like this one ā¦
Explore all investor deep dives here.
Nik MilanoviÄ
GP @ The Fintech Fund
Stablecoins and emerging markets have been two of the biggest untouchable areas for VCs over the past two years. But now these two are some of the biggest opportunity areas according to Nik.
The most interesting opportunities for stablecoins come in countries without real-time payment systems.
Reasons to be bullish on fintech: 1) the size of banks, funds, non bank players, and their slowness to adopt new technology, 2) we are very early in the AI curve and underneath all of the AI hype, we are seeing the next platform shift and how services are going to be offered, and 3) fintech is still super concentrated regionally.
Media-as-a-service. All VCs are competing for allocations (especially at the seed), and it is becoming harder to distinguish yourself. Providing a tangible value through impressions and customer introductions are two reasons why media-first funds are winning allocations in todayās world.
If you want to spend more time with the investors on your cap table, you should seek capital from those with concentrated portfolios.
Speed = reacting quickly to opportunities when they come up.
The first step of operating a fund is getting allocations to companies at their formation stage. The next phase of operating a fund is getting allocations into more established companies later in the life cycle.
Every LP has a different preference on reserves. Itās up to you to figure out which LPs align with your strategy rather than trying to convince LPs that your way of thinking is right.
Your brand is the most important thing when youāre first starting out. You dilute your brand by not having the right amount of selectivity with your investments.
Itās okay to be slow to write checks. LPs are underwriting your judgement as much as anything else.
SPV investing is binary - you either return the capital or you donāt. For funds, you have to factor in hurdle rate, IRR, MOIC, and other variables which makes you more sensitive to valuations.
TAM doesnāt matter, especially at pre-seed. Itās a complete fugazi.
Full talk: https://youtu.be/H-zuthiDhDQ
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