ICONIQ General Partner, Yoonkee Sull - Finding Edge in Fintech and Building Enduring Companies

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Wharton Fintech podcast. I'm your co-host, Sabrina Favvy. - I'm your co-host, Wesley Astor. We're excited to bring another great conversation with a great guest today. - Today we're gonna be joined by Yunkie Sol, general partner iconic growth. Yunkie leads iconic spin tech investments and has played a key role in backing companies like Adyen, Chime, well simple, grow and round. With over a decade in venture investing, he has helped build iconic growth into a successful venture capital firm with over 150 portfolio companies and $21 billion in capital commitments. In today's conversation, we'll explore some of the biggest fintech trends, including how fintech startups can successfully challenge legacy financial institutions, the current state of fintech funding and how founders can secure capital and a tighter market. The role of financial innovation and expanding access to underserved communities and finally how AI, digital assets and virtualist commerce are shaping the future of fintech. Yunkie, welcome to the podcast. - Thanks so much for having me. - So we'd love to start learning a bit more about your background in your path to venture capital and iconic growth. You've built an impressive career in venture capital, helping grow iconic growth into an influential fintech investor. What first drew you to venture investing? - Yeah, sure. I'll start a little bit with my childhood. I would say it kind of goes back to some early influences for my dad in particular, who grew up with an engineering background through a PhD program in electrical engineering that spent a big part of his career as an engineer and then eventually got involved with a number of technology businesses and ventures. And so there were some early roots there for me as I was growing up. This is not unique to myself, but also as a child who was growing up in the '90s, I really quite literally grew up alongside the internet. And so that was a very tangible set of experiences in terms of just recognizing and seeing the impact that technology advances can have, especially when you have these massive platform shifts. And so I would say it started really there. And as I got into college, I kind of pursued the intersection of finance and technology. I was an economics major in undergrad. At the same time, I was involved with a number of venture-related initiatives in college as well in the community. And my first job out of college was as an investment-making analyst in New York and covering technology media and telecom. And at the time, this was kind of the early 2010s, going into venture and growth was not a particularly popular career decision. Also, there were actually that many firms that hired investment-panking analysts at the time. It's obviously changed quite drastically, kind of call it 10 to 15 years later. And so, but at the time, I was very fixated on going into and finding a venture and growth investing opportunity at a lot of friends who ended up deciding to pursue private equity and going into the hedge fund industry and have always built great careers there. But I think my interests were always very squarely here. And so, it was lucky enough to land an opportunity as one of the first associates at Iconic Growth and move to the Bay Area after being an investment-making. It'd be great if you could tell us a bit about Iconic Growth as well. Iconic is differentiated in its approach, seeking to blend venture capital with deep network effects and long-term partnerships. What may do Iconic specifically? And how is the firm evolved since you started? Yeah, I think one thing I'll start with is we've grown tremendously. Iconic Growth, when I first joined, it's now we're now closer to 100 across three different cities as well. And so, it's grown a lot. But I think from the very beginning, there was a very unique focus on building and cultivating an incredible network, a deep focus on building community. And this core principle around what we like to call uncommon care, which was really to focus on building long-term relationships and partnerships. And so, I think from there, the other thing that was really important to me was, I partners had this exclusive focus on working with and partnering with founders and companies who we believed could become market-defining category leaders in really strategic markets with great secular tailwinds and become their most strategic and long-term partner as it relates to their journey. And so, I think that really resonated with me. And ultimately, just in terms of our network and unique introductions that we've been able to facilitate built on years of relationships in addition to kind of the unique group of entrepreneurs that we have. We have built some of the largest market-leading companies globally. We've also built a number of teams outside of the investment team to help us better serve our portfolio companies across portfolio operations, across leadership advisory, analytics and data science, technical advisory, go to market advisory. And we're certainly not done. And our ambitions are only getting larger and larger. And I think the other thing I might add, just from a team perspective, is we've also had the fortune to add to our partnership a number of incredible operators. And I'll kind of run through a couple just-- because I think it's emblematic of what we mean by long-term relationships and partnership. But we had Ahmed Agrawal join us very recently, who was formerly the president of DataDoc, which was a company that we partnered with initially in 2015. We also brought on Rob Bursting, who was the former CEO of Kupa, one of the largest procurement software businesses. Another business we actually partnered initially with in 2015. I think there's a theme of 2015 for some reason. But lastly, we also brought on Cameron Zaki, who was the former CEO of Adian, a large global payments business, also a business we partnered with in 2015. And these are individuals that we've worked with across the table for more than a decade. And they've, of course, chosen to work with us on this side. And so I think it's just the representation of-- that is who kind of iconic growth is and stands for. And I think that's what made me excited to join in the beginning, even though at the time it was maybe a little bit closer to a vision. Then actuality and then kind of seeing it evolve in over the last decade plus has been just incredible. That's incredible. I'm curious. What do you think iconic did really well that allowed it to foster those long-term relationships perhaps better than other investors? Yeah. I think it goes back to its very early roots. I think we've really been focused on-- relationship building is not transactional. At the end of the day, we really try to show up for community. We try to show up with incredible and deep care. We try to give more than we ever take. And over time, these relationships are built overnight. And so you do right by folks who go on to do incredible things. And I think that just pays dividends in ways that-- and it just compounds in ways that are just very, very powerful. And I think this speaks to all sides of our business and our ability to just drive a really unique value with unique access to a really unique network that we've built over time. And looking back at your journey from starting as an associate to your current role as a partner, what do you think are some of the biggest lessons you've learned about spotting high potential Tintech companies? I think the biggest maybe learning is we might start to explore a certain thesis or a certain trend because we have a viewpoint on it. But we've learned time and time again that we really need to maintain a pretty flexible mindset. What works for a particular region or a particular end market or a particular customer can very greatly all entrepreneurial journeys are incredibly unique. And while we might bring learnings, we have at a global level and try to apply that where relevant. Ultimately, we're partnering with founders who have a unique point of view on how to build the best business and the best products for the customers that they want to serve and for their mission and vision. And so I think for us, it's just been keeping an open mind, keeping a learning mindset. If I reflect on all the investments that we've made across the Tintech portfolio, no story is the same, no entrepreneur is the same. We talked a lot about pattern recognition, but I think the pattern recognition is just work with incredible entrepreneurs who have a unique insight into the markets that they're building with just in a session with the product that they build and the customer that they serve and really follow that. Awesome. And shifting a bit more to the Fintechs that you're investing in. So we had mentioned earlier, you've invested in some of the best Fintechs out there like Chiamin, while simple, and these companies have successfully taken market share from traditional banks. What do you think are the biggest weaknesses of legacy firms? financial institutions that start up skin capitalize on? - Yeah, I think that's a combination of things. I think the first kind of words that come to mind are speed, transparency, low cost, convenience, simplicity, better UI. And over time, I think if you continue to deliver across all or some combination of these dimensions consistently into your customers with delightful products, you build really, really deep trust and ultimately a brand around that. And I think that sort of, that serves as the ultimate, ultimate mode. And there are of course, you know, economic advantages as well, right? So, you know, the lack of overhead that technology businesses have more agile and using technology to drive operational efficiency, also better understanding the customer. It also feeds into inability to drive accelerated product velocity and innovation. And oftentimes, you know, these companies are also bringing disruptive business models to the industry. And so I think it's a combination of these things and I don't think that's gonna change anytime soon. - On our baseline, as these Fintech startups are evolving and thinking about differentiation, especially we've seen the Fintech sector kind of mature over the last couple of years as well. How can some of these new Fintechs compete with well-funded incumbents and Fintechs that have already established themselves and how can they think about differentiation as they're growing as well? - Yeah, I think, I don't think the basic principles are really any different, you know, and I don't think it's inconsistent with how we would think about any other sector. But I think using speed and technology as core advantages as we talked about to ship amazing products that, you know, add a ton of value to the customer. I mean, that's really what this is about. And of course, like the advantage that incumbents or maybe other established players might have is distribution, certainly. Right, some of these brands have been around for decades if not longer. Also huge balance sheets to get aggressive on and, you know, to create a creative thing with if they so desire. And so what that comes, what that boils down to at the end of the day is, you know, you then need to compete with a better product or perhaps through creative distribution strategies. And so I think that's a really big part of it. I think a good example of this, you know, which has been a growing trend. I think we'll talk about this later in this, you know, interview as well is the growth of embedded financial services. For example, in terms of vertical software, businesses, or marketplaces increasingly becoming the point of distribution for financial services products. I think there's an interesting balance between, you know, melding both a creative distribution strategy and a better product. And so an example, you know, a good framework for this would be, you know, it is likely that a traditional bank, for example, Walt Partner with a next generation of vertical software business to distribute their, you know, lending, lending products through. But a new emerging Fintech company that can provide really modern infrastructure to enable this kind of functionality, but also use that as a leverage point for, you know, accelerated distribution and very efficient distribution. I think those, those are some of the, some of the ways where I think, you know, net new startups can really effectively compete with both on the product side and the distribution side. And I think there are multiple examples of this. That's just one example. But in the end, I think those are some of the, you know, some of the characteristics I, you know, I think about a lot. And as you mentioned, Metafintech is becoming quite popular as well. And with Embedded Fintech, a lot of these companies are actually partnering up with banks. And we're seeing a lot more partnerships between Fintechs, the traditional banks. Do you see this as the future of Fintech or do you think Challengers will continue to disrupt the industry on their own, like perhaps some previous new banks have? - Yeah, I think I do think partnerships are here to stay. In the end, the financial services ecosystem were broadly speaking. There are a lot of counter parties here. A lot of people do a lot of business with each other. It's very intertwined. And so, and, you know, I think there are things that the traditional banks are really good at. And I think there are other things that startups are really good at. And there are other things that the card networks are really good at. There's a lot of different core advantages, different players in the ecosystem might have to bring to add to the increasing value of the overall Fintech ecosystem. And so, I do think things will, everyone will coexist for a long period of time. Now, I don't think it's mutually exclusive, meaning you of course are seeing more digital banks, for example, becoming their own banks, beginning getting their own big licenses versus partnering with a bank on the back end. And, you know, them seeing that as a strategic advantage as it relates to cost of capital or other product related, you know, related reasons. And so, of course, over a very long period of time, you know, I do think there will probably be more convergence and more competition, but at the same time, like, you know, it's such a big market. And there are such big, you know, pockets of opportunity that I think you're going to see, you know, a mix of different approaches over time. And, you know, I think there are many, many different avenues to create a lot of value for everybody. - Awesome. My next question to you is, we've talked about Mendeff Fintech. There's a lot of different sectors within, or subsectors within the Fintech space. Are there any particular areas of Fintech that have excited you previously or currently very exciting to you? And what are you interested in exploring further moving forward? - I feel like I'm almost going to give you a broad answer here because I think it is reflective of our interests. They are very broad. And I think being, you know, a little bit to the earlier question you had asked, I do think it's important to be thesis driven, but I also think it's really important to keep an open mind and understand what the best founders are working on and why. And so, you know, I think if we think about the investments that we've made, we've done a lot in payments, we've done a lot in wealth, in digital banking, financial software, spend management, vertical software, and vertical payments. And we'll continue to, we'll continue to go deeper in those areas and I think there's a lot of, I think we're still early innings across all those different opportunities. But there's also a number of other areas that we're exploring with a lot of interest. And so, real-time payments, anything that can streamline commerce. I, we still think there's a lot of friction in commerce, particularly in the B2B context. And so, I think there's still a lot of innovation to be had around, streamlining identity, risk, fraud, embedded financial services we talked a fair bit about. I also think there's a huge gap in venting infrastructure still. You know, of course over the last couple of years, there's been some fallout as it relates to, you know, different, different, you know, player, it's a different constituents of the ecosystem for compliance reasons and things of that nature. And I do think there's a huge gap in the market for companies that can really do a nice job of balancing technology with compliance, with innovation to become really, really great modern infrastructure to support the growth of the overall venting market. And maybe one last thing that I think a lot about, that we think a lot about is there's still a lot to do in optimizing, you know, money movements, both cross-border and domestically, around speed, efficiency, automated reconciliation. I think there's just a lot still there that we can be doing to help make the process of money movements, you know, much more efficient. I think the overlay on top of all this, I think you, I didn't say AI or blockchain for a reason. I do think that both are really interesting, but we think of them as more technology, technologies that can enable these capabilities further. And so of course, there's a big overlay on top of this in terms of what can AI do, what can some of the promising use cases coming out of blockchain do to help really power some of these solutions as well. So those are some and also the many other things that we're actively talking about and thinking through internally. - As you're looking at these different sub-sectors, are there any companies that you've previously invested in or just recently invested in that you're particularly excited about the mission or the vision that they have for the world of Fintech? - There's quite a few. I mean, you know, I think most recently, actually my partner in Europe and you know, announced an investment that we made in Manzo, which is one of the leading digital banks in the UK and increasingly they're expanding internationally. And I think that they've just been on a fantastic path and continue to innovate both on the consumer facing side, but also on the SMB banking side. And we've been really excited about that. I think the other more recent and the other most recent investment that we announced the FinTech side is a business called Coast. which is a fleet payments and fuel card company, you know, very, very amazing product, great founder with great fintic experience and they are providing a, you know, they're tackling a very low, the historically very low NPS category that's very, very deep and very large with an incredible product that is incredibly easy to use with great integration, great reconciliation and things of that nature. And I think the other interesting thing about coast is that, you know, we can of course directly sell to, you know, fleets, but there, I believe that there will also be kind of partnership or embedded opportunities in the future, you know, similar to some of the conversation we've had around embedded financial services. So those are a couple like most recent fintic investments that we've announced that I might highlight. You mentioned a moment ago, blockchain and AI a bit later in the inter conversation. We have a few questions around your perspectives on those two. For now, I'd love to pivot to the current state of fintech funding. You've seen a fintech funding slow down over the past couple of years. In your view, what is driving this shift and how do you see the funding environment evolving in 2025? - I will just start with that outside of 2022, where we made very few investments, given the market environment. I think over the history of our kind of investment track record, our investing activity into fintech companies has always actually been quite meaningful and quite constant. And so there's, we haven't seen a major spike up or spike down relative to other investments that we've made and in general over the last couple of years, I actually, we kind of like the fact that many of our peers at other firms were so negative on fintech, despite our belief that nothing really has fundamentally changed about the secular kind of long-term trends supporting this category while valuations were also normalizing. And I think we saw this particularly to be the case with market leaders around the world. But I think context is also important. And sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm going a little bit longer on this, but I think from a context perspective, fintech and financial services in general is more cyclically exposed industry than some other areas, like B2B software. And you know, I think we have to remember that in 2021, we were coming off a no interest, as our zero interest period with stimulus payments, high valuations, and the market generally, you know, in retrospect, overestimating the growth curves of a lot of different companies. So then shortly entering 2022, where we were lapping stimulus payments. And we went through, we started to go through a really, really rapid rate hike cycle. And so as a fintech industry, especially if you're touching and have a direct relationship with consumers, you're going to directly feel that. But at the same time, I think our observation was, fintech businesses were still taking share on the metrics that mattered. So still taking share on users, on assets, on wallet share, and ultimately on market share. And there were certainly other industries where, you know, like global payments, where I think there were moments in time when people, when the market started to feel like, suddenly it was completely commoditized overnight. And so I think in that backdrop, we actually decided to lean in in those moments of time to make more meaningful investments into market leaders and fintech that we thought still had really exciting long-term growth trajectories, especially during kind of peak, what I might call fintech uncertainty. And now, you know, coming into 2025, it does feel like things are swinging back a bit. You're starting to see more activity. I do think some of it is, of course, supported by new innovations around new developments and advancements around AI, because I do think there's a lot of, there are a lot of very interesting applications as a release to fintech. But I think that's how we digested, you know, the environment over the last three years. We still kind of, we still, you know, really leaned into those opportunities when we saw great opportunities. And, you know, our large-term view has had it really changed that materially kind of through the different buffs in the road. - And for fintech founders looking through his capital today in 2025, what in your view are the most important factors that investors are looking for? - Yeah, I think one, one thing I might just, you know, mention is, you know, for us, we're investing kind of from the earliest points of growth to pre-IPL. And so, you know, of course, at different stages, we might be looking for, or we might, you know, we might be looking for slightly different things. But at the end of the day, I do think it just boils down to, you know, some of the core fundamentals, you know, founder and team, Hofstra, Cheech, and Larger, just a problem statement. Why are we the unique solution? And importantly, what outcomes are we tangibly driving for our customers? What is the structural strength of the, you know, unit economics and the engagement, the retention? And I think really importantly, path to market leadership. And so, we strongly believe that, you know, if you are able to become the market beater, it will enable you to capture disproportionate share of the value created. And, you know, of course, momentum, capital efficiency, all these things are really important, but these are ultimately outputs of all the things that, you know, I think we just, we just discussed. And so, I think, I think those are the things that we think about. But at, but I think one other thing I might mention is, you know, especially early on, you really want to, I think we found a lot of success with companies that really do one core thing exceptionally well, better than anybody else in the market. But over time, of course, we want to see a path to win on multi-product and, you know, building diversified revenue streams and building resilience in the business model. I think that's more about the path and the journey and the strategic high ground a company might have. But, you know, especially early on, I do think it's really, I do think, you know, often times, not always, but often times the focus is really critical in terms of doing one thing, you know, really better than anybody else and demonstrating that. - That makes sense. And perhaps you already just answered this next question. But in your view, what separates the Fintech companies that are able to successfully raise funding from those to struggle, or perhaps another way to phrase that is you mentioned a bunch of traits that you look for. What do you think if you're to put, like yourself in the founders' seat for a moment, like the successful founders are doing to get those outcomes that might not be intuitive or that typical target that's struggling might not be doing? - Yeah, I think. - Oh, it's a, let me think about that question. I mean, you know, one, I would just caveat that it's hard to generalize, of course, across, you know, different companies and founders. And I think everybody has a different thing that makes them so unique, you know, as a founder. You know, I think, so I think on the earlier stages, I might separate this a little bit. On the earlier stages, I do think, you know, in the end, it's really about the founders, about the early team, that's about the market opportunity and kind of the unique insight that they have in terms of the product that they're delivering at the end of the day. As a business kind of gets into growth, I think the thing that I would add on top of that is, you know, in the end, you know, in terms of what delivers, you know, great outcomes long term and, you know, shareholder value long term. Growth is still the most correlated attribute that's to long term value. And let me answer this differently. So I think growth is the most correlated metric to long term value, but the growth, and this might sound obvious, has to be valuable and accretive, which means that it really has to be paired with sound unit economics. And I do think, you know, fantastic founders that I've had the fortunate to work with are really able to illustrate and demonstrate that, you know, the incremental dollar that they're investing is truly high ROI and high ROI, and that they're able to, you know, grow as fast as optimal by reinvesting capital at a pace that's optimal. And, you know, I think that is really dependent on their ability to truly understand their business at a very granular level and understand how to balance, you know, growth and, growth and profitability at the end of the day. - That's really interesting. You actually say that, I don't know if I was in this class, but we're currently in a scaling operations class where we learn pretty much it's like a dug-in that we need to always look at a return on investment capital tree and basically build it from the very ground up, the unit economics before looking at any company. So it's really interesting to hear you say that because that's pretty much all we work on in that class. - Yeah. I think one thing I'll mention about Unite Economics, though, is you wanna make sure that the Unite Economics are structured. really sound, but especially in FinTech, sometimes it can take a little bit of time to get to that place because, you know, let's say you're a credit business. And the reality is, for the first year, you have to take some losses to build your credit underwriting engine. That's okay. That's very, you know, that makes a ton of sense. And the decision you might be making is though, while we're doing that, we just want to be we want to be moderate in terms of our growth because it's really important for us to create the right credit box for us to scale on top of. And so I think, I think also making sure that you, we can see I do I in terms of like, okay, hey, these are the steady state unit. You can always say we know we can get to through these different cost initiatives at scale. These are the things that we're willing to take on in terms of whether it be losses or risk or other things today in order to get to that place and having a very clear path to get to that level. I think is, I think, I think there is, I think we all appreciate that every company is on a journey to scaling you to economics and just making sure that there's a sound path there and illustrating that is a really important aspect of aspect of this. No wonder, but that makes sense kind of like balancing that path to profitability with perhaps some of the losses you might incur in the beginning stages. Very cool. We've shifted up a little bit. We're actually going to be focusing a bit more on the socioeconomic impact of financial innovation. So as we know, Fintech promises to democratize financial access, but many innovations still primarily serve already well off consumers. How can Fintech censure that they're driving true financial inclusion across the board? Yeah, I actually think this is where a lot of value has actually been created personally. And I think a lot of it was also done with just disruptive business models as well. So maybe a couple of examples I might point to, you know, Chime is a good example of a company that it's offering a fee-free checking account with no minimum fees or overdraft fees or Monzo, which we talked about, another portfolio company that has done really well in the UK by bringing transparency to the customer and accessibility or Robinhood for being the first to offer commission-free trading or another one of our companies in wealth altruist in terms of arming advisors with tools to ensure that they can serve clients with any size of net worth. And so I think a number of others, there are a number of others where I think that early core value proposition was about, you know, removing hidden fees, allowing people to access products that they otherwise could not have had access to and ultimately delivering the savings back to the customer building a fantastic business alongside that. So I do actually think a lot of great FinTech businesses have kind of delivered against this and are continuing to deliver for it. You've mentioned some of the new banks that have risen in popularity like Chime and Monzo and it seems like that sector is quite well-established but maybe some other FinTech sectors still need disruption. We mentioned earlier, which is the fleet payment solution and how fragmented that space can be. Are there any other spaces within FinTech that you believe are right for disruption or that could use technological advancement and invasion to grow even further? Yeah, I think one high level dynamic we discuss a fair bit is that there's definitely been a lot of innovation for consumers over the last day. Get a little bit to your point. I still do think that we are in the early innings of the growth headroom there even today. But we are now seeing similar impacts and companies emerging in B2B companies that are just providing better financial technology to small businesses, to advisors, to others like that. So I think after a lot of innovation on the consumer side, I think we are seeing a lot of similar themes get replicated on the B2B side and I think we are still very early in that. I also think that there is a lot of opportunity in terms of financial software businesses, whether it be on the accounting side or the planning side or the treasury side, to increasingly leverage AI to further automate, create efficiencies and things of that nature for the customers at the service wall. I think we are seeing really interesting trends there. And I think more macro, I think there's a lot of discussion around the existing rails needing to be disrupted to support even further innovation. And I think it's a complicated and a nuanced subject. But I do think there are going to be interesting things that emerge out of those themes as well over the coming decade plus that we will be keenly watching as well. So related to disruptions or perhaps opportunities within Fintech, we'd love to hear your perspectives on the technologies that are shaping the future of Fintech. One that you mentioned a couple of times is AI. AI is transforming financial services from underwriting to fraud detection. Where do you see the biggest opportunities for AI within Fintech? First, I think there's a lot of opportunities in terms of just adopting AI internally. And so one of the things that we've talked about here is Fintech businesses certainly do have an advantage over incumbents in terms of efficiencies. This is just another huge lever that I think Fintech businesses can further take advantage of. This certainly touches some of the examples that you mentioned in terms of underwriting to fraud, to risk. I think these are certain. And of course, we're seeing a lot of activity on the support side. And so I think the applications here are quite expansive. And I think Fintech businesses are really in a strong position to take advantage of that. And then there's a lot of innovation that is going to happen on the customer facing side in terms of providing more productivity tools, more automation, just using AI to make people's lives easier and make your tool easier to use. I also think personalization is a huge opportunity in terms of leveraging AI to better affect that. And that could be things around financial advice, eventually, in the future. And so I think the potential is really, really massive. And the exciting thing is we're still at the very beginning of it. The other exciting thing is even if you were a Fintech business that got started 10, 15 years ago, you have every right and every opportunity to take advantage of these advanced specific technology to embed them further in your own operations or in adding value to your customers. And so I think we're really excited about this across the board, both as a really so new investments that we might make in addition to the opportunities it presents for our portfolio companies. Yeah, and you mentioned personalization. I thought that I've had is that typically perhaps even outside of just Fintech, I feel that there's a trade off between personalization and standardization in the sense that personalization isn't always scalable. And that perhaps AI is a way that you can make that a bit more scalable and unlock a lot of opportunities that haven't been that haven't existed in the past. Definitely. And I was talking to one of our other portfolio companies, CEOs the other week. And you was talking about this exact opportunity. I won't be able to match it to it is, but they've scaled personalization and messaging to millions of customers. And the only way they could have done this is through AI. And I think the other important thing is we have to remember that you can't just take an AI and say, hey, go do this and expect it to execute on it perfectly. It won't. And so I think another big part of the job is you have to fine tune it. You have to make it so that it resonates for your product. You have to make sure that the messaging actually makes sense. It's going to scale in the way that you expect it to. And it actually takes quite a bit of investment from a product perspective. And in order to make it look and feel the way that you really wanted to be. And so that is consistent with your brand. And I think you're dead on. I think I think it's very much more possible today because of these advancements. And you had also mentioned briefly blockchain earlier in our conversation. Digital assets and tokenization have been gaining traction amongst institutional players. What are your perspectives on this? And again, you mentioned it earlier, but perhaps you could elaborate. Like, do you think this is a fundamental shift in financial infrastructure? What do you think of the role as a blockchain within Fintech and financial institutions? I think it'll be more fundamental. I don't think it's a passing trend. I think the question is just how long will it take to get to maturity and to become mass market and also how will the value ultimately be created? I think there's a lot of reasons to be optimistic for what it could mean for payments or tokenization or other really interesting use cases. I don't see it as a passing trend, but there's still a lot of work to do to ensure that it becomes a more present fabric of the overall system. To shift into our final round, which is the Blitz round, it's a rapid fire question round where we're going to be asking you a couple different questions, basically short answer style and let me know whenever you're ready for those. I'm ready. Awesome. All right. So what is the most underrated skill a Fintech founder should have? Obviously, product, technology, commercial and things, these are all super critical. But I think there is something to be said about understanding the balance and managing the balance between compliance and innovation. I think the best have done this exceptionally well. I can take some time to fight the right balance as well. But I think the other really interesting thing is you do this really well. Not only do you maintain good relationships with regulators, for example, but you know, you build credibility to push innovation from a policy perspective as well. And so I think I think that's something that comes to mind. And what is a Fintech company that is outside of Iconics portfolio that you admire? There are many. But I will it's hard not to say stripe. We are big admirers of business. What is one over hyped trend in Fintech right now? I always get a little bit nervous when things get over hyped. And so this has nothing to say about whether I think it's long term really interesting. I do think I will pick stable coins. I think stable coins are interesting. I think they will have a growing role in global payments. I just want to make that clear. But it does feel like there was like a sudden step function change in hype and excitement recently. I think some of it's very well, you know, very well deserved to make sense. But I might I might mention that just given just given the change in hype more recently. And what is a book or resource that you would recommend to Fintech entrepreneurs? I'll mention a book that a fantastic portfolio company that I've had the pleasure to work with. It's my catch in who's the CEO of all simple had recommended a book called invested by Charles Schwab back in 2022, which is an autobiography of Charles Schwab. I read it. It was a great reminder that in Fintech, especially when there are macro macro factors out of your control. And there were some dark years at Charles Schwab. If you read that book, the thing you can the thing you can control is to continue to obsess over your customer over shipping great products. And you do that with great discipline and efficiency and all the other side of it, you will be well positioned. Good times are coming back. And, you know, great companies are not defined by a bad year here and there. It's rather what they decide to do over decades. And I thought just reading that book in 2022 in particular. I thought it was just a really good reminder just to just think about think about those aspects. And finally, if you were inventor capital, what industry would you be in or what job would you have right now? So the sort of cop out answer would be I would probably want to be on the operating side. And there's certainly a fair number of founders that we've been fortunate to be in business with that I would in an instance want to work for. So I think that would be one answer, but you know, an answer that might be a more detached from technology or venture in general. When I have time, I enjoy writing a fair bit. And so something to do with writing is what I is what I would probably consider. Would you have a newsletter? Would you be writing books? What kind of writing menu would you pursue? It's a good question. I think I would go the newsletter route. I think there's something. You know, I'm a little bit sad that it feels like long form content is becoming less and less appreciated over time. And so maybe maybe maybe I should like the balance there and something on the newsletter side would be more fitting for me. It doesn't surprise me that you enjoy writing because I've been thinking actually through our conversation that you're very articulate and I can see you like being very thoughtful before your responses. That's that's really nice. Nice of you to say. I don't know if I fully agree with that. I appreciate the comments regardless. And finally, shifting into our final two questions. What is the most important advice you'd give to a Fintech founder today? I think knowing your customer very deeply better than anybody else is the most important thing I can think of. And finally, where can people follow your work or learn a bit more about what I call and growth is doing? So you can learn more about us certainly on iCottacappal.com/growth And also please do follow us on our ex Ed LinkedIn pages. You know, we have a fantastic team that's constantly publishing great insights, great reports. And so I think there's a lot there and so that's where you can find a bit more on us. Thank you, Yunki. This has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you for sharing your insights and we're really looking forward to seeing what's next for iconic growth. Thanks so much. Really enjoyed it. Thank you for listening to today's episode of the Wharton Fintech podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, please make sure to leave us a review and give us a follow on social media. Until next time. [Music]