Welcome to my new weekly fintech focused column. I have been publishing this every Sunday but on March 27, this column turns into a newsletter! So, if you want to have it hit your inbox directly starting then, sign up here.

2021 was a record year for venture capital fundraising, and fintechs were the largest recipients of funding worldwide, with about 21% of all venture dollars last year going into fintech startups.

We all knew – or at least some of us did, ahem – that this was likely not sustainable in the long term. Investors appeared to be backing some startups in part due to FOMO, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.

So as the first quarter draws to a close, it’s clear that while in no way have fundraises come to a screeching halt, investors are starting to pump the brakes. Generally, it appears we are experiencing a market pullback – which Alex touches on in this piece – precipitated by a number of things, not the least of which – the conflict in Ukraine and disappointing performances by companies who went public in the last year. And fintech, last year’s rising star of venture, is not immune.

My former colleague, Joanna Glasner, at Crunchbase News published a story on March 7 indicating that venture capitalists’ enthusiasm for fintech seems to be waning as of late. Her data point, according to Crunchbase data, was that in the two weeks leading up to her post, a total of 51 fintech companies across the globe collectively had raised $1.1 billion in seed through late-stage venture funding. That was down about 63% from the prior two-week period, during which 80 companies raised just shy of $3 billion.

Last year, it was truly a founders’ market, meaning that terms were more founder-friendly than ever. Many buzzy startups had their pick of investors and found themselves presented with multiple term sheets. In many cases, companies were raising money left and right at very early stages, with little more than a deck, idea and team established.