Which Fintechs Should Pursue an Investor GTM Strategy?

Fintech + Investor GTM = <3

As a highly regulated industry currently experiencing significant, technical product innovations, fintech is well-suited to investor GTM partnerships.

Investors want high-quality deal flow and healthy exits. Partnering with certain fintechs can help with both by sharpening investors’ market intelligence and directly contributing to the monetization and growth trajectories of their portfolio companies.

Below, I’m going to walk through whether an Investor GTM strategy is relevant for certain types of fintechs. It’s not exhaustive, but it will give you a taste of how this can play out.

Of course, a sales team should assess this strategy within the context of their broader GTM efforts. Brand awareness, ACV, ICP, investor-customer relationships, and headcount should all factor in to the decision.

Potential Opportunities

So, should [X] platform prioritize investor partnerships as a part of their GTM? Let’s see!

Procurement

Yes. Procure-to-pay, AP, and accounting platforms should take this strategy seriously. These tools can reduce complexity (i.e. headcount) and ensure investor money is well-spent.

InsurTech

No. You are unlikely to get an investor’s attention with insurance. If your insurtech sells something that is relevant to a very specific investor’s portfolio, then go for it; but other kinds of partnerships are better uses of time.

Wealth Management

No. It’s too removed from the bottom line and unlikely to see alignment between your ICP and their portfolio. I can see a platform that provides digital advisory as an employee perk hoping to unlock this strategy, but that won’t get serious attention from investors.

Embedded Payments

Yes. As long as integrating payments drives monetization, this is a good idea. But beware: it’s crowded. Even the strongest investor intro is likely to become your ticket to a bake-off.

Embedded Lending

Yes. Embedded lending platforms should target VC and PE firms who have invested in large platforms that can feasibly integrate the product and quickly access thousands of merchants.

RegTech

It depends. For example, a company selling SMB data will likely be used alongside other credit decisioning data sources, so the path to the bottom line isn’t direct enough; but a fraud detection platform may create efficiencies or a safer path to growth.

What other examples come to mind?

Conclusion

Depending on the product, I think startups can consider a bespoke investor partnerships experience and/or a 1-to-many “X for startups” approach.

Hopefully, the list above gives you an idea of how varied this space can be. Fintech is highly-regulated and changing quickly, but that doesn’t guarantee the relevance of Investor GTM.

Ultimately, keep it simple: if your best customers and prospects are in their portfolio, experiment and build out the strategy.