The campaign for 2020 US presidential election has been kicked off with a bang. Re-emboldened democrats are pushing liberal themes, which have been an undercurrent in the ebullient startup scene for a long time. While it is too early to predict what political agenda is going to win, we could nevertheless identify items that will define the investment landscape for the next 5 years.
How fighting financial inequality, affordable housing, environmental protection, healthcare for all translate into long-term value for users and investors?
Financial inclusion has been the bread-and-butter of Fintech for a while, with various models scrambling to get better saving, planning, and investing practices to an under-privileged audience. Educating and nudging the masses to adopt sounder financial habits are at the core of these initiatives. This pre-supposes lowering the platform cost of traditional players in order to scale value-added services. To name but one, 9-30am is precisely doing that.
In housing, there are some components linked to supply-demand that are best controlled at the state level. What could be done at street-smart level is clearing away opacity, cutting intermediaries, simplifying the buy/sell process and facilitating funding channels. If buying is not for you, then the sharing economy has helped a lot, either swapping homes, or Airbnb-ing.
While the Green New Plan might be a soft utopia, lower carbon intensity, better waste management practices, electric cars and renewable energies are going to continue to rise in force. Myriads of projects and companies will have better opportunities to post profits.
Nobody can disagree that healthcare for all is a noble aspiration. It is notorious that the US healthcare system has the poorest return on investment – it invests the highest dollar amount per capita, and a significant portion of GDP for a life-expectancy that is average for a developed country. It is less known that the private sector spending is the main contributor to this poor performance. Long story short, the private nature of well-funded payers is pushing higher the prices of providers. The abundance of money rather than the lack thereof is the issue that creates massive wastes. Models that cut down red tape, facilitate adherence, limit intermediaries will help lowering down drug prices.
The political scene might change, but these value-creating initiatives have already started.