Missing A Target

The past couple of days, I was in New York City at a couple of startup events.  I was at the Empire Startups event on Wednesday, and Fin Tech Sandbox on Thursday.  Both were good events. Met a lot of nice people.  One of the goals our fund this year was to expand its network.  We have been to NYC three times and at the end of this month will have been in SF twice and Atlanta twice.

In a panel discussion at Empire Startups, I pulled a couple of nuggets of information out.  Ben Cukier was on one panel.  They were having a discussion about who is winning at fin tech, which was really a far-ranging discussion about fin-tech startups in general.  Here is one point that he made.

You have two very large generations in America; Millennials and Baby Boomers.  Most of the startups Ben sees are concentrating on solving problems for the Millennials.  Makes sense, since a lot of the startup entrepreneurs are millennials or slightly older than the Millennial generation.  However, they are missing it when it comes to fin tech.

Fin Tech is about moving money around, capital flows.  It’s about reducing friction in the distribution chain.  Millennials don’t control a lot of capital.  Baby Boomers control $14 Trillion in capital and that capital is most certainly going to move around the system for the next 20-40 years.  When they die, it will transfer to their children.

I didn’t make a mistake in typing.  It’s Trillion with a T.

Old people are boring and we are all sick of hearing this and that about the Baby Boomers.  But, it’s still a huge market segment that should not be ignored and left to mainline finance companies.