35 of you showed up to my first in-person event in Los Angeles last week.

It was one of those rare nights where everything just clicked. One attendee told me it was their favorite event they had been to in a long time. What made it work?

Zankou Chicken certainly helped.

I stepped back. No panels. No agenda. Just an open evening for people to connect over good food and real conversation. And it turns out that people really needed that. I have always believed that strong communities are built by curating the right minds and giving them space to collide. That bet continues to pay off.

I am carrying that same spirit into my next gathering: an intimate dinner with a handful of GPs in San Francisco to swap stories about what it really takes to raise and run a small fund. After that, I will be heading to Austin and Miami this fall and winter. If you are an investor or builder in those cities—let's connect.

And speaking of building in a tough environment, investors are getting excited about the Chime IPO. But beneath the headlines, what does its potential listing really tell us about not only the state of fintech, but also the muted IPO market of the past few years?

Let’s take a closer look.

This week’s headlines were hard to miss: Chime is finally going public.

Exuberance among the LinkedIn glitterati and other hot takes suggest a long-awaited “win” for fintech:

For a sector that has spent the last few years weighed down by compressed multiples and skeptical public markets, the excitement is understandable. IPOs have been few and far between, and even rarer are ones from consumer fintech players that captured mass market attention like Chime did in the late 2010s.

But context matters — and so does caution.

IPO volume and performance over the past decade tell a sobering story.

Most companies going public in recent years have failed to sustain their debut-day momentum. Many are trading well below their offer price. And for consumer-facing fintechs in particular, public market scrutiny often shines a light on business model challenges that were easier to overlook in private.

Chime is no exception.

Yes, it built a strong brand and reached tens of millions of users. But growth is capped. Its model — centered around low-balance, debit-preferred customers — faces structural limitations. As users graduate financially, they tend to move on. And while it can still win share in its core demographic, competition from Cash App, Zelle, and newer entrants is increasing. (Sidenote: check out another excellent newsletter, Payments in Full, for a detailed analysis on Chime).

Meanwhile, Chime’s marketing-heavy approach continues to eat into margins. Its core revenue stream — exempt interchange fees — is under threat from potential regulatory changes and routing competition. If users shift toward credit cards, the company risks losing up to 85% of revenue per account, even if it retains the underlying deposit relationship.

Chime’s diversification options are also limited. In the higher-balance segment, checking is free and credit cards are standard. In lending, better-positioned players already dominate — whether it is buy now, pay later (BNPL) or earned wage access (EWA). The result? A consumer fintech platform with massive brand equity, but diminishing structural advantages.

Chime may go public. It may even trade well for a while. But it will not save fintech. And that is perfectly fine — as long as you know where the real value is created.

So what does this all mean for the future?