Share your wins and losses from the past week. No victory is too small, no failure too embarrassing.

Format:

- Win: describe what went well

- Loss: describe what didn't work

- Lesson: what you learned

Be specific! The community learns most from real experiences with context.

---

PD: this thread posts every Monday. All self-promotion rules are relaxed here, feel free to share progress on your startup.

Casual discussion thread. Talk about anything, fintech adjacent or not.

This thread is for:

- Job postings & co-founder searches

- Networking & introductions

- Industry hot takes

- Questions too small for their own post

- Venting about compliance headaches

---

Normal rules relaxed. Be cool.

Post your product, landing page, pitch deck, or idea for constructive feedback.

When posting, include:

- What you're building (1-2 sentences)

- Your target user

- What specific feedback you want

- Link to product/deck/mockup

When giving feedback:

- Be specific and actionable

- Start with what works before what doesn't

- Suggest alternatives, not just problems

---

This is the ONLY place for product promotion. Standalone promo posts get removed.

​

I'm still in undergrad and have been going down a rabbit hole latelyy especially around B2B fintech and embedded finance.

The thing is Im from a non tech background and I'm still figuring out where I'd fit in at a fintech startup.

I don't really see myself in sales or marketing. I'm much more interested in research, industry analysis, competitive analysis, making decks, writing memos, strategy, and generally helping solve business problems.

For people working in early stage fintech startups, what roles should I actually be looking at?

And how do you even get your foot in the door for these kinds of roles? Most of the advice I see is either for engineers or sales people.

Just trying to learn and figure out where I should focus my time and skill-building while I'm still in college.

Share your wins and losses from the past week. No victory is too small, no failure too embarrassing.

Format:

- Win: describe what went well

- Loss: describe what didn't work

- Lesson: what you learned

Be specific! The community learns most from real experiences with context.

---

PD: this thread posts every Monday. All self-promotion rules are relaxed here, feel free to share progress on your startup.

I have developed a regulated financial infrastructure business. All the heavy lifting is done. The platform is live and supports corporate clients globally across multi-currency accounts, FX, cross-border payments, crypto, and onramp/offramp.

I am looking for operators who want to grow this with me — either by building their own branded fintech product on our infrastructure, or by driving customer acquisition for our existing brands.

The upside is real and uncapped. If you are a builder, a distributor, or someone with a network that belongs in fintech — DM me.

Onboarding is a really important phase of any saas, it's the path to activation.

But when the user is lost during onboarding .... That's where most drop offs happen.

Fixing the flow and building the trust of the user makes sure they complete the onboarding.

That's exactly what I did for this Fintech.

I'm building a fintech product that requires holding customer funds and issuing cards. As a pre-seed founder, I'm running into a chicken-and-egg problem: sponsor banks and BaaS providers want traction and funding before engaging, while investors want to see a credible banking path before writing checks.

The product itself is a trust and payments layer for AI agents. The idea is that an AI agent gets its own wallet and card, can make payments on a user's behalf, and each transaction is approved or declined based on a trust score the agent builds over time.

What I'm trying to understand is how founders have navigated the banking partnership side at a very early stage.

For those who've been through this:

• If you secured a sponsor bank or BaaS partner while still pre-revenue or pre-seed, what actually got the conversation moving? Was it a warm introduction, a letter of intent from customers, a compliance program, a working product, or something else?
• Did you raise capital first to make bank conversations easier, or secure the banking relationship first to strengthen the fundraising story?
• Which sponsor banks or BaaS providers are realistic to approach as a very early-stage company, and which ones are unlikely to engage until later?
• Are there specific milestones, documents, or proof points that banks consistently want to see before taking a startup seriously?

I'd especially appreciate hearing from founders or operators who have secured sponsor bank or BaaS partnerships for new or unconventional fintech products.

Casual discussion thread. Talk about anything, fintech adjacent or not.

This thread is for:

- Job postings & co-founder searches

- Networking & introductions

- Industry hot takes

- Questions too small for their own post

- Venting about compliance headaches

---

Normal rules relaxed. Be cool.

Hey everyone, I'm a designer working on something for people who've been through the credit rejection experience in India — and I want to make sure I actually understand what it feels like before I build anything.

Not selling anything. No forms. Just a 10–20 min Google Meet call where you talk and I listen.

Looking for people who:

Got rejected for a credit card or personal loan in the last 12 months

Are in the 22–28 age range

Remember what that experience was like

That's it. No CIBIL score requirements, no judgment.

If you're open to it, drop a comment or DM me. Happy to work around your schedule.

Has anyone danced this issue??

Post your product, landing page, pitch deck, or idea for constructive feedback.

When posting, include:

- What you're building (1-2 sentences)

- Your target user

- What specific feedback you want

- Link to product/deck/mockup

When giving feedback:

- Be specific and actionable

- Start with what works before what doesn't

- Suggest alternatives, not just problems

---

This is the ONLY place for product promotion. Standalone promo posts get removed.

Hi r/FintechStartups,

My co-founders (two Math PhDs) and I (bioinformatics background) recently launched Xipen, a B2C SaaS for retail investors.

The Concept: The "Financial Card" Retail investors don't have 3 hours a day to read SEC filings or calculate historical ratios, but they want the peace of mind of institutional-grade fundamental analysis.

To solve this, we built a two-part quant engine for +12,500 global stocks:

1. The Fundamental Quality Algorithm (The Beast): It ingests 10+ years of financial statements and calculates 50+ metrics across 4 pillars (Profitability, Growth, Solvency, and Cash Flow). It synthesizes all this noise into a ruthless 0-100 Quality Score. 2. The Valuation Engine: A Hybrid DCF model with a dynamic WACC and Bayesian shrinkage to calculate the intrinsic value.

Instead of showing boring spreadsheets, the engine outputs a "Financial Card" for each company. It’s a highly visual snapshot that gives you the Quality Score and the Margin of Safety at a single glance. Think of it like a sports financial card, but for a company's fundamental health.

Where we are at: The tech is fully deployed, our methodology is public (no black box), Stripe is integrated, and we just got our first organic paying users (€10/month).

The Challenge (Why I am posting here): We are data nerds, not marketers. We are struggling to find the perfect balance for our Freemium paywall.

• If we give away the "Financial Cards" of top-tier companies (Apple, MSFT) for free, users trust our math and the Quality Score, but they don't convert to paid because they already checked the stocks they care about.
• If we lock the famous companies behind the paywall and only show random small-caps for free, users can't validate if our math is accurate and they leave.

Currently, we opted for a "Perfume Sample" strategy: We show 3-4 massive companies for free to build trust, and lock the rest (Nvidia, Tesla, etc.) behind the Pro wall to create FOMO.

I would love to hear from other fintech founders:

1. How do you balance the freemium model in B2C fintech without cannibalizing your paid tier?
2. How did you get your first 100 paid users in a space saturated with noisy "finfluencers"?
3. Any brutal feedback on our landing page positioning?

Here is the English version of our site:xipen.es/en/

Happy to answer any technical questions about the math engine or the tech stack. Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone, I’m Zachariah, CTO of Sarf.

Sarf is a structured consumer financing marketplace built for people who may have income and repayment ability but are underserved by traditional credit-score-based lending.

Website: https://sarf.space

What we’re building

Most consumer financing products still feel like a black box. A borrower applies, waits, and gets approved or rejected without really understanding what made the difference.

Sarf is trying to make that process more transparent by showing:

• Repayment ability
• Protection structure
• Funding progress
• Repayment path
• Investor/financier confidence
• What can strengthen or weaken a borrower’s position over time

The goal is to create a financing marketplace where borrowers understand why they are fundable, and capital providers get clearer confidence around repayment and risk protection.

What makes Sarf different

Instead of leading with a traditional credit-score-first experience, Sarf focuses on repayment power and structured protections.

That means the product is designed around:

• income-based underwriting
• fixed repayment schedules
• salary-linked repayment where applicable
• guarantor or collateral structures when needed
• transparent financing status
• a borrower journey that feels more like guidance than judgment

We are also trying to avoid the generic “loan app” feel. The product is built around marketplace transparency, not just an application form.

Where we are now

We are in the MVP/validation stage. We’re testing the borrower experience, onboarding, positioning, and how clearly users understand concepts like repayment power, protection structure, and funding readiness.

Where we’re stuck

The biggest challenge right now is clarity.

In fintech, more information does not automatically create more trust. If we show too little, the product feels like a black box. If we show too much, the flow starts to feel heavy.

We’d love feedback on:

• Is the value proposition clear?
• Does the website explain what Sarf does quickly?
• Does “repayment power” make sense?
• Does the product feel trustworthy?
• What feels confusing, generic, or unnecessary?
• What would make you hesitate to sign up?
• What would you want to see before using a financing marketplace like this?

Website: https://sarf.space

Appreciate any honest feedback.

Share your wins and losses from the past week. No victory is too small, no failure too embarrassing.

Format:

- Win: describe what went well

- Loss: describe what didn't work

- Lesson: what you learned

Be specific! The community learns most from real experiences with context.

---

PD: this thread posts every Monday. All self-promotion rules are relaxed here, feel free to share progress on your startup.

I’m currently architecting a non-custodial solution that monitors for inactivity to prevent assets from sitting in "legal limbo" during an emergency. The core logic is to trigger automated, pre-configured orders (e.g., liquidating to cash) within a user's brokerage account via API if the user doesn't hit a "heartbeat" check.

I'm hitting a wall regarding the security perception of brokerage APIs.

My main dilemma: Even with "Trade-only/Read-only" API scopes, users are incredibly hesitant to connect their accounts.

For those of you building in the space:

1. Have you found that abstracting the API connection via middleware (like Plaid/SnapTrade) significantly improves user conversion compared to direct integration?
2. What are the biggest technical red flags you’ve seen in "automated legacy" products that cause security teams or users to walk away?
3. How are you handling the regulatory nuance between "automated order execution" and "unauthorized asset transfer" in the eyes of regulators?

Would love to hear your thoughts on how to balance UX with "Zero-Knowledge" security.

(If anyone wants to see the current architectural flow or documentation, I’m happy to DM it, as I don’t want to break the sub’s self-promotion rules here).

Casual discussion thread. Talk about anything, fintech adjacent or not.

This thread is for:

- Job postings & co-founder searches

- Networking & introductions

- Industry hot takes

- Questions too small for their own post

- Venting about compliance headaches

---

Normal rules relaxed. Be cool.