In partnership with

Hi, fintech fam! 💜

On Monday, I shared something I’ve never revealed before:

The exact blueprint I used to turn my journalism experience into a profitable, award-winning media company.

Alongside Katrin Kaurov of Frich Money, we broke it all down at Pace University—how we built powerful businesses around a newsletter, turned content into revenue, and proved you don’t need thousands of followers (or dollars) to start.

Now, I’m turning that playbook into something for you.

We’re calling it: The Career Creator Toolkit—your step-by-step guide to turning content into a revenue engine, whether you’re a startup founder, experienced operator, or just looking to kickstart your career.

Join the waitlist here and be the first to get it.

Now, let’s get into today’s column.

INNOVATION

Scaling Smart: How to Grow with Intention in Fintech’s Most Critical Stage

At the growth stage, the real work begins. Product-market fit is behind you. Profitability, scale, and sustained momentum lie ahead.

And no matter your function—marketing, ops, talent, or revenue—the inflection point always shows up the same way: faster growth, higher expectations, and more complexity.

That’s exactly where this conversation began at the Fintech Is Femme Leadership Summit last month, in a powerhouse panel moderated by Stephanie Perez, Managing Director at Fin Capital, with insights from:

• Kathleen Waid, Fractional CRO & Advisor

• LaToya Bowlah, SVP of Marketing at Vestwell

• Kelly Shea, Chief Administrative Officer at Array

Here’s what they’ve learned leading growth-stage fintechs through pivotal transitions—and what every operator should know before scaling the next chapter.

Growth Isn’t a Buzzword—It’s a Relationship

Kathleen Waid likened the growth journey to falling in love. “Early-stage companies are like dating,” she said. “You’re energized, things are exciting. But then you introduce new people—team leads, investors, new customers. Eventually, you’re building a house together. It’s real. It’s high stakes.”

The key to maintaining momentum without losing your edge? Tie growth milestones to pre-defined actions.

“If I want to hit $2M in revenue, what do we do when we get there? Do we invest in brand? Hire sales? Launch a cross-sell product? Growth shouldn’t surprise you. It should trigger action.”

Build Systems That Don’t Kill Your Startup Magic

LaToya Bowlah pointed out the tightrope many startups walk: evolving structure without stifling speed.

“Startups have a scrappy, fast, experimental culture—and you want to keep that,” she said. “But at a certain stage, you need to infuse insights and intentionality into your strategy.”

Her playbook for scaling includes:

• Hiring player-coach leaders who love to build and still get in the weeds
  

• Investing in the right tech stack—not the most tech: “The marketing and sales tech stack is critical—not just for automation, but for how we go to market and scale one-to-one prospecting down the funnel,” Bowlah said. “But if you over-index on technology too quickly, you risk ending up with a bloated stack that isn’t implemented efficiently—and that can be expensive to fix. Focus on having the right subject matter experts in place who can truly evangelize the tools you adopt. That’s how you scale sustainably.”
  

• Building cross-functional scrappy squads to test, break rules, and learn fast

The lesson? Build fast, but don’t over-engineer. And make sure your internal teams are equipped to actually use the tools you’re buying.

Sustainable Scale > Growth at All Costs

Kelly Shea called out a red flag that too many growth-stage companies still ignore: scaling headcount, tools, and spend without clarity on why.

“More doesn’t always mean more value,” she said. “You need multipliers—not just bodies.”

She stressed the importance of team design that eliminates churn, confusion, and misalignment across functions. “If you can’t explain who owns what, your customers will feel that chaos too.”

Fix the Sales-Marketing Disconnect—for Good

Ask anyone who’s operated in the trenches of growth: friction between sales and marketing is real. And preventable.

Waid shared a war story: walking into a board meeting where marketing presented pipeline numbers she’d never seen. “Lesson one: come in as a united front,” she said.

Her fix? Forget vanity metrics like MQLs.

“Align marketing and sales on one thing: pipeline development. For every dollar marketing spends, how much top-of-funnel pipeline do we get? Then, how many of those top-of-funnel dollars end up as actual ARR? That’s the metric that matters.”

Bowlah added that it’s not just alignment—it’s shared ownership of outcomes. And if you can invest in revenue ops or a shared data framework early, it’ll pay off in clarity and collaboration.

Navigating External Complexity Starts With Emotional Intelligence

As fintech companies expand into platforms and multi-product offerings, internal complexity rises too. And with it, confusion.

“At a growth stage, you don’t just need talent—you need emotionally intelligent talent,” said Shea. “People who understand that it’s everyone’s job to reduce friction.”

From a customer perspective, Bowlah offered a tactical lens on messaging complexity: skip the lectures. Focus on why it matters and show up at the moment it matters.

“Education is important—but education feels like work,” she said. “Don’t sell homework. Sell value, framed in your audience’s context.

You have to ask: how do I want my ideal customer to engage with my product? When are they most likely to think about it or need it? That’s where the opportunity lies.” 

At Bowlah’s previous company, for example, they identified their ICP as a high-powered, ambitious millennial woman—mid-career, excelling, and focused on getting to the next level. 

For her, financial wellness was tied to career advancement. But executive coaching is expensive and often out of reach at that stage. 

“So we launched a more affordable coaching solution tailored to her moment,” she shared. “It gave her real value, introduced her to our financial products, and turned her into an evangelist. That one move didn’t just deepen engagement—it opened up an entirely new audience.”

Data Is Your Armor When Pressure Builds

Whether you’re pitching the board or pushing a strategy, Waid’s rule of thumb is simple: your power is in the data. 

“The data you don’t collect is the knowledge you don’t have. And without that, you’re guessing.”

When a board pushes for short—and long-term projections, you need to know your average sales cycle by segment, your ACV, and your win rates at every stage of the funnel. That’s how you build credible forecasts and hold your ground.

“For example, I’m working with a client right now whose sales cycles are 24 months,” Waid shared. “These are $10 million deals with major financial institutions. So when they asked, ‘You’ve been here 12 months—what’s happening?’

I had to remind them: we’ve 5x’d the pipeline, but you can’t expect a rabbit to come out of the hat when it doesn’t live for another 12 months.”

You build the system, stand by the data, and then ask: how do we make it better? Can we shorten that 24-month cycle to 20? Can we move through procurement faster? That’s how you push forward—aggressively, but grounded in reality.

Data is what grounds your narrative.

Retention in a Delayed Exit Environment

As companies stay private longer, Shea pointed out that old retention frameworks are breaking.

“You can’t just throw equity at people and expect them to stay,” she said. “You need systems that meet employees where they are—offering flexibility, purpose, and clarity.”

And avoid designing compensation or recognition around one person. That kind of one-off retention play can disrupt culture and damage trust.

When to Go External: Recruiting Without Regret

So when do you bring in a recruiting agency? Shea’s advice: only after you’ve fully explored internal mobility, referrals, and warm intros.

“Your best hires are often just one or two degrees away,” she said. “But when you’re launching new functions or domains—that’s when external expertise is worth it.”

Her bonus tip: read the agency contract like a founder. You want partners who are as invested as you are—not transactional.

And Yes—Let’s Talk AI

In marketing, Bowlah sees GenAI tools as accelerators—not replacements. “Content is the product of marketing,” she said. “AI helps make content creation more efficient, but the input still needs strategy.”

Waid warned founders not to oversell. “We’re in the ‘AI-washing’ phase,” she said. “Make sure what you’re calling AI is actually adding value—not just buzzwords.”

Bottom Line: Don’t Just Scale—Scale With Intention

The growth stage isn’t a finish line. It’s a pressure cooker. And the way you scale—who you hire, how you measure, and what you prioritize—determines whether you build a rocket or crash the engine.

At Fintech Is Femme, we cover the women building with conviction, clarity, and leadership that lasts. And this panel? Was a masterclass in how it’s done.

_{WTF ELSE?}

• Fintechs that raked in profits from high interest rates now face a key test

• Stash secures $146 million to add AI to financial guidance platform 

• The future of banking-as-a-service fintech companies

• Redefining fintech: can Agentic AI lead the way in innovation?

• From posts to profits: Why creators are the new entrepreneurs investors can’t ignore

_#SPONSORED

The newsletter every professional should be reading

There’s a reason Morning Brew is the gold standard of business news—it’s the easiest and most enjoyable way to stay in the loop on all the headlines impacting your world.

Tech, finance, sales, marketing, and everything in between—we’ve got it all. Just the stuff that matters, served up in a fast, fun read.

Look—over 4 million professionals start their day with Morning Brew’s daily newsletter, and it only takes 5 minutes to read. Sign up for free and see for yourself!

Check it out

_{I WANT IT, I GOT IT}

• 🎧 Today’s Listen: ICYMI: Season 1 of Fintech Mavericks is live! In this episode (throwback) my co-host Drew Glover and I interview Emily Green, Head of Wealth Management at Ellevest, about scaling from $40M to $2B AUM, sunsetting their robo-advisor, and the mission driving it all: getting more money into the hands of women. Emily shares bold moves, lessons from Ellevest’s early days, and how the firm is preparing women for the Great Wealth Transfer with values-led financial planning. Tune in here or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 🚀 Today’s Growth: The other day, I watched Bhuva Shakti’s TED Talk—and it cracked me wide open. A single mom, the first woman in her community to get an education, an immigrant who landed on Wall Street and helped steer people through both the Great Recession and the pandemic. She broke generational cycles to build a better life for her daughter—and now she’s using her voice to help reshape the financial system for all of us. And the most powerful part? She’s a member of The Academy of Fintech—our private community of fintech leaders building what comes next.

• 🧘‍♀️Today’s Self-Care: One of the standout women-founded wellness brands featured at the Fintech Is Femme Leadership Summit was NNABI—and I’ve been taking their vitamins ever since. As someone in my 30s, I thought I might be too young for this product… but I was wrong. It’s never too early to start taking care of yourself—and I’ve genuinely been feeling better since making it part of my routine.

_FINTUNES

🎵 Tyla - Bliss

Vibey new song is out just four days ago. Enjoy!

_{LET’S CONNECT}

📰 Share this newsletter with a friend and start growing your network.

🔗 Connect with me on LinkedIn for daily insights on female leadership.

🤝 Grow your business through content & community by partnering with me.

📣 Promote yourself to 50,000 subscribers by sponsoring this newsletter.

🎤 Host an epic event by booking me as a speaker, moderator, or emcee.

📚 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 Thursday!

Love,

Nicole 💜