We see the disruption in almost every traditional product offering of bank. We currently monitor 480 FinTech startups in Europe. Most of them focus on one category only. Others compete against banks – and against each other – in two or three categories.


Click here if you want to go directly to the graph.

To better understand the industry, we started mapping it. First we had lists. We soon realized that having a single dimensional list did not do justice. Our portfolio company number26.de for example does personal finance management within its retail bank account. And offers the functionality to send money easily from peer to peer. Hence it competes directly with peer to peer wallets. And with other personal finance management startups. Lists were difficult to maintain.



I then started to build mind maps. However, the end nodes of mind maps also only arch back to one category. So we had to duplicate startups and hook them to category nodes. Not very sexy.

Finally, I started to develop a view that I believe does justice to this multidimensional industry: a self sorting graph. Startups are hooked to the main categories they operate in. This allows to understand one category within FinTech, but also which startup competes with who.



The map is based on sigma.js (read this for more on this great JavaScript framework) and Force Atlas 2 (read this for the math behind it) – a graph layout algorithm on top of a JSON export fed by a MySQL database – I believe to now have found a great way of displaying the connection between the multiple startups within the European FinTech Industry.

Feel free to play around with it – please add startups that we missed – and give feedback to “schmincke at earlybird dot com”.