Toby Strangewood, co-founder, Wake the Bear
The financial sector isn’t for the faint-hearted.
It’s a category of established and well-funded heritage and high-street brands as well as famed, PR grabbing unicorns. There is also a constant wave of emerging fintechs entering the market, all with aspirations of global scale based on promises of better customer-centric FS solutions.
Having led strategy for well established banks, as well as for some of the most exciting fintech start-ups, I know that when a business has ‘cracked the tech’ and can genuinely deliver game-changing but broad FS solutions, it can be daunting to know where to start in your customer communications due to your long list of functional and emotional benefits. This issue is compounded as you’re a new, unknown (and therefore untrusted) brand.
So it may reassure those businesses to know that, while it seems counter-intuitive, there is a strong argument for ‘less is more’ when launching and establishing yourself in market.
If your business has created a product that is genuinely amazing, and contains so many features and benefits that you know it will conquer the category, a clever strategy for launch is to drip feed your innovation piece by piece through your marketing in order to avoid hitting your potential customer with a singular macro solution which may be hard to comprehend and even harder to trust.
Airbnb has revolutionised a static and archaic category, but didn’t launch with its ‘live like a local’ messaging at the outset. Instead of leaping to the full potential of the product and the experiences it creates, its marketing team focused on immediate and more tangible benefits, that of monetizing your spare room, or staying somewhere cheaper than a hotel.
This approach requires the brand to consciously take a step back and acknowledge that the bigger brand promise and delivery actually needs to be simplified at first. Frustrating if you have much more under the hood but, I’d argue, necessary to ensure your launch has a clear focus and clear, understandable benefit.
Ask yourself, ‘what is the killer feature of my app or FS product?’. If you could only talk about one, what would it be? If that feature has a clear value exchange to your customer, then it’s often a much better way to launch with that, showing one card rather than the whole pack and ensuring consumers ‘get what you do’.
In short, sell an immediate benefit, not your entire dream.
The following ten financial service startups knew that. They started with one solid feature or benefit and doubled down on it. Only then did they scale into the financial multitaskers they are today.
The Single-Feature Success Stories
Robinhood went all in on commission-free trading. They slashed the fees and the hassle for new traders. Once they had them hooked, they branched out into crypto and banking, turning no-cost trading into a gateway for financial exploration.
Acorns made investing as easy as buying a coffee. Pop your spare change into an investment account and watch it grow. Their winning idea? People are more willing to invest pennies than piles of cash. Once trust was built, Acorns sprouted into banking and retirement services.
Venmo made splitting dinner bills a breeze, with a social twist. But here’s the deal: They didn’t just make payments easier, they made them fun. From there, it wasn’t just about paying your friend for pizza – it was about being part of a community that could also pay businesses.
Square offered a little white square that turned phones into cash registers. Magic for small businesses, right? They honed in on those who felt left out by the big payment processors and then broadened into loans, payroll, and more.
Stripe seized the confusion of online payments and threw it out the window. Catering first to developers with sleek, simple integration, they caught the tech wave and rode it straight into a sea of financial solutions.
WealthSimple simplified the complex world of investing and targeted those who wouldn’t know a stock from a bond. With robo-advisors handling the investments, they paved the way for tax services and private portfolios.
TransferWise (Wise) revolutionised the money transfer process by being transparent with fees. They underlined the ‘hidden fee’ pain point, scratched it out, and created a loyal user base that helped them grow into a financial wunderkind with borderless banking.
SoFi addressed the elephant in the room – student debt – by offering refinancing to save grads from sinking. Once they secured a foothold, they leapt into insurance, investing, and even a card to rack up credit.
Chime enticed with a no-fee checking account, hooking those tired of being nickel-and-dimed. The initial draw? An intuitive app and automated savings. They let their customers’ savings grow while adding credit builders and early access to earned wages.
Revolut targeted the nomads and travellers, slashing the costs of currency exchange, and delivered a multi-currency debit card worth talking about. With their foot in the door, they upped their game to include stock trading and cryptos.
These are all perks of stripping back to a killer feature or value exchange for launch.
Starting with a single feature isn’t being timid, it’s being strategic. These companies knew the potency of simplified marketing: one feature, one message. Effortlessly digestible for the chronically busy entrepreneur.
If your product isn’t exactly where you want it to be for launch, then zooming into a single feature that is ready – assuming you believe it to be a game-changer – can also reduce development costs pre-revenue.
Lastly, consider this: a unique offering carves out a niche, meaning reduced competition. These companies didn’t throw a hodgepodge of services to see what stuck. They owned one. And when you own your space, scaling isn’t just slapping on more features; it’s growth with purpose.