Jake Gibson, NerdWallet + Better Tomorrow Ventures // Investing In The Future of Fintech

Jake Gibson is the co-founder of NerdWallet & Founding Partner at Better Tomorrow Ventures, a $75mil venture fund, investing in the future of Fintech alongside Sheel Mohnot.

He's been involved in fintech for over a decade. Prior to NerdWallet, he studied math and quantitative finance at MIT and traded interest rate derivatives at JPMorgan.

In this conversation we discuss:

– NerdWallet's business model + growing to a $500mil+ valuation
– the transition from founder to investor + the 80/20 of investing
– mental models to figure out your next step
– why "everything is fintech" + examples of this thesis
– DeFi, NFTs, stock market highs & ideas from a global fintech market

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Preview
00:01:42 Intro To Jake + Nerdwallet
00:06:19 Nerdwallet Deep Dive + $500mil Valuation
00:14:25 Opportunity: Nerdwallet Model In Other Verticals
00:18:02 Audience First Business in 2021
00:21:47 Trend: Audience Business Selling To Software Companies
00:25:31 Founder To Investor
00:30:34 Mental Model For Thinking About Next Step
00:34:52 "I want to be rich" - more context
00:39:02 Finding Motivation In Struggles
00:42:06 Role of Luck, Golden Handcuffs + Lifestyle Creep
00:48:13 80/20 of investing
00:50:53 "Everything Is Fintech" - Raising A $75mil Fund
00:55:26 Starting A Neo Bank
00:57:11 Fintech Opportunity In Ridesharing, Tesla & Airbnb
01:01:59 Facebook + Whatsapp Payments
01:03:28 Asia Market + WeChat Model
01:04:47 Problem vs Product...Verb vs Noun
01:10:17 Jake's Take on DeFi
01:16:02 NFTs + NBA Top Shots
01:20:21 Tesla's Balance Sheet
01:22:22 Elon + Chamath: Meme Masters
01:22:41 Global Market Ideas
01:28:32 Why Do We Have Stock Market Highs?
01:31:16 Investing Advice To A 25yr Old