Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream

How Technology Is Transforming Lending and Shaping a New Era of Small Business Opportunity

By: Karen Mills

Narrated by: Ellen Archer

Small businesses are the backbone of the US economy. They are the biggest job creators and offer a path to the American dream. But for many, it is difficult to get the capital they need to operate and succeed. In the Great Recession, access to capital for small businesses froze and in the aftermath, many community banks shuttered their doors and other lenders that had weathered the storm turned to more profitable avenues. For years after the financial crisis, the outlook for many small businesses was bleak. But then a new dawn of financial technology, or 'fintech', emerged.

Beginning in 2010, new fintech entrepreneurs recognised the gaps in the small business lending market and revolutionised the customer experience for small business owners. Instead of Xeroxing a pile of paperwork and waiting weeks for an answer, small businesses filled out applications online and heard back within hours, sometimes even minutes. Banks scrambled to catch up. Technology companies like Amazon, PayPal and Square entered the market and new possibilities for even more transformative products and services began to appear.

In Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream, former US Small Business Administrator and Senior Fellow at Harvard Business School Karen G Mills focuses on the needs of small businesses for capital and how technology will transform the small business lending market. This is a market that has been plagued by frictions: it is hard for a lender to figure out which small businesses are creditworthy and borrowers often don’t know how much money or what kind of loan they need. New streams of data have the power to illuminate the opaque nature of a small business’ finances, making it easier for them to weather bumpy cash flows and providing more transparency to potential lenders.

Mills charts how fintech has changed and will continue to change small business lending and how financial innovation and wise regulation can restore a path to the American Dream. An ambitious book grappling with the broad significance of small business to the economy, the historical role of credit markets, the dynamics of innovation cycles, and the policy implications for regulation, Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream is relevant to bankers, fintech investors and regulators; in fact, to anyone who is interested in the future of small business in America.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 Karen Mills (P)2020 Audible, Ltd

Concise History of Fintech

This is a great book for those interested in a high level overview of Fintech. The history is interesting, and the analysis is well done in setting up the synergies and tensions between traditional lenders and start ups.

Verbose, redundant, and boring

Much of this book is written in “business-ese”; the jargon-riddled language that academics and bureaucrats use to waffle around and seem smarter than they really are. In this book, like everywhere else, it has the opposite effect: It turns me off. It frustrates me to see how points that could be made concisely are delivered in the least efficient way possible.

There is also no actionable business info in this book, which was disappointing since I was hoping to find some.

The narration was okay though.

3/10, a boring waste of time.