Clearbanc

Attack incumbents through a small, neglected, fast-growing customer segment

Shaan's entry-point playbook: go after a customer segment that's small but growing and misunderstood by incumbents (creators, immigrants, crypto/e-commerce companies). Brex did it for funded startups, ClearBanc lent against Facebook Ads data for e-commerce. The market looks small at the start but becomes huge.

“It's like what you guys did, what Brex did is you go to a customer segment that is small but growing and is completely neglected or misunderstood. By the incumbents, and it's really not even worth their time to like make it a big priority to go understand this segment.”

Steal thisPick an underserved, fast-growing niche the incumbents won't bother understanding, then build the financial or software infrastructure they're missing.