503. The Future of Fintech, If VC Growth Has Become a New Asset Class, and the Case For and Against Vertical Integration in the AI Age (Eric Byunn)

What It Covers

Eric Byunn, cofounder of Centana Growth, discusses fintech as a permanent innovation category rather than a cyclical trend, the case for vertical integration versus focused wedge strategies in AI-era startups, and why growth-stage investors should treat due diligence as a value creation tool rather than purely a risk filter.

Key Questions Answered

• •Fintech as evergreen asset: Rather than asking what inning fintech is in, Byunn frames financial services as a permanent innovation category — the largest or second-largest sector by revenue and market cap. Subsegments like lending, challenger banks, and crypto each cycle through hype, but the underlying innovation stream never stops, making sector-specialist investors structurally advantaged over generalists.
• •Diligence as value creation: Centana closes every diligence process with a formal management session sharing observations before signing. This serves two purposes: capturing collective learning from the data review and establishing explicit alignment on post-investment priorities. Misalignment on focus areas is cited as the root cause of most investor-management conflicts that produce bad outcomes.
• •Monopoly framework overindexed: Conventional VC doctrine overweights winner-take-all market structures. Empirically, many successful exits come from markets with three or more meaningful winners. Backing companies without requiring a monopoly path allows investors to stay committed through pivots and competitive shifts, which founders value and which improves long-term alignment between investor and management team.
• •Vertical integration is context-dependent: The bundling versus unbundling decision should be made value-chain by value-chain, not as a universal rule. Financial services has unusually complex, regulation-shaped industry structures where incentives vary dramatically by segment. Certified, a Centana portfolio company, bundles technology, remediation, and embedded insurance into one identity solution — a structure that only makes sense for specific verticals.
• •Responsiveness as competitive differentiation: In a market where founders routinely get ghosted by investors, consistent responsiveness — even a brief decline — builds reputation and deal flow. Byunn treats prompt replies as a professional standard, not a courtesy. Given that capital is increasingly commoditized, relationship quality and communication behavior become measurable differentiators in winning competitive growth-stage deals.