Money, Money, Money

“I work all night, I work all day, to pay the bills I have to pay
Ain’t it sad
And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me.”
–Abba, 1976

Money 20/20 helped remind me the glass is overflowing, not half-full or half-empty. This annual conference showcases the brighter future of money, which continues to undergo massive innovation and should make a real difference in the world’s economy with greater access to technology and access to capital for more people.

Here are some quick highlights from this year’s conference:

• Uber Money: Uber announced a smart platform play with their Uber Cash. The company wants to help drivers grow and save their money, and is offering drivers $100 no-fee overdraft. With their massive data on drivers and riders, they are literally willing to extend no-fee credit to drivers as well as riders. This is rewriting the rules, as banks have been extracting enormous fees for overdraft or small loans.
• Shopify: With 1M merchants, Shopify continue to lower the barriers to entrepreneurship and create ecommerce growth opportunities for more people. Their recent report estimates “Businesses built on Shopify supported $183 billion in global economic activity from 2016-2018. Last year, businesses on Shopify supported over 1.4 million full-time jobs around the world.”
• Lendio: Their Sunrise app for small businesses is a service to auto-generate a P&L based on downloaded transactions. Hopefully, the days of manual bookkeeping and accounting will go away and allow business owners to make better, faster decisions plus access growth capital easier.
• Hurry Home: This was my favorite from the startup competition. The service helps lower the barriers to home ownership and provides real estate investors with a better investment option.

I could go on and on, but Charles Schwab drove home the key theme of confidence in the future. Innovation powers on and new opportunities are created everyday.

Money 20/20 demonstrated that innovative technology, freer capital and youthful entrepreneurial energy are abundant to tackle the many significant challenges, from economic disparity to climate change. Patience is hard, but I’m always going to bet on growth that will result from nonstop, exponential innovation.