The ‘Holy Grail’ of Social + Fintech

Many companies/products use social (“multi-player”) as a way to get started, and then move more towards the financial (“single-player”) side of their offering.

SoFi, again, built a tight community and then concentrated on lending

Wealthfront, an investment firm, started out as KaChing

Robinhood, started more social and then moved more towards transactions

Prosper, another platform which started out more social

Money is still private, so people are less likely to invite each other to a social product that involves money

However, some companies are able to get past this by not blatantly linking to money

Robinhood is one example. It functions more as a game and allows consumers to feel high class and adult since they have a portfolio

Taking transaction to social (like Robinhood)

From social sites, like those which have developed wallets etc

From games, like Fortnite, which now has a token economy

From platforms, such as Reddit (think WallStreetBets), which see crazy behaviors that could become mainstream…or not

Some emergent social trends stay niche (or subculture), but if stigmas drop for the trend, it could go viral

Crypto is one socio-finance topic that has changed how we talk and think about money

Debt is one of the hardest socio-finance topics to tap into, but Instagram hashtags are one place where this is changing

Products have focused on solving a functional/transactional part of a problem (changing the numbers).

Now, products are also starting to focus on cognitive and emotional parts of problems

There are also many offline socio-finance communities, which could be brought online

Examples of companies doing this well:

Joy – app to rate transactions by how you feel

Credit Karma – making debt less scary and providing transparency so you can know how you stack up to others

Examples of not doing this well:

Budgeting and personal finance apps. They have cognitive and functional value, but don’t tap into emotional aspects

Portfolio sharing products. Many try to be social, but too heavy into function