Fintech's fever can't make up its mind

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked: After a multi-year fundraising boom, what is the current health of the fintech startup market?

The episode was inspired by a rigamarole of news, including but not limited to Klarna's potential valuation haircut, Apple's BNPL announcement, Brex's partial market retreat and Wealthsimple's staffing cuts.

The other reason that we're chatting fintech is that after attracting a simply huge chunk of venture capital in the last few years has gone into the sector. And that means that so very many startups are in play when we discuss the fintech niche. This is not just a few unicorns, and decacorns, but a flat-out fleet of companies that are now stuck waiting for the venture capital market to reignite.

With Affirm and Klarna showing just how far prices for fintech revenues have fallen, what's ahead? How worried should founders be? We dug into all that and more!

Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.