More About Alex
Alex Rampell is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz where he focuses on financial services. He serves on the boards of Branch, Brightside, Capitolis, Descript, Divvy Homes, Earnin, Flock Homes, FlyHomes, Loft, Point, Propel, Sentilink, Super Evil Megacorp, and VGS, and Wise (WISE:LSE).
Alex additionally led the firm’s investments in OpenDoor ($OPEN), Plaid, Quantopian (acquired by Robinhood), and Rival (acquired by LiveNation).
Prior to joining the firm, Alex co-founded multiple companies including Affirm ($AFRM), which he co-founded with Max Levchin, FraudEliminator (acquired by McAfee in 2006), Point, TrialPay (acquired by Visa in 2015), TXN (acquired by Envestnest in 2019), and Yub (acquired by Coupons.com in 2013).
He holds a BA in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from Harvard University.
Latest Content
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There’s likely a whole category of non-AI companies and products that can FINALLY exist *because of the productivity gains of AI.*
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The process of moving money between countries is complicated and costly. Here's how foreign exchange works and what happens when you send money abroad.
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Generative AI is likely going to usher in a far more profound method of company transformation.
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The emergence of generative AI could yield the largest transformation the financial services market has seen in decades.
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Visa and Mastercard currently facilitate more than three-quarters of all credit card transactions in the United States, at a time when post-pandemic Americans are now using credit or debit cards for roughly 57% of all tr...
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Cyber incidents have reached a crisis level over the past decade. In 2021, the U.S. saw 1,862 data compromises, affecting nearly 300 million people (a nearly 100% increase from five years ago). Cybersecurity practitioner...
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As we first shared in 2019, everything is relative — especially home prices in the Bay Area. These prices have continued to rise on an absolute basis over the last 12 years; the typical home in Palo Alto, for example, ro...
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Being a landlord sounds like a terrific thing, and it has been a powerful path to wealth creation for so many people for centuries. But there are two problems:
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Creator economy is a buzzy, often catchall term used to describe independent contractors. But in reality, most of the innovation has revolved around passion-project content (Substack for writing, Teachable for courses, e...
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In the August fintech newsletter from a16z: Why every company may spin out a fintech company, what goes into an index, and the case for credit unions
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I’m excited to announce our investment in SentiLink — having led their Series A, we’re now doubling down on their Series B alongside Craft Ventures.
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Plus, will neobanks be winner take many? How to choose the right partner bank? News and analysis from the a16z fintech team in our monthly newsletter.
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On behalf of the entire a16z team, I am thrilled to welcome David Haber as our newest general partner. I am equally thrilled to say he will be based in New York City, our first full-time GP in Manhattan. As software cont...
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This first appeared in the monthly a16z fintech newsletter. Subscribe to stay on top of the latest fintech news.
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Capitolis makes banks, and more importantly, their balance sheets, more efficient—yielding higher Return on Equity (ROE), which is the #1 KPI for most financial services companies. Banks are heavily regulated, more so in...
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This first appeared in the monthly a16z fintech newsletter. Subscribe to stay on top of the latest fintech news.
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In the wake of the GameStop short squeeze, payment for order flow—the practice of market makers paying brokers to execute customer orders—has fueled no small amount of debate: Is it a tactic deployed by large capital mar...
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This first appeared in the monthly a16z fintech newsletter. Subscribe to stay on top of the latest fintech news.
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The internet has many legacies, but its greatest one is disintermediation. And the greatest disintermediation—of the banking system—is coming soon to an app near you.
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This year, as “every company becomes a fintech company,” fintech surged into mainstream consciousness. The fallout from COVID-19 crippled the economy, depressed small businesses, and scrambled many people’s financial out...
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Democratizing investing, embracing social+, embedding insurance, revamping distribution, empowering community, and disintermediating the banking system.
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Special omnibus episode combining two previous episodes on the a16z Podcast network, discussing the relevance, considerations, and problems/ solutios of the Paycheck Protection Program (or PPP) from the Small Business Administration (and the role of government stimulus/ pandemic relief for the economy) and where tech comes in.
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What’s really behind the IPO pop? TL;DR: it’s Economics 101. The laws of supply and demand, and marginal pricing, withstand the test of time.
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COVID is changing many things about the world. Some will be permanent, some will be temporary, but for most things, we simply don’t know yet. A decision framework I’ve been using when evaluating investments in companies...
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This episode examines the potential for misuse and fraud among those applying for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)—and how fintech and software provide overlooked tools to stop it. Host Lauren Murrow is joined by Bharat Ramamurti, the original member of the COVID-19 Congressional Oversight Commission, which is tasked with evaluating the impact of coronavirus relief loans; Naftali Harris, the CEO of SentiLink, a software company that builds technology to detect synthetic fraud; and a16z fintech general partner Alex Rampell.
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Recent news, commentary, and analysis from the a16z fintech team.
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How pricing works, how post-IPO activity is influenced by the 4 types of stock market investors, and how we can improve the less-than-ideal price discovery of IPOs.
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Recent news and analysis from the a16z fintech team.
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This episode is the first in a two-part series that examines the pandemic’s impact on real estate. Part 1 focuses on prospective home buyers, sellers, and existing homeowners. Part 2 (streaming on 6/17) addresses renters and landlords. How has social distancing shaken up the market to buy? What’s the ripple effect of eviction freezes and a record number of homes in forbearance? And how can tech streamline the inefficient process of renting, buying, and selling a home?
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We are very excited to announce our Series A investment in Brightside, a company focused on financial health, distributed through employers. Not only does Brightside improve financial wellness and literacy—helping both e...
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Subscribe to the monthly a16z fintech newsletter for more fintech commentary, news, and analysis.
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The a16z fintech team on plummeting mortgage rates, policies for small business relief, why Apple is waiving credit card payments, and more.
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The U.S. Federal Reserve recently made a range of moves -- from cutting interest rates to near zero (which it also did in the 2008 financial crisis) and using other tools -- to support "the flow of credit to households and businesses, thereby promote its maximum employment and price stability goals" during this current pandemic and public health crisis. However... what does this mean for small businesses, which may be most impacted? What's the difference between monetary and fiscal policy here; where does rhetoric (such as around buybacks vs. dividends) confuse; how does adjudication and disbursement work... and where could technology come in? In this short-but-deep dive episode of 16 Minutes on the News, a16z general partner on fintech Alex Rampell -- who also covered quantitative easing and more on a previous episode -- breaks it all down in 18 minutes, with useful analogies, in conversation with Sonal Chokshi. How do we stop not just the novel coronavirus, but the economic virus, too?
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This episode of 16 Minutes on the news covers: 1) Google could bring Steam support to Chrome OS, according to an earlier unconfirmed report, and what that could mean for the broader gaming ecosystem, developers as well as devices -- with a16z general partner Andrew Chen and Jonathan Lai on the consumer team. 2) New York restaurants and retail establishments can no longer reject cash payments under legislation that was passed by the City Council there; what this says about the banking system more broadly, why it's a regressive tax on the poor and therefore a progressive move -- at 8:57 with a16z general partner Alex Rampell on the fintech team. 3) Updates on COVID-19 disease -- at 16:44 based on latest reports from WHO and CDC as of Friday March 6.
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This first appeared in the monthly a16z fintech newsletter. Subscribe here to stay on top of the latest fintech news.
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Neobanks compete with prime bundles; Visa to acquire Plaid; Shopify launches $200 loans; entering the "AWS era" for financial services, and more.
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In this 19th episode of our news show, where we cover recent headlines from our vantage point in tech, we cover the following news items: 1) Recent moves to regulate artificial intelligence (AI) software including the White House's recent guidance (and op-ed from the U.S. CTO) on AI in general, as well as limits to exports of specific AI software that went into effect this week -- with operating partner Frank Chen (whose talk was cited in an earlier White House report); 2) Recent activity on the topic of negative interest rates as well as quantitative easing, given recent remarks (and paper) from former chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke -- with general partner Alex Rampell, who covers all things fintech.
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We are excited to announce our investment in Loft, which in a little more than one year has gone from a PowerPoint presentation to one of the fastest growing real estate companies we’ve ever seen.
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Banking on the Future: Why our most hated institutions will become our most beloved
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Abating the housing crisis, streamlining the farm-to-table supply chain, automating financial busywork, and providing infrastructure for in-house payments.
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We are thrilled to be leading a new investment round in arguably the coolest-named company of all time, Super Evil Megacorp, a cross-platform, cloud-first gaming company. After Super Evil launched Vainglory and scaled it...
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Credit cards and payment cards are arguably the most valuable network in the world, with at least $1 trillion of publicly traded market cap. On September 18, 1958—61 years ago today—it all began in the little town of Fre...
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On behalf of the whole a16z team, I am thrilled to welcome Anish Acharya as our newest General Partner.
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Get this monthly update from the a16z FinTech Team: sign up here.
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Why on earth is the modern mortgage so damn complicated? In this short animated video, a16z General Partner Alex Rampell takes us through the history of the American mortgage, all the different processes and players that...
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In this episode of the a16z Podcast -- which originally aired as a video on YouTube -- general partner Alex Rampell (and former fintech entrepreneur as the CEO and co-founder of TrialPay) talks with operating partner Frank Chen about the quickly changing fintech landscape and, even more importantly, why the landscape is changing now.
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If you’ve lived in a country like the U.S. with a pretty stable currency, you probably think about how much things “cost” in seemingly absolute terms -- of the currency. Things getting more expensive or less expensive co...
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In the world of finance and financial technology, established companies are starting to look at the rearview mirror at fast-approaching startups, wondering just how true the phrase “objects in mirror are closer than they...
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a16z's Alex Rampell explains how as consumers get used to less friction in the age of mobile, software is finally beginning to disrupt buying a home.
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“You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I’m not hungry enough to eat six.” --Yogi Berra
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1/n Visa today has a $328B market cap, bigger than virtually every bank on earth (JPM at $384B is the only one bigger). And yet it started out as a non-profit owned BY banks. How did it become more valuable than its “par...
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Entrepreneurship and venture capital are both about the art of never giving up, while relentlessly adapting to conditions on the field.
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“Never answer an anonymous letter”
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Editor’s note: This article by now-a16z general partner Alex Rampell was originally published in 2012 in TechCrunch.
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“You can observe a lot just by watching.”