Matt Brown's Notes

Cross-border payments in ~1,000 words

A gentle introduction to correspondent banking, money transmission, payment aggregation, and stablecoins, as well as cross-border payment business…

Nov 21 • 

Matt Brown

The secrets to pricing payments in vertical software

Payments are the secret weapon of the best vertical software companies. It’s not uncommon to see 2-5x increases in revenue, retention, and other metrics…

Nov 6 • 

Matt Brown

September 2024

VerticalSoftware.FYI

A new community-driven list of 450+ vertical software companies, along with embedded financial products and other info, now available at…

Sep 23 • 

Matt Brown

August 2024

Invisible asymptotes in vertical software

Vertical software is a great category to build and invest in. But the label and strategies behind it are quickly becoming irrelevant. The opportunity to…

Aug 29 • 

Matt Brown

July 2024

Price and shape risk that others can't or won't

Why the canonical startup advice of "make something people want" doesn't apply to fintechs, who are ultimately in the business of pricing risk and…

Jul 8

June 2024

Investing in Rainforest

I’m excited to announce that I’ve led a $20M Series A investment into Rainforest on behalf of Matrix and joined the board. Rainforest enables software…

Jun 26 • 

Matt Brown

Real-time payments in 1,000 words

Real-time payments are a critical but often misunderstood trend in global payments. This note explains how they work, what catalyzed their recent…

Jun 4 • 

Matt Brown

April 2024

The new fintech stack is... open source?

Why open source is a powerful strategy — how to determine where open source is most and least effective — where open source is best suited in fintech

Apr 30 • 

Matt Brown

A data-driven look at fintech adoption in vertical software

The two trends I’m most bullish on are vertical software and embedded fintech. Businesses of all sizes and industries rely heavily on software…

Apr 10 • 

Matt Brown

March 2024

A chat with Michel Rbeiz, Toast's GM of Fintech

On Toast's product and fintech strategy, how AI complements full stack products, trends in embedded fintech, and more

Mar 27 • 

Matt Brown

Dangerous language in startups

How we describe something affects how we think about and interact with it. It's especially potent and dangerous in startup descriptions, and worth…

Mar 18 • 

Matt Brown

February 2024

Payfac in 1,000 words

Payfac is the model behind fintech’s biggest successes, from Stripe and Square, to Shopify, Uber, and more. It's a critical but misunderstood topic, so…

Feb 7 • 

Matt Brown