READING THE MARKET
VENTURE CAPITAL
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STEVE MACDONALD ’ S 2021 PREDICTIONS
1 . Market consolidation will continue as the previous cohort of startups reach maturity like Plaid and Credit Karma .
2 . Legacy companies ’ acquisitions will accelerate .
3 . New niche unicorns like Robinhood and Brex will be minted .
4 . The trillions of paper dollars will continue to be digitised .
5 . New niche players will evolve to digitize those dollars .
6 . More anti-fraud solutions will proliferate with that digitisation .
7 . AI will be core to every new breakout fintech company .
investment in consumer tech , AI ( artificial intelligence ) and cybersecurity will be essential . “ Making sense of all this new data to deliver real-time , actionable insights will be a key theme in 2021 . Telstra decided a number of years ago to supplement our investment process with data science . This has resulted in several recent investments that we otherwise would not have identified .”
READING THE MARKET
“ Inevitably , the volume and value of deals has been negatively impacted by the pandemic , at least at the beginning ,” continues Koertge . “ But there have been signs of renewed activity in recent months .” This begs the question : what kind of company makes an attractive prospect in the post-COVID environment ? Technology is a core part of the finance market , but it ’ s often not sufficient for differentiation between investment options . “ Cool new technology doesn ’ t automatically guarantee a transformational impact . Telstra Ventures spends a lot of time understanding the drivers of a market , who the players are and how innovation and technology are shaping a market .” MacDonald agrees , stating that finding companies and / or individuals with “ deep domain expertise ” cannot be overstated . Martínez , while not refuting this assertion , accentuates Koertge ’ s other point that the contemporary market requires “ contextual awareness ” of market trends , particularly with
FEBRUARY 2021