Who didn’t love The Flintstones, a bunch of cavepeople (or to be politically correct, “Prehistoric Americans”) possessing the ability to recreate modern appliances using Stone Age technology?
Fred’s car ran on foot-powered motor. Wilma used a baby woolly mammoth to vacuum the floor. A bird’s beak played groovy 60s records.
Animal-operated technology helped The Flintstones become one of the most beloved cartoons of all time.
Unfortunately, primordial technology is not so entertaining when you discover it is being employed by a tech startup that you either invested in or hired to build your company’s infrastructure.
I recently became aware of one such “FlintTech” horror story. It began with a FinTech poser selling white label crowdfunding solutions. Let’s call them “Company A”. Company A was contracted by Company B to build a platform that would facilitate online capital raises. Company C decides to list its offering on Company B’s platform. As the fundraise gets underway and investors are ready to provide capital, both Company B and Company C realize that the system is unable to complete the transactions. As a result, the CEO of Company C must physically collect each and every investor’s check and manually deposit each one into his company’s bank account – much like the prehistoric bird sitting inside Fred Flintstone’s instant camera and carving pictures in stone with his beak.
While bringing hi-tech ingenuity to a non-tech world can lead to a lucrative cartoon franchise, offering non-tech solutions to a hi-tech world can end with insolvency.
With FinTech being one of today’s hottest investing sectors, be careful where you allocate your capital. And always try to have a yabba dabba doo time.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn Pulse
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