For those of us who follow the Fintech market, it’s been a busy couple of years. Disruptive innovations within Fintech infrastructure, B2B payments, Crypto, DeFi, Neobanks, and Insurtech are scaling at a breakneck pace. As investors who are deeply embedded in and native to this space, we understand the need to grow along with them. That’s why we’re pleased to announce the addition of Connor Love to our expanding Fintech team.
Connor should be no stranger to many of you, having worked with us for the past few years while he finished his degree at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
A graduate of West Point, Connor served as a Captain in the US Army and deployed to Northern Iraq in 2019. Prior to that, he worked for the Office of Chief Legislative Liaison in Washington, D.C, led a group of reconnaissance soldiers in the Pacific, and served as a strategic advisor and speechwriter to General Robert Brown, the Commander of US Army Pacific.
It was in the military that Connor saw first hand what a group of motivated individuals could achieve while working together as a team. It’s this mindset he brings to his work with us as we continue to build out our Fintech portfolio. Connor embodies the #onelightspeed team focused culture, has a knack for building strong relationships with founders, and has an intellectual curiosity that drives his strong work ethic in the venture industry.
Over the last year Connor’s already helped us finalize deals with Seel (return assurance for ecommerce), Lemon Markets (a stock trading API), Herald (infrastructure for commercial insurance brokers), trading.tv (a social media platform for retail investing), and Nirvana, as well as a handful we’ll be announcing later this year.
His particular area of interest is Insurtech, which has been long overdue for effective digital disruption. Connor’s predictions for the future of insurance digitization closely align with our overall philosophy around Fintech.
For example:
*Underwriting really matters, and how well companies manage risk is more important than how quickly they can grow. This focus on quality underwriting will allow digital upstarts to become full-stack insurance providers.
*Insurance infrastructure, in the form of developer-friendly APIs, will help level the playing field between disruptors and incumbents. And just as products like Plaid and Stripe enable tech companies to offer financial services to their customers, Insurtech APIs will allow more enterprises outside the insurance industry to add underwriting to their product portfolios.
*The global market is largely untapped. Outside of a handful of developed countries, the penetration of insurance as a percentage of overall GDP is in the single digits. The total addressable market is enormous.
*Insurance will be the key to unlocking the DeFi and Web3 worlds for billions of consumers. As recent multi-million-dollar hacks of popular crypto networks show, DeFi users lack adequate protection against malicious activity. Normal users won’t be willing to invest in tokens without some insurance protection from hacks or attacks.
While it’s true that several companies in the initial Insurtech wave have shown less than impressive returns so far, we agree with Connor that the game is still in the early innings. The market potential remains enormous.
To date, Lightspeed has invested more than $1.4 Billion in Fintech startups, and we’re really just getting started. We’re happy to welcome Connor to our team!
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