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It’s 2025 and it’s still called Money2020. The chatter of the event….
Money 20/20 was a packed house in Las Vegas. From the Venetian to Encore the halls were full of those with badges and the 10x of additional attendees in/around the event attending the 100s of private events and hosting 1v1 meetings.
My takeaways:
Agentic Commerce- everyone is interested. The corporate VC’s are investing in and around agentic commerce and the news of $PYPL ( ▼ 2.52% ) being an agentic wallet with OpenAI was a big first move.
Wealth management is interesting to everyone from VC to Corp Dev teams. Acquisitions to partnerships, many are trying to wrap their head around how to do more in and around the wealth management industry.
Valuations are all over the map. SF is paying out the nose for startups. Sub $10m seed rounds which is common for Social Leverage is foreign to SF based investors. Corporate VC teams are recalibrating their expectations as they invest in valuations that are all over the place. “If AI is the pitch, the valuation goes up.”
Stable coins- everyone wants a strategy and allocation in their portfolio.
Tokenization is the future. Good for Social Leverage portfolio company Alpaca.markets which is the market leader.
Nobody can navigate Las Vegas inside hotels. The need for better maps or an app dedicated to in hotel directions would be huge win for everyone.
Series A expectations continue to vary. Minimum $5m in revenue seems to be pretty standard for prominent VCs.
The fundraising environment is tough for fund managers.
48hrs in Vegas is enough for everyone.
Foot and back massage booths or private parties would be a big win for a sponsor next year!
