When Nubank filed its S-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in October 2021 ahead of its $41.5 billion IPO, the filing referenced the company’s published research on Latin American financial inclusion rates 14 times. Investment analysts at Sequoia Capital, which led Nubank’s Series G round, later confirmed that the company’s consistent publication of market data on unbanked populations in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia was a significant factor in their initial investment thesis. Nubank had spent years publishing proprietary data about the markets it operated in. By the time it sought public market investors, the company had already built the evidentiary foundation for its growth story.
What Investors Look For Before Writing a Check
Investor due diligence in fintech follows a predictable pattern. Before engaging in direct conversations with a company, investors conduct independent research. A 2024 survey by Preqin found that 78% of venture capital investors researched a company online before accepting a first meeting. Among growth-stage and late-stage investors, the figure was 91%.
What investors find during that research directly shapes their initial perception. Companies that have published substantive industry analysis present a body of evidence that investors can evaluate independently. Companies that have published only press releases and product announcements present a thinner profile that requires more direct investigation to assess.
The distinction matters because investor time is scarce. A typical Series B venture capital partner evaluates 200-400 potential investments per year and funds 4-8 of them. The faster an investor can build conviction about a company’s market understanding and domain expertise, the more likely the company is to progress through the evaluation funnel.
The Three Confidence Signals Published Insights Generate
Published industry insights build investor confidence through three distinct mechanisms, each addressing a different element of the investment decision.
| Confidence Signal | What It Demonstrates | Investor Concern It Addresses |
|---|---|---|
| Market understanding | The team knows the market structure, size, and dynamics | “Do they understand the opportunity?” |
| Domain expertise | The team has deep technical and operational knowledge | “Can they actually build this?” |
| Transparency and rigour | The team shares data openly and analyses it honestly | “Will they be honest with me as an investor?” |
Market understanding is the most immediate signal. When a fintech company publishes detailed analysis of the market it operates in, including specific data points on market size, growth rates, competitive dynamics, and regulatory environment, it demonstrates that the leadership team has done the analytical work required to build a successful company. Investors repeatedly cite market understanding as the single most important factor in early-stage investment decisions.
Domain expertise is demonstrated through the depth and accuracy of published analysis. An investor reading a company’s published breakdown of payment processing architecture or lending risk models can assess whether the team has the technical depth to execute on its product roadmap. This assessment, which might take multiple meetings to establish through conversation, can be formed in minutes through well-crafted published analysis.
Transparency and rigour may be the most valuable signal for long-term investor relationships. Investors back companies for 5-10 years. During that period, they need to trust that the management team will share accurate information about the company’s progress and challenges. A company that publishes data openly, including data that reveals market challenges alongside opportunities, signals a commitment to honest communication that investors find reassuring.
How Published Research Shapes Investment Theses
Investment theses in fintech are built on market data. When a fintech company publishes proprietary market data that validates an emerging opportunity, it does not just build confidence in the company. It helps investors build and defend the investment thesis they will present to their own investment committees.
Consider the embedded finance opportunity. When Plaid and Stripe published data in 2023 and 2024 showing that embedded financial services were growing at 3-4 times the rate of standalone financial products, those data points appeared in investment committee memos across dozens of venture capital firms. The published data gave investors a credible, citable basis for allocating capital to the embedded finance category. Companies operating in embedded finance benefited from investor enthusiasm that was partly built on competitors’ published research.
This dynamic means that published industry insights have value beyond the publishing company. They shape capital allocation across the entire sector. Fintech companies that publish data demonstrating the growth of their category attract not just direct investor interest in themselves, but increased capital flow to their entire sector, which benefits them through competitive validation and market momentum.
The Pre-Fundraise Publishing Strategy
Fintech companies that align their publishing strategy with their fundraising timeline consistently report faster closes and stronger terms. The approach is not about generating publicity around a funding announcement. It is about building the information environment that investors will encounter during their pre-meeting research.
The optimal timeline, based on analysis of successful fintech funding rounds between 2022 and 2025, follows a consistent pattern. Six to twelve months before a planned fundraise, the company increases its publishing frequency, focusing on market analysis that demonstrates the opportunity, technical deep-dives that demonstrate capability, and traction data that demonstrates execution.
By the time investor meetings begin, the company’s published body of work serves as a pre-qualification mechanism. Investors who have encountered the company’s analysis arrive at meetings with a baseline understanding of the market, the technology, and the team’s analytical capabilities. The meeting can focus on commercial terms and strategic alignment rather than on establishing basic credibility.
Rapyd, the payments infrastructure company, executed this strategy effectively ahead of its $300 million Series E round in 2024. In the nine months before the round, Rapyd published 18 pieces of analysis on cross-border payment infrastructure, regulatory fragmentation, and embedded finance adoption across emerging markets. When the round opened, multiple investors reported that they had already formed positive views of the company based on its published analysis.
Sustaining Investor Confidence Post-Investment
Published insights build investor confidence not only before an investment but throughout the investor-company relationship. Investors who see their portfolio companies publishing thoughtful industry analysis gain confidence that the management team remains engaged with market dynamics and is thinking strategically about the company’s positioning.
Andreessen Horowitz partner Angela Strange has noted publicly that she tracks the publishing activity of her portfolio companies’ leadership teams as one indicator of management quality. Companies whose founders stop publishing after raising a round sometimes signal a shift in focus from market leadership to operational management, which may be appropriate but is a data point that investors monitor.
The most investor-savvy fintech companies maintain their publishing cadence through all stages of company development. Nubank continued publishing market analysis on Latin American financial inclusion after its IPO, providing public market investors with the same type of proprietary data that had attracted its private market investors. The consistency of the publishing programme reinforced the investment thesis across multiple investor audiences.
Nubank’s S-1 did not cite external analysts to make the case for Latin American financial inclusion. It cited its own published research, research that investors had been reading and referencing for years before the IPO filing. That is the most complete expression of how published insights build investor confidence: when the evidence a company presents to public markets is the same evidence it has been sharing openly with the industry for years.
