Fintech’s most popular value-props – FinovateFall 2018 Edition
FinovateFall 2018 is right around the corner, and I’ve been spending a lot of time over the past few weeks working closely with our presenters to prepare them for the show. (For those of you who haven’t been to a Finovate before, we ask presenters to do a live demo, without slides or video, of their latest technology, and we give them just seven minutes to do it. Helping them prepare is pretty much the only way we can sleep at night after forcing presenters to cope with such a harsh format.)
Get ready for the show!
Going through the coaching process is always interesting for me; not only do I get to see a sneak preview of all of the innovations that will be on stage, but I also get to hear a lot of value propositions that companies are laying out to capture the audience’s attention.
And while the technology that we’re seeing now has changed dramatically from what was on offer when I first started demo coaching, a surprising amount of the core value propositions remain unchanged.
This is especially true for bank-facing fintech, where the value propositions of the companies who will be on stage very frequently boil down to one of the following basic statements:
- My product helps you get more customers
- My product makes your existing customers more profitable
- My product helps you operate more efficiently, saving you money
- My product helps you avoid costly mistakes (compliance, security breaches etc)
There are, needless to say, any number of bank-facing innovations out there with more complex value propositions, and consumer-facing fintech doesn’t necessarily follow the same trend.
It’s also worth acknowledging the obvious truth that there are a huge number of different ways that fintechs can tackle those fundamental goals. But even with those caveats, it’s fascinating to me that the central goals of so many fintechs remain relatively unchanged even as the industry itself has grown dramatically in recent years.
Whether you’re attending Finovate or simply struggling to determine what’s relevant in a crowded (and often noisy) space, my advice is to make sure you keep the big picture in mind. Remember that fintech is a means to an end, and that a lot of the “ends” will stay constant from one year to the next.
If you’re presenting at Finovate next week, make sure you tell the audience exactly why they should take time from their schedules to talk to you at your booth.
Don’t leave the audience to make their own assumptions about why your product is valuable, especially if you directly tackle something that can impact the bottom line. (Now stop reading this, and go practice your demo again.)
