How we Failed Again, but You Won. A Startup Story Pivoting to a Free FinTech Wikipedia

We are notoriously open about our agency's failures. Being a startup and boutique fintech consultancy firm, we surely have a lot of those:

• First, we could not acquire a contract with the local banks while being established in Georgia. We had to establish an entity in UAE to win a proper payment partnership.
• We were sure that launching an e-commerce store would not require an IT guy. Now, we are happily bound by our relationship with an IT guy, probably forever.
• When we launched the sales of our country's deep-dive profiles, we expected a lot more demand than we got. Now it is time to recognize that it did not work as we thought it would.

What we’ve found and why pivoting

Our target audience is small and HIGHLY specific, consisting of professionals in fintech and related digital industries. Instead of buying reports, they are bringing new exciting projects and custom research orders to our table because we seem to know our stuff. The only type of reports in hot demand right now are industry-specific.

This led us to understand that our gain is not the hard cash per report; it is the lead generation that our free country’s fintech profile reports are creating. Thanks to our country profiling work, we are blessed with the greatest clients and exciting research and consulting projects.

The FinTech Wikipedia

Without further ado, we decided to open up all the fintech profile deep-dive reports presented on the website previously for sale. While updating the data across these papers and formatting every country profile, we came up with the idea of building the first-ever absolutely free FinTech Wikipedia—a global database divided into regions and countries and available in three languages: English, Spanish, and French.

🔎 Hint for desktop browsing lovers: every click across this map leads to an open and detailed country profile!

Now, there are 31 free country reports online:

🌄 Africa

▪️ Algeria

▪️ Kenya

▪️ Nigeria

▪️ South Africa

🕌 Middle East

▪️ Iran ▪️ Saudi Arabia ▪️ Turkey ▪️ UAE

🚌 Asia&Pacific

▪️ Australia ▪️ China ▪️ India ▪️ Indonesia ▪️ Japan ▪️ Mongolia ▪️ Thailand

🦙 Americas

▪️ Argentina ▪️ Brazil ▪️ Canada ▪️ Colombia ▪️ Mexico ▪️ Peru ▪️ USA

🏰 Western Europe

▪️ Germany ▪️ Italy ▪️ Portugal ▪️ Spain ▪️ Sweden ▪️ UK

🌅 Eastern Europe & Middle Asia

▪️ Kazakhstan ▪️ Russia ▪️ Serbia

Enjoy reading the latest trends and insights. Feel free to share it with your peers and colleagues. Send your feedback to the WTM team. Keep pushing the boundaries of financial knowledge!

‘What the Money?’ is a fintech consultancy bureau that advises on doing business across the globe and talks about digital innovations, payment landscapes, and e-commerce. WTM releases news digests and analytics, country reports, and op-eds on hot topics in digital industries. Find available reports on the website. Follow WTM socials to learn more fintech insights and news: official blog, LinkedIn community, and Telegram channel.