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Hey, fintech fam 💜

I hope you’re staying safe and warm if you’re in New York or anywhere along the East Coast. I have to say… a second blizzard was not on my 2026 bingo card.

But we made it through — and I’m holding out for those glorious New York spring days any minute now. (March is basically here, right?)

It’s official: tables are completely SOLD OUT for the FEMMY Awards on March 2 — our annual awards show and Women’s History Month celebration, where this community finally gets to gather IRL.

We’ve got live music. We’ve got powerhouse women. We’ve got awards. And honestly? We’ve earned a night like this. It’s been a long winter — I’ll see you on the dance floor.

General Admission tickets are now low stock but still available, and I’m thrilled to be co-hosting alongside Stripe, Candidly, Spave, Springboard Enterprises, Aprio, and Orrick.

Grab your ticket here while you can!

For today’s column, I’m drawing a line between two places you might not expect. From record-breaking wins in Milan to the women reshaping financial infrastructure, there’s a pattern emerging — and it’s worth paying attention to.

Let’s get into it ✨

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✍🏽 _{ON LEADERSHIP}

Women Are Winning — And the Fintech Market Is Finally Catching Up

At the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, U.S. women once again outperformed — securing the majority of the country’s gold medals for the third consecutive Winter Games.

Breezy Johnson in Alpine skiing. Elana Meyers Taylor in monobob. Alysa Liu in women’s figure skating. And across disciplines, the pattern held: they didn’t just win — they controlled the moment.

What felt different wasn’t just the medal count. It was the cultural narrative surrounding it. These athletes weren’t shrinking themselves to fit legacy narratives. They were visible. Vocal. Unapologetic about their ambition.

It struck me because the same shift is unfolding in fintech—and many other industries —though far fewer people are calling it what it is.

Consider the numbers.

The global fintech market is projected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2030. Women already control an estimated $31.8 trillion in global spending and influence the majority of household financial decisions. And yet female-led fintech companies receive roughly 2–3% of venture capital funding.

We know it’s not a pipeline problem, but a market inefficiency.

Performance data I’ve reported on consistently shows female-led companies generate 35% higher ROI, burn 15% less capital monthly on average, and reach exits with stronger unit economics. In a post-2022 “flight to quality” environment — where investors prioritize durability over blitzscaling — those traits aren’t soft advantages.

They’re competitive edges.

This is why what’s happening inside fintech right now feels less like a diversity conversation and more like a structural correction.

The women building in this moment are not asking for seats. They are building the table.

On March 2, many of them will be in one room at the FEMMY Awards — not as a symbolic gathering, but as an economic signal.

Take Sheila Lirio Marcelo.

Before the care economy was quantified in the trillions, she built Care.com out of lived necessity and scaled it into a $500 million public company, becoming one of only 7 women in history to take a company public. Today, with Ohai.ai, she is tackling unpaid caregiving labor — which Oxfam once estimated would amount to $10.9 trillion annually if compensated.

She didn’t “niche down.”

She named an entire invisible economy and built infrastructure around it.

Or Lule Demmissie, former CEO of eToro U.S., who has weathered the dot-com crash, the financial crisis, and COVID volatility without theatrics. She once told me she doesn’t aspire to be a unicorn. She aspires to be a farm horse — durable, steady, built for long-term performance.

In an industry that once rewarded velocity above all else, that mindset now looks prescient.

Look at the broader market. The F-Prime Fintech Index rebounded to $947 billion in market cap by the end of 2025 — well below the $1.3 trillion peak of 2021, but miles above the sub-$400 billion trough of the correction.

Revenue growth across the index averaged 29%, and investors are rewarding what F-Prime calls “goldilocks” companies: steady 20–40% growth, improving margins, and credible paths to profitability.

Durability is back in fashion.

And durability has long been the operating system for many female founders.

Luan Cox built lending infrastructure through FinMkt long before “embedded finance” became a slide in every pitch deck.

Laurel Taylor embedded student debt optimization and retirement matching into the financial system itself through Candidly — delivering $2.3 billion in projected student debt impact and tens of millions in additional retirement savings.

Asya Bradley operates at the intersection of venture, infrastructure, and global payments. At Stripe, she works with some of the most ambitious fintech founders in the world. Through her investing and LP work at places like Kinship Ventures, she helps determine where capital flows next.

Susan Langer built Spave around a behavioral truth economists are finally quantifying: generosity compounds. In a market obsessed with extraction, she designed a model around contribution — and customers respond accordingly.

And then there is Kay Koplovitz.

Before fintech debated dual-revenue models, Kay invented one for cable television. She built USA Network into a prime-time leader and later founded Springboard Enterprises, which has helped create more than $76 billion in value across 900+ women-led companies, with 28 IPOs and over 240 exits, including icons like Canva’s Melanie Perkins.

That is capital and infrastructure formation.

Springboard is now building a fintech cohort alongside Luan Cox and Fintech Is Femme, at a moment when the arbitrage is clear: women founders, with superior performance metrics and direct insight into the dominant consumer segment, remain dramatically underfunded.

Markets eventually correct inefficiencies.

The question is who moves early.

What feels different about this moment — much like those Olympic wins — is the absence of apology.

These leaders are not flattening their edges to fit. They are embedding impact into underwriting models. Embedding inclusion into risk frameworks. Embedding purpose into revenue strategy.

They are rejecting false binaries.

• Profit and responsibility.

• Scale and stewardship.

• Innovation and regulation.

As Lule once told me, we live in the era of “yes, and.”

Fintech’s first era was access.

The second was scale.

The third — the one we are entering — is durability.

Durable infrastructure. Durable margins. Durable trust.

The women in this room are not a side narrative to that story. They are central to it.

The Olympics gave us a metaphor. Fintech is giving us the data.

The women are winning.

And, since math doesn’t lie, the market is starting to notice.

_{I’D LIKE TO THANK THE ACADEMY…}

A huge shoutout to this year’s FEMMY co-hosts — and the powerful networks they’re bringing into the room:

✨ Laurel Taylor (Candidly)

✨ Asya Bradley (Stripe)

✨ Kay Koplovitz (Springboard Enterprises)

✨ Susan Langer (Spave)

✨ Allie Coleman (Aprio)

✨ Courtney Kearns (Orrick)

When leaders like these convene their communities, it’s more than a guest list — it’s an ecosystem of partners coming together.

I’m excited to announce our upcoming member-led event during ICBA LIVE — an intimate evening hosted by Fintech Is Femme for the women shaping the future of community banking.

Step away from the conference floor and into a more intentional space designed for meaningful connection, elevated conversation, and real community.

This curated gathering is for founders, operators, and leaders in community banking looking to connect with peers and partners beyond the noise.

Location details will be shared upon approval.

_{NEW YORK FINTECH WEEK 2026}

Introducing FTW: NYC — a three-day, high-impact conference experience convening fintech’s most influential brands and leaders across innovation, leadership, and security in the global capital of financial innovation.

Early bird tickets are going quickly — and so are our Community Bundles, which include access to all three summits plus year-round membership to The Academy of Fintech.

_{I WANT IT, I GOT IT}

• 📚 Today’s Read: Stripe published its 2025 annual letter to the Stripe community, outlining what was a strong year for businesses on Stripe and the broader internet economy. 

• 🎬 Today’s Watch: If you have somehow missed it, Alysa Liu’s gold-medal winning free skate at the Winter Olymicsis taking over the internet for a reason - what a joy to watch someone love what they do and do it so well!

• 💫 Today’s Activity: I made my stand-up comedy debut on Saturday at Second City — and it was so much fun. When I signed up for the seven-week course, I knew balancing it with founder mode wouldn’t be easy, but carving out space for a hobby (and doing something I’ve always wanted to try) felt important. Huge shoutout to my classmates if you’re reading this — I hope I successfully converted you into the fintech fam. 

_FINTUNES

🎵 JADE - Lip Service

_{LET’S CONNECT}

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📣 Promote yourself to 50,000 subscribers by sponsoring this newsletter or the Humans of Fintech podcast.

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📚 Increase your expertise by ordering your copy of my book, Fintech Feminists: Increasing Inclusion, Redefining Innovation, and Changing the Future for Women Around the World.

That’s all for now! See you on Thursday.

Love,

Nicole 💜