Modern Treasury, a payment operations platform founded in 2018, made a bet in its first year that most fintech startups would consider strange: it hired a technical writer before it hired a second salesperson. The company’s co-founders, both former bankers, had observed that the financial infrastructure they were building was so poorly understood by potential customers that sales conversations spent 80% of their time on education and 20% on the actual product. Rather than hire more salespeople to have more educational conversations, they invested in publishing detailed technical guides to payment operations: how ACH processing actually works, how bank ledger systems handle double-entry accounting, how real-time payment rails compare across countries. The guides became the most referenced payment infrastructure documentation on the internet. By 2023, Modern Treasury’s website was receiving 500,000 monthly visits, predominantly from the finance and engineering teams at companies that were exactly its target customer profile. The publishing investment did what hiring ten salespeople could not: it educated the market at scale.
The Strategic Calculation Behind Fintech Industry Publishing
When fintech companies invest in industry publishing, they are making a calculation about the most efficient use of marketing capital. The calculation weighs three factors: the cost of educating each potential customer individually (through sales conversations, demos, and meetings) versus the cost of educating the market collectively (through published content that scales without marginal cost); the value of credibility that accumulates from consistent publication versus the transient visibility of advertising; and the compounding returns from an archive of published expertise versus the linear returns of campaign-based marketing.
The Content Marketing Institute’s 2025 B2B research found that 46% of B2B companies expect to increase their content marketing budgets. This investment growth reflects a market-wide recognition that the calculation favours publishing, particularly for companies selling complex products to sophisticated buyers. In fintech, where products are complex by definition and buyers are among the most analytically rigorous in any sector, the calculation is even more favourable.
The Boston Consulting Group projects fintech revenues will reach $1.5 trillion by 2030, with embedded finance and digital lending accounting for the largest share of projected growth.
According to CB Insights’ 2024 fintech report, global fintech funding declined 40 percent between 2022 and 2024, pushing the sector toward consolidation and a sharper focus on profitability over growth at all costs.
But budget allocation alone does not explain why fintech companies invest in industry publishing. The deeper reason is competitive positioning. A fintech company that has published 200 articles on payment infrastructure over three years has built a moat of institutional knowledge and audience trust that a new competitor cannot replicate by simply increasing its advertising spend. The publication archive is a durable asset. It appreciates over time as the archive grows and the company’s search authority and citation network expand.
Five Investment Models for Fintech Industry Publishing
Fintech companies approach industry publishing through five distinct investment models, each with different cost structures, team requirements, and expected returns.
The first model is the research lab. Companies like Plaid and a16z operate what are effectively in-house research operations that produce quarterly or annual reports based on proprietary data. The investment includes dedicated analysts ($120,000 to $200,000 per analyst annually), data infrastructure for analysis, editorial and design support, and distribution. Total annual investment: $300,000 to $1 million. The return is market category leadership and the ability to define how the industry understands itself.
The second model is the executive publishing platform. Companies invest in enabling their executives to publish regularly through ghostwriting support, editorial infrastructure, and distribution networks. The investment includes a writer or agency ($3,000 to $8,000 per article), executive time (two to four hours per piece), and distribution support. Total annual investment for a programme producing two to four executive bylines per month: $100,000 to $300,000. The return is personal brand building for executives that translates into faster fundraising, easier partnerships, and talent attraction.
The third model is the technical documentation hub. Companies like Stripe and Modern Treasury invest heavily in comprehensive technical documentation that doubles as a publishing platform. The investment includes technical writers ($100,000 to $150,000 annually per writer), documentation infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance. Total annual investment: $200,000 to $500,000. The return is developer adoption, reduced support costs, and a search presence that drives product-led growth.
The fourth model is the industry commentary operation. Companies invest in rapid-response commentary on industry developments, publishing analyses of regulatory changes, competitive moves, and market data within days of their occurrence. The investment includes a writer or editor with financial services expertise ($100,000 to $150,000 annually), a monitoring system, and distribution relationships. Total annual investment: $150,000 to $300,000. The return is media relationships (journalists cite the company as a source) and audience engagement that keeps the company top-of-mind.
The fifth model is the community publication. Some fintech companies invest in building publications that serve their broader community rather than promoting the company directly. Wealthsimple’s magazine and Brex’s startup finance guides are examples. The investment includes editors, writers, designers, and distribution, and typically runs $200,000 to $500,000 annually. The return is brand affinity that transcends the product and creates customer loyalty rooted in the value of the content itself.
Why the Return on Publishing Increases Over Time
Unlike advertising, where each dollar produces a roughly fixed return, publishing investment produces increasing returns over time. Four compounding effects drive this acceleration.
The first effect is search authority accumulation. Each new article adds to the company’s domain authority in search engines. Over time, the company ranks for more keywords, attracts more organic traffic, and captures more of the audience’s attention without additional spending. According to DemandSage’s 2025 content marketing data, content marketing generates three times more leads than outbound marketing at 62% lower cost. The cost advantage widens as the search authority grows, because each new piece of content benefits from the authority accumulated by all previous pieces.
The second effect is citation network expansion. Published analyses get cited by other publications, analysts, and industry participants. Each citation introduces the company to a new audience and reinforces its authority. The citation network grows with each new publication, and older publications continue generating citations long after their initial release.
The third effect is audience compounding. Each piece of content attracts new readers, some of whom become regular followers. The audience grows with each publication, which means each subsequent piece reaches more people than the last. This audience compounding effect means that the hundredth article the company publishes reaches a significantly larger audience than the first, even if the distribution effort is identical.
The fourth effect is institutional knowledge accumulation. The process of producing industry publishing forces the company to develop deep expertise in its market. The analysts who research the reports, the executives who contribute insights, and the editors who fact-check the claims all develop market knowledge that improves every other aspect of the company’s operations, from product development to sales to partnership negotiations.
When Publishing Investment Pays Off
The timeline for publishing investment returns varies by investment model, but the general pattern is consistent: minimal returns in the first six months, visible but modest returns between six and eighteen months, and accelerating returns after eighteen months as the compounding effects take hold.
This timeline creates a selection effect. Companies with patient capital and long-term orientation make the publishing investment and benefit from the compounding. Companies with short-term orientation see the slow initial returns, conclude that publishing does not work, and redirect budget to advertising. Over time, this selection effect widens the gap between companies that have built publication moats and those that have not.
The CMI data showing that only 29% of companies rate their content strategy as highly effective is partly a reflection of this timeline mismatch. Many of the 71% who rate their strategy as less effective may simply not have invested long enough for the compounding to begin. The fintech companies that understand this timeline, and that commit to the investment through the slow initial period, build competitive advantages that accelerate over time.
Modern Treasury’s decision to hire a technical writer before a second salesperson looked unusual in 2018. By 2023, the company’s published content was generating more pipeline than its sales team could process. The early investment in publishing, which produced no measurable returns in its first six months, had compounded into the company’s most productive growth channel. That is the pattern that fintech companies investing in industry publishing are betting on: slow initial returns followed by acceleration that no other marketing channel can match. The companies that understand the compounding dynamics and invest accordingly are building advantages that will define their competitive positions for years.
