Whatsssss up fam, Ian here!
Some insanely exciting news—Fintech Today’s been acquired by WorkWeek!
Before we get started I’d love to give a shoutout to Julie and the rest of the Fintech Today team. We ended the year on a tear: we’ve been profitable since October and have built a paid community with hundreds of fintech operators and founders chatting about stuff every day. Huge shoutout to Julie for executing on the vision for Fintech Today and Jordan, Parker, Sam, Yoon, Braeden, and everyone else that’s been so instrumental to getting us here.
When FTT first started out, the goal was to see what else we could create off the back of content and community, and one option was launching a venture fund. We’ve been testing out investing in companies like Pallet (sourced by my chief of staff Parker Jay-Pritchit), Eco, Rainbow, and Saber HQ.
For me personally, I’ve been investing through a syndicate I started with my good friend Nik Milanovic a few years ago. We’ve been able to source some awesome early stage fintech deals like Hummingbird, Moov, Stir, Unit, Power, EmbedFi, Zerohash, and dozens more
And while I poke fun of VC’s on Twitter all the time, the gig does sound fulfilling and I’ve found myself being pulled towards doing it full time. Working with founders with amazing ideas and seeing how my past work experience as a product manager and network in fintech can be helpful for portfolio companies has been such a rewarding experience. A lot of these founders have become good friends and it’s really inspiring to hang out and learn from them too.
Maybe it’s because I turned 30 or maybe it’s something else, but the internal conflict between building and investing reached a point where I had to make a decision. Splitting focus has always been a fault of mine, while taking other people’s money is a responsibility I take extremely seriously. As the fund started to get more real and more and more commitments came in, I felt a personal obligation to be honest with myself. Can I run a company that’s just getting started and has a ton of potential and deserves my attention, as well as a fund that requires my full time focus and work?
Luckily, I hit up my homie Jordi, who told me to hit up Adam Ryan. Adam and I became homies over the summer when he first started Workweek. Even back then, his vision for creators to enable and grow and develop their business on the Workweek platform really resonated with me.
Adam, Becca, and the Workweek team and I have massive plans for FTT. As of now, we’re going back to our old programming: I’m writing a once a week column that starts next Friday and a few Twitter Spaces a month. And honestly, the plans we have in the future are fucking sick so definitely stay tuned: In a few weeks, Adam, Jordi, and I have another announcement and while Crypto Tonight is on pause for now, Adam and I have some dope plans around that too.
I’m HYPED! We have a ton of plans to help the fintech and crypto communities and this acquisition can take Fintech Today to brand new heights.
Ian Kar is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fintech Today. He has been in fintech for 5+ years as both a reporter and a product manager. As a journalist at Quartz, he broke a number of major industry stories including the discounted transaction rate Apple negotiated with financial institutions for Apple Pay, product developments at Uber and Venmo, developments in the blockchain space, and major funding rounds. As a PM at Acorns, a micro investing app with 5M+ downloads, he was the product owner for “Grow,” an in-app financial education product. Leveraging his experience as a reporter covering the space, he developed a product that catered to Acorn’s millennial audience.
