Rex Salisbury’s Post

Happy Monday! Week 3 of the newsletter is out. We talk new business formation setting records, why title insurance sucks, and Adyen's banking advantage. Be sure to hit subscribe so you can get this straight to your inbox!

Title insurance is a total scam. ~3% of premiums go to payout losses. Biden administration is going to eliminate title insurance for refis which will save borrowers $500 to $1.5k per transaction. Generally hate government interventions but the mortgage market is basically a government construct (Fannie and Freddie are in conservatorship and set the guidelines anyways). also, Title Insurance is such a scam and so overpriced, not sure how this could backfire... What am I missing?

Surprised to see that…crypto is back!? Roughly half of the new unicorns in Q1 were crypto related like Berachain, Eigen Labs, HashKey Group and Polyhedra Network. Not only that, but crypto and blockchain companies accounted for a third of the total number of financings, more than payments and banking tech combined! I do think crypto has real world use cases, and I’m excited to see what happens when we move past the asset class as a tool for speculation, but I’m not sure we are there yet (although there have been some great developments with stablecoins getting traction).  Love to hear from folks with a deeper perspective as to what is going on…

I backed NALA as one of my earliest angel checks before getting Cambrian off the ground. Yesterday, they announced a $40M Series A. It's been quite the journey. Plenty of bumps over 6+ years - Co-founder departure - Business Pivot and shutting down the 1st product - Starting all over and raising $10M - Launching the USA (not easy to get partners to make this happen!) In the last 12 months, it has started to look like an "overnight success" - 10x revenue growth - hitting profitability - launching rafiki.com (cross border payments API) - raising $40m Congrats to Benjamin Fernandes on the tireless work and million+ air miles it took to get the business to where it is today. Building in fintech is never easy, especially when you're trying to help build an entire ecosystem alongside your company. Still lots more work to do!

the craziest thing happening in our economy...rate of business formation has increased 60% since pandemic. At first this seemed like a one off thing. Now it's been 4 years. What's causing it?

Welcome back! Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. Week 2 of the newsletter is out and we're talking about the venture ecosystem in the USA, the future of private markets and whether or not 401k plans even work anymore. Be sure to hit subscribe so you can get this straight to your inbox!

Are 401(k)s achieving their desired social outcomes? On one hand, rates of plan participation and contributions are rising. On the other hand, 50% of Americans don't have access to an employer sponsored plan and 90% tax of the benefits flow to highest contributors who are in the top 10% of the income distribution.... Meaning 401(k)s primarily benefit the upper middle class.

Are credit card fees really too high? Reflecting on the Visa / Mastercard lawsuit. A Common complaint with credit cards in the US is that fees are too high. But consumers get quite a lot of benefits from the networks. (1) Rewards  (2) Protection, including on $15B of chargebacks a year  (3) Convenience and more…

trying something new...a linkedin newsletter! keeping it simple. 3 links...every week (mondays). covering fintech (of course). goal is to be (1) light (2) fun and (3) insightful. will also have one question / topic for folks in the community to go deeper on. participation encouraged! Check it out! 👇