The Free Toaster

Marketers sometimes like to enter new channels gradually, conservatively even. This works in many channels like paid search, social, and direct mail. 

But for fintechs, entering new affiliate channels like this can have catastrophic consequences. 

In today's Podcast, I share why entering into new affiliate marketplaces "cautiously" can be dangerous for new entrants. As an alternative, I'll walk you through how to play the game in reverse.

Note: If you want to hear more about this in future Podcasts, email me at [email protected] with your questions.

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A word from our sponsor, Spinwheel:

Reduce friction in your lending application with just two fields—phone number and birthdate. Spinwheel’s APIs boost application rates by 20-30% while also providing real-time credit data and seamless payment processing. Want to see it in action? Connect with their Head of Growth for a demo!

https://spinwheel.io/partner/?utm_source=freetoaster&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=apr

A word from our sponsor, New Market Growth:

New Market Growth helps fintech consumer lenders generate explosive growth on affiliate marketing channels like Credit Karma, Experian Marketplace, LendingTree, and others.

Subscribe to the Free Toaster Newsletter:

We chat with Colin about how AI is changing marketplaces.

His thesis: “The rise of agentic AI will transform marketplaces from passive aggregators to active facilitators of transactions.”

To learn more, check out Colin’s take on how AI will revolutionize marketplaces:

About Colin Gardiner

Former economics/statistical researcher that now loves building sticky consumer facing products via iterative data-driven methods. Built products for both large corporations and seed level startups, always with a primary focus on acquisition, conversion and monetization.

*****

A word from our sponsor, Spinwheel:

Reduce friction in your lending application with just two fields—phone number and birthdate. Spinwheel’s APIs boost application rates by 20-30% while also providing real-time credit data and seamless payment processing. Want to see it in action? Connect with their Head of Growth for a demo!

https://spinwheel.io/partner/?utm_source=freetoaster&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=apr

A word from our sponsor, New Market Growth:

New Market Growth helps fintech consumer lenders generate explosive growth on affiliate marketing channels like Credit Karma, Experian Marketplace, LendingTree, and others.

Subscribe to the Free Toaster Newsletter:

We sit with credit card expert Jason Steele about what's happening behind the scenes in the industry. Jason shares how he went from tech work to becoming a respected credit card authority who writes for major publications and runs CardCon, the credit card industry conference.

We discuss:

Also:

And remember:

Jason conference — CardCon — happens May 6-8 in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Use code "TOASTER" for $50 off registration at cardconexpo.com.

Where to find Jason:

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-steele/

*****

A word from our sponsor, Spinwheel:

Reduce friction in your lending application with just two fields—phone number and birthdate. Spinwheel’s APIs boost application rates by 20-30% while also providing real-time credit data and seamless payment processing. Want to see it in action? Connect with their Head of Growth for a demo!

https://spinwheel.io/partner/?utm_source=freetoaster&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=apr

A word from our sponsor, New Market Growth:

New Market Growth helps fintech consumer lenders generate explosive growth on affiliate marketing channels like Credit Karma, Experian Marketplace, LendingTree, and others.

Subscribe to the Free Toaster Newsletter:

Want to chat with Carlos Caro, our host? Find him at [email protected]

LendAPI lets you create application flows, credit decision engines, and complete lending products through simple drag-and-drop tools—all without hiring engineers or spending millions.

You can build and launch lending products quickly and efficiently, then use a working product to raise venture capital. Even non-financial businesses like boat dealerships are using it to replace clunky Excel-based applications.

Tim in unsually transparent as an early stage founder. He shared:

LendAPI connects with all three credit bureaus, loan servicing systems, and identity verification providers that you work with daily. Tim's vision is to become the "WordPress of lending"—making it easy for your clients to launch financial products without technical expertise.

Where to find Tim:

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothytli/

Substack (Tim’s build-in-public blog)

https://substack.com/@lendapi

LendAPI

A word from our sponsor, Spinwheel:

Reduce friction in your lending application with just two fields—phone number and birthdate. Spinwheel’s APIs boost application rates by 20-30% while also providing real-time credit data and seamless payment processing. Want to see it in action? Connect with their Head of Growth for a demo!

https://spinwheel.io/partner/?utm_source=freetoaster&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=mar

A word from our sponsor, New Market Growth:

New Market Growth helps fintech consumer lenders generate explosive growth on affiliate marketing channels like Credit Karma, Experian Marketplace, LendingTree, and others.

Subscribe to the Free Toaster Newsletter:

Want to chat with Carlos Caro, our host? Find him at [email protected]

In this episode, I catch up with my old Columbia PhD classmate Guru Sethupathy, founder of FairNow, an AI governance platform for financial services.

About AI Governance:

Why It Matters for FinTechs:

Explainability Benefits:

Resources:

A word from our sponsor, Spinwheel:

Reduce friction in your lending application with just two fields—phone number and birthdate. Spinwheel’s APIs boost application rates by 20-30% while also providing real-time credit data and seamless payment processing. Want to see it in action? Connect with their Head of Growth for a demo!

https://spinwheel.io/partner/?utm_source=freetoaster&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=mar

Subscribe to the Free Toaster Newsletter:

Want to chat with Carlos Caro, our host? Email him at [email protected]

In this episode, we speak with Greg Cox, CEO of Monevo, to discuss their recent acquisition by TransUnion and how they're transforming credit offer distribution.

Greg shares insights on how Monevo makes both lender and publisher relationships more efficient by improving approval rates, boosting monetization for publishers, and delivering better-qualified users to lenders - all while maintaining flexibility in commercial agreements that align with good outcomes for all parties.

A word from our sponsor, Spinwheel:

Reduce friction in your lending application with just two fields—phone number and birthdate. Spinwheel’s APIs boost application rates by 20-30% while also providing real-time credit data and seamless payment processing. Want to see it in action? Connect with their Head of Growth for a demo!

https://spinwheel.io/partner/?utm_source=freetoaster&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=mar

Subscribe to the Free Toaster Newsletter:

Want to chat with Carlos Caro, our host? Email him at [email protected]

Rich Walker is a 35-year industry vet who’s been responsible for over 10 billion pieces of Direct Mail.

Rich has led direct marketing teams at Capital One, the Winterberry Group, Deluxe Corporation, 2nd Order Solutions, and more recently, Aven.

He also ran his own consulting shop - Pilot Performance Marketing - focused on helping lenders solve Direct Mail.

So we jumped at the opportunity to get his take on how lenders can leverage Direct Mail to grow their customer acquisition programs.

We Discuss:

1️⃣ Why Direct Mail still matters

Reduce friction in your lending application with just two fields—phone number and birthdate. Spinwheel’s APIs boost application rates by 20-30% while also providing real-time credit data and seamless payment processing. Want to see it in action? Connect with their Head of Growth for a demo!

https://spinwheel.io/partner/?utm_source=freetoaster&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=feb

Subscribe to the Free Toaster Newsletter:

What is Congruence? Aligning messaging from your ad, to your landing page, to your final conversion steps creates lift in your marketing funnel, reducing your CACs and increasing your customer acquisition volumes. It sounds elementary. Yet many organizations forget to do it.

Today we dig into examples of marketing from Wells Fargo and Discover to illustrate what it means to be Congruent across your marketing funnel.

The visuals from our Newsletter will help:

A word from our sponsor, Spinwheel:

Streamline your lending application pages with 2-fields.

To see a demo, click below to chat with their Head of Growth.

https://spinwheel.io/partner/?utm_source=freetoaster&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=feb

Subscribe to the Free Toaster Newsletter:

www.thefreetoaster.com

We chat with Kevin Bennett, a successful entrepreneur who helped grow Caribou to a billion-dollar company. Now, he's back with Further, a platform focused on helping people afford their first homes. Kevin shares important lessons for early-stage founders and gives practical advice for growing a business.

We Discuss:

Product vs. Distribution: Kevin explains why both product development and getting your product to customers are equally important.

Experimenting with Marketing: Kevin talks about the need to test different marketing channels and how to do it quickly.

Evaluating Marketing Channels: Kevin shares a simple framework to decide if a marketing channel is worth investing in:

Does it resonate with your audience?

Can it scale as you grow?

Are the economics (costs and returns) good?

How stable is the channel or partnership?

Speed and Cycle Time: Kevin emphasizes the need to test ideas fast and make decisions quickly.

Strategic Partnerships: Kevin talks about the value of finding strong partners who can help your business grow.

Streamline your lending application pages with 2-fields.

If you’re anything like us, friction on application pages makes you nauseous.

It makes your CACs go up. It makes your volumes drop. It causes your CFO and CEO to say mean things.

The trouble is, application friction isn’t easy to fix. Your prod/eng is busy. We get it.

Spinwheel’s APIs streamline a lending application form with just a phone number and a birthdate - like magic (but it’s really just smart tech)! Then you get a 20-30% lift in your application rate.

Additionally, they can give you real-time, verified consumer credit data and seamless payment processing, which can help you serve customers beyond the initial application.

To see a demo, click below to connect with their Head of Growth and see this thing in action.

https://spinwheel.io/partner/?utm_source=freetoaster&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=jan

Subscribe to the Free Toaster Newsletter:

We sit with Tomas Campos, CEO at Spinwheel. Spinwheel’s product caught my attention because affiliate marketers could use their product to reduce the friction in their application processes. 

Timestamps:

Where to find Carlos:

Where to find Tomas:

Find Us:

Don't forget to subscribe and review our show. If you’re interested in being a guest, email me at [email protected].