Lately, in my LI feed im seeing compelling headlines like: “Millions in EBITDA. Lean Teams. No VC funding. Meet the new class of SaaS founders who are rewriting the standard scaling playbook”, Wes Bush and “$10m ARR bootstrapped is the new unicorn” Adam Robinson

But……with the exception of some very notable exceptions, i’m not seeing it happening in the payments and fintech industry, at least not in the same volume and velocity.

Why?

Is it too regulated and too capital-intensive, requiring investments in infrastructure, security, and compliance?  Are large amounts of external finance simply an essential part of starting a fintech company? I.e., no consumer or B2B customer or partner will ever trust an under capitalised bootstrapped startup?  Bootstrapping is simply not viable in this industry, right!?

Or maybe it’s a cultural thing! Too many banking, payments, risk, compliance  backgrounds? Are founders in this space simply more risk averse in nature, less entrepreneurial in spirit, and simply not made for bootstrapping by design?

Maybe i've got this completely wrong and there are loads of bootstrap fintech founders out there. DM me if you are one of them. I want to be proved wrong!