Jackson Gates
@jacksongates
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@ManresaVentures Previously at Affirm, Sweep (acq by Affirm), Pandora, Vulcan and Tenaya Capital. Married to @biancagates
San Francisco, CA
Joined August 2008
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I love being a VC again. Already sharing dozens of half-baked ideas with founders that I haven't fully thought through, are not a part of the budget and don't have headcount. Best part is that I can say they are great ideas without taking any responsibility. :)
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"Banking as a Service" is fundamentally flawed. If you provide a financial service, you should have the opportunity to apply for a national license, receive it, and have a direct relationship with a prudential regulator. We need modular national licenses for financial services.
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Infrastructure that I'd like the US govt to build:
- secure govt issued unique identifier that is not SSN
- equivalent of a digital notary
- safe, secure, real time payments
- simple transparent tax code (seems like important infra to me)
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Pay-By-Bank is a useless fantasy. Debit card rails are great. Durbin exemption should be eliminated. Credit card rewards are goofy but fine and probably not going anywhere.
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New photo. Not an NFT. And no laser eyes. Am I doing this wrong?
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Big day for Affirm! Great team and they are ready for this huge step. Smart. Determined. And more focused than ever.
Affirm is now
#NasdaqListed
($AFRM)! We’re excited about this huge step forward as we bring our mission to life.
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@jkwade
And globally, Visa only takes 12bps to set rules, enforce and set interchange rates to clear the market btwn 100M merchants, thousands of banks and billions of card holders. Rebuilding Visa with the block chain is one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard.
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My advice is always to get as close to your regulator as possible. So if you can’t be a bank - work directly with the most reputable and experienced bank you can find.
BREAKING:
Mass layoffs at banking-as-a-service platform Synapse (hearing at least 130+ people, which is 50% of the company.)
One of the company's largest clients, Mercury, gave notice of non-renewal & plans to move directly to Evolve.
More as this develops.
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Years of hard work. And nobody works harder than, Max.
Today is the result of years of work by hundreds of dedicated Affirmers who believe in honest and transparent finance. And although there is more work to be done, today offers an opportunity to reflect and celebrate.
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Terrible advice in FinTech: "CAC will be high so you need to cross-sell multiple products."
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This is what happens when the marketing team doesn't talk to the credit team.👀
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Listed a few of my more recent investments at
@ManresaVentures
Very different set of founders, products and visions. And I love them all!
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Allstar legal team! Now at Finix, Settle, Caribou and of course Affirm. Thanks for letting me stand in the picture. :)
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If you're a payments network it is your job to adjudicate disputes. Affirm always did this and built strong merchant risk and consumer risk teams from the start. It's expensive but important.
CFPB releases interpretative guidance "that confirms that Buy Now, Pay Later lenders are credit card providers"
Guidance will require BNPL firms that offer pay-in-4, like
@Klarna
@Affirm
@AfterpayUSA
, to investigate disputes, provide refunds & provide statements & disclosures.
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Deepak is one of the most determined and energetic founders I know. Pedal to the metal. Ándele Pues!
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We couldn't be more excited to team up with Walmart!
We’re excited (and very proud) to announce our partnership with Walmart! Now you can pay over time at your local Walmart supercenter, with no hidden fees. Stop by a Walmart near you to learn more! (Not available in Iowa, Puerto Rico, or West Virginia).
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Big announcement from my friends at Affirm! They are an incredibly hard working team and some of the smartest people I've ever worked with.
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Can’t wait for the part about Lehman Brothers Venture Partners. Who plays me - the unmanageable, stubborn analyst with strong opinions and no experience?
My favorite play is coming to SF & tix are available.
"The Lehman Trilogy" is an epic 3.5h play that covers 160 yrs of history of the Lehman Brothers, with all characters played by only 3 actors. I saw it in London in 2019 and will see it again in SF. 👇🏾
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Founders
@biancagates
and
@mlsharkey
are building an exceptional brand and an exceptional business. This is going to be a HUGE year for Birdies. Great article below on the challenges and opportunities in 2020.
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Fun conversation at Affirm today with the smart and insightful
@nicoleahjohnson
from
@ForerunnerVC
. Thanks for spending time with us
@Affirm
!
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Office Hours will allow everyone to create their own consulting business. And
@joekim91
and
@patrickraynolds
are an incredible team. Growing quickly on all fronts and hiring full stack engineers and product designers.
Some personal news—I started a company!
I've been mostly quiet, hard at work, but figured it was time to start sharing more about the journey.
I’m building
@OfficeHours
: the easiest way for people to monetize their professional knowledge.
A thread 👇
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@peter
🤦♂️When Peloton filed their S1 and disclosed that over 50% of their bikes are purchased with Affirm, did Amex execs shrug and think “Naw. Those can’t be Amex customers…”
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Happy Birthday to my wife!
@biancagates
You are even more beautiful, fun and driven than ever. I love you and I love being your “companion”. 😍⭐️🥂
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Just watched this interview w/ Peter Thiel Long but incredibly interesting.
http://t.co/tZgpWqBS
via
@pandodaily
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Silicon Valley is truly a crazy place. The culture is an anomaly. It shouldn’t exist. But it does. You cannot recreate this. You can create something different - possibly better - but I don’t know how and it won’t be the same.
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Also - I was born in Santa Cruz and raised here. My mom watered the plants in Bill Hewlett and David Packard’s office. She then decided to start her own plant rental business in Santa Cruz in the 70s. The soul of Silicon Valley is deep and real and welcoming and optimistic.
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The best competitors fight until the very end - in sports and in business and especially startups. I am subtweeting a friend here who is one of the fiercest and most loyal teammates I’ve ever known. Don’t stop swinging until the final bell!
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The credit bureaus need to get their acts together and present and enforce clear, consistent rules. Selective furnishing. Soft vs hard pulls. Permissible purpose. These should not be fuzzy, opaque, bendable rules. Everyone should play by the same rules.
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Some people say they don’t value professional in person interactions. But... in person interactions are definitely better at building trust and relationships. We are all more emotional than we’d like to believe. Also - we don’t live in the Matrix.
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Year end confession: I really dislike the term “FinTech” but I obviously use it a lot.
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Fintech founders. Get as close to your regulator as possible. Direct license if possible or have a direct relationship with your bank. Understand what they do, how their business works and how they think.
One single quote in here, from Treasury Prime, sums up everything in BaaS land: “Reading between the lines – or sometimes the lines themselves – regulators want banking institutions, not intermediaries, to have direct oversight of their fintech partners.”
This was ALWAYS true
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Congrats to Birdies,
@biancagates
and
@mlsharkey
on their new partnership with Angel City LA. Check the video below!
As part of
@birdiesslippers
' mission to uplift and empower all women, the footwear brand is joining forces with
@weareangelcity
—LA’s newest professional women’s soccer team—as the founding sleeve sponsor! Congrats
@biancagates
and
@mlsharkey
!
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In 2008
@saarsaar
told me, "One of the fallacies in VC is that we underestimate the magnitude of the wins. Take Facebook - people are wondering if it's worth $15B, but it will probably be worth $100B." He was right and still undershot by 10x and counting...
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Instant, irreversible payments are not fundametaly better.
@RogueCfpb
Or, just a thought, they could design their P2P payments app to not be real-time by default, which was a choice that I NEVER understood.
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Separate license to:
hold consumer cash on your balance sheet
sell consumer deposits
issue a debit card
originate a consumer, unsecured installment loan
originate a consumer revolving line of credit
originate a line of credit for small businesses
originate auto loans
etc etc
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Two oustanding founders and ex-Affirm colleagues. Very easy decision to back this team. And a great mission to make direct realestate investing more accessible. Keep an eye on:
@fractionalapp
@hellastellah
@rlostrevino
It's a big day for Fractional as we continue on our mission to make real estate investing inclusive, collaborative, and hassle-free. We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve raised $5.5M in funding from
@CRV
,
@YCombinator
, Will Smith, and
@KDTrey5
.
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No cap
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@michelletandler
@KateClarkTweets
Paul has shown people that he’s bold and creative enough to build groundbreaking products that might produce new markets. It’s not that Clubhouse is *worth* $100M today. It’s that many VCs trust him w/ the capital and want 10% of anything he builds.
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When I first met Omri he told me he was going to build a programatic, scaleable AP/AR solution. I asked him if he was sure he wanted to work on that for the rest of his career. He looked at me like I was crazy. "Of course!" This team has been locked in from Day 1.
Huge thanks to
@bayareawriter
for this amazing piece on
@TechCrunch
announcing
@RoutableHQ
's Series B led by
@sama
and
@jaltma
🤩📈🏆
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@pitdesi
Someone needs to write the book. Both companies (XM and Sirius) almost went out of business in 2002. They finally merged in 2008. Everyone knew they should from 2001+. And then after 10 yrs of long distance hatred - they acquired Pandora in 2018 for $3.5B. I almost cried. Almost
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There should also be a law that every beer needs to taste great and have zero calories.
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Every decade or two, a handful of firms try to institutionalize and scale VC. More capital. More people. More process. But lower returns. Retreat and repeat.
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The negative commentary and attempts to dunk on Clubhouse are really lazy. Thoughtful and creative opinions are so much more productive than the basic salty comments.
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Retreat! So much for eating OpenDoor’s lunch. Most FinTech businesses require intense focus, specific talent and a ton of trade secrets. Not for the faint of heart or newcomers that think they can copy and win with a lower CAC.
Real-estate firm Zillow Group is exiting from the home-flipping business, saying Tuesday that its algorithmic model to buy and sell homes rapidly doesn’t work as planned.
It will lay off 25% of its workforce.
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Lending is predatory until you need money, and can't get a loan.
@TaupeAvenger
Bernie sanders, making credit cards an elite-only product
You lower credit folks must carry wads of cash!
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@AsHotDog
With these complex deals, I’ve learned that there is a lot of work in good faith going on behind the scenes and most of the quick Twitter takes are lazy and wrong. 🤞A’s and city agree on terms. The bargaining zone so large. Almost any deal in the range is good for all.
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Clubhouse is evolving from "cool and novel" to "powerful and important". The last time we saw a new medium of communication like this was Twitter. This will be a wild ride and I'm glad
@pdavison
and
@rohanseth
have their hands on the wheel
👇🏼you don’t want to miss this one!
Mayors of Miami, Austin, and San Francisco plus several special guests. Gonna be 🔥🔥🔥
“Virtual Dinner Party 🎈 ” with Felicia Horowitz. Saturday, Jan 16 at 5:00 PM PST on
@joinclubhouse
!
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This is known as a "coordinated shift" and it can happen very, very fast. Network effects are real but there are degrees of strength to these network effects businesses. Messaging apps aren't as defensible as many people thought because you can use multiple apps at the same time
Looks like consumers have ZERO interest in seeing Facebook’s aggressive advertising added to WhatsApp. Check out the AppStore rankings: 👀 👀 👀 unreal pops for Signal / Telegram. Amazed at how fast people are “popping in.”
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@mikulaja
It was an accurate and nuanced assessment of bank partnerships. You quibble with their marketing language. Unit CEO says they could have been more "precise". Certainly doesn't read like a hit-piece to me.
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I'd love to fund a consumer credit building application. But need to see the right product and business model. Interchange is not enough.
As long as you take actual credit risk and allow your customers to sink or swim, they’re great.
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If you are a fintech operating at scale you should welcome and seek a direct relationship with a prudential regulator and get as close as possible to the underlying infrastructure. The apps who want to be apps but not regulated are doing it wrong.
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@AlexH_Johnson
It's complicated. The bureaus were not prepared for simple, frequent, point of sale payment plans.
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FWIW - when I make an investment I never ask “why me.” If I believe in you, your mission and the potential for your company — I’m in!
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The debate about "California is burning. Everyone move to Miami" is a good reminder that we are all stretched thin and emotionally drained. The end isn't near. CA is still great and I have a lot of close friends in Miami. Everyone take a deep breath. Vaccines on the way.
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Nuvocargo - freight forwarding for long haul trucking in North America. Huge opportunity. Killer team! Hiring across the board, especially bilingual English/Spanish execs
To all truckers that work tirelessly to keep our economy moving, we see you and we thank you.
Remember to show your appreciation this week!
#Nationaltruckdriverappreciationweek
#NTDAW
#ThankATrucker
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Hope they are successful. I generally don’t like the business of subprime credit but it’s necessary and helpful and I want someone to crack this. And I’m always open to a new pitch and product idea at pre-seed and seed.
QED- and Invus-backed subprime credit card startup Mission Lane, sometimes referred to as "Capital Two" by industry insiders owing to its heavy links to the OG card company, has replaced its CEO and raised additional equity in an internal round.
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Ben and the Dwolla team are ACH experts and trailblazers in payments. And great partners to startups building new payment applications.
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Our engineering team
@Affirm
just launched their blog. First post is "Redux Patterns and Anti-Patterns" Enjoy!
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Affirm growing fast and ready for a big 2019! Hiring across the board and we love referrals!
Affirm is now 500 strong! Thanks to our amazing Talent Team, who are already hard at work on the next milestone. We're hiring in three U.S. cities—check out our openings at
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There is no perfect strategy, only perfect timing. Especially true in startups and venture capital investing where the water is always moving and changing direction.
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The best product designers I know are self-taught. They didn't climb the PM ladder at *hot* companies. They just started imagining beautifully simple products and building them.
@pdavison
@tconrad
@asibehar
@patrickraynolds
come to mind in addition to Zuckerberg Dorsey etc
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Yeah but college is a lot of fun! So is business school.
- hoya saxa ‘00, gsb07
College is a scam, you don’t need it.
- Stanford ‘00, ‘04, ‘05, ‘06
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@mikulaja
When you apply for a charter you have to specific which products you’ll offer, how fast you’ll grow, etc and you can’t deviate from that plan. Best to keep things as simple as possible and Cash app is definitely not simple. I’m still amazed and impressed they got the charter.
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Sanket and Brek have built a killer mobile app for trade workers (builders, electricians, plumbers, welders, carpenters etc) to showcase their skills and expertise. And the product roadmap is incredible! I’m excited for them and excited to be an investor in
@wearehammr
🔨🏆👷♀️👷♂️
Professional Update ✨
After an incredible 4.5 years at
@Superhuman
, I’m excited to announce that I’m taking the entrepreneurial leap & co-founding a new company.
Super grateful to have had the opportunity to work with an exceptionally thoughtful, talented and ambitious team 🙏
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Great partnership:
@SteveMadden
+
@ShoppingGives
Consumer want to connect their purchases with causes they care about and brands are listening. ShoppingGives powers everything and 100% of the proceeds go to the non-profit. Great company! Great mission!
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.
@Affirm
on the list of career launching companies I think this list started as an Excel file in 06-07 and has included a lot of winners!
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I'm addicted to
@TWistartups
on
@SwellApp
. The founder interviews are fantastic. Free therapy too.
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Great thread on Stripe vs Finix. Also a great example of how a company's greatest strength can be a weakness -- or rather an open opportunity for competitors.
Two weeks ago, an article came out about
@Finix
going "head-to-head with Stripe." Since then, a ton of companies/investors/candidates reached out asking why software platforms choose Finix over the competition to power their payments.
So we asked some newly-signed customers...
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I think Square acquiring Tidal is bonkers. I helped build a music company (Pandora) and a payments company (Affirm). I would not combine these businesses. Better to just bundle through partnership if the marketing combo is justified.
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Every time I meet a healthcare investors we have a lot to talk about. The businesses at the intersection of healthcare and FinTech are fascinating and represent huge opportunities. Por ejemplo:
@papayapay
@gentemhealth
@JuniperPlatform
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Love when founders hype their teams! And Deepak is a great recruiter and constantly looking for talent for Nuvocargo - particularly bilingual (Spanish/English) operators and product leaders.
Startup founders get all the credit, when really others are doing so much valuable work and deserve recognition.
Meet our amazing mgmt team below
@nuvocargo
below:
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@RuncieDan
I had no appreciation for Mac Miller until I saw his Tiny Desk concert. Reminded me of when I saw Kurt Cobain on MTV Unplugged. 🤯
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Non competes are terrible and unnecessary. Some reasonable exceptions, particularly if/when you sell your business. But on the whole, this ban is long overdue.
We ban non-competes in California and are the economic engine of tech, biotech and payments. Excited for Americans in other states to benefit from this beneficial policy change.
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Some people can do their jobs working from home. But building a company involves teamwork, culture and commitment. I don’t know how you do that with WFH culture. I will bet on a centralized team 100-1 over a decentralized team.
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And the soul is more than just tech. The spirit is more powerful than the software.
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Good assessment of Chime and challenger banks in general. Very impressive to see Chime create a strong brand in consumer banking.
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@hunterwalk
I think part of the reason is that the speakers are already monetizing eg including their $Cashtag in bio
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SSN as our unique consumer identifier for financial services is stupid. But if that’s what we are forced to deal with, you shouldn’t have to enter your full SSN. It’s not necessary and potentially riskier as Max points out later in the thread. Also - AFRM will be fine either way
The actual industry practice for banks, credit card companies, and fintechs (eg
@Affirm
) is to collect identifying info (name, address, etc) and only the last 4 digits of SSN, then use a third-party service (eg credit bureau) to match it up to the full 9-digit SSN. 4/11
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I am continually shocked at how arduous it is to pay medical, dental and physical therapy bills... I need to either (a) get injured less or (b) get all of these shops to use Papaya And to all FinTech people - keep an eye out for Papaya and
@patrickkann
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This is true. The bigger risk is to stay at a huge company, do what you’re told, stop learning and never do anything that you’re really proud of.
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If you invest in applications you should understand the infrastructure they are built on. And if you invest in infrastructure you need to understand how the ecosystem will emerge and what apps might be built. If not, you’re flying blind. Especially true in FinTech.
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Great breakdown on payfacs from
@peter
who was one of the first people I sought out when I was tinkering with a payments startup.
A walk down memory lane on the creation of the “payfac” (ie “payment facilitator”).
I was at Visa when the “payfac” category was created. Before payfacs there was only such a thing as “Internet payment service provider,” or IPSP. The first to be an iPSP? PayPal. 1/
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Building the team! Keep an eye on VGS!
We couldn’t be more thrilled to have such a seasoned executive join VGS as our CFO. Welcome to the team, Paul! Excited to work alongside you to take our organization to the next level!🚀📈🚀
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For better or worse, payments infrastructure is not winner take all. That said, I don't know how CB can publish this article without mentioning
@finix
as a leader and first mover - and if you go really deep it should mention Balanced Payments too.
Payment facilitation startup Tilled closed on $11 million in a Series A round.
The Boulder-based company’s platform is designed to enable software companies to monetize payments.
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@amyecheetham
@bryce
Every decade or two, a handful of firms try to institutionalize and scale VC. More capital. More people. More process. Lower returns. Retreat and repeat.
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My take on potential PayPal + Pinterest merger. Looks better in banker pitch decks than real life. These master plan mega mergers never work. I hope they back away quickly.
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@BudgetsAreSexy
@morganhousel
Counter point: while blunt - that statement isn’t bad advice for a college intern or new grad. Learning “curve” is truly a curve not a line - It is exponential. Hours worked early in your career can be an investment in yourself - and you are getting paid vs paying for college
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@VivekIsTweeting
@Affirm
@SentiLink
@wasmerio
@qbioinc
@unit21inc
@haven_money
@andcomfort_
@patrickraynolds
is co-founder of
@JoinOfficeHours
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Thanks
@Zisk
and
@futureofmoney
for choosing
@getsweep
for your startup award! Another great conference yesterday!
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Big moves by Richie and Finix team! And a very important strategic accomplishment.
Finix is now a payments processor! With direct connections to
@Visa
@Mastercard
@AmericanExpress
@Discover
we’re removing another layer in the payments stack. This is such a rare feat - I’m proud of our team and can’t wait to deliver more benefits to customers & partners.
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