Former Inc. editor Ledbetter to launch fintech newsletter

Former Inc. editor in chief James Ledbetter is starting a newsletter focused on financial technology.

Ledbetter said he became interested in fintech when he was editing Inc. ” We ran a few smart features on it, and I began to sense that this could be transformational (not in exclusively positive ways, of course),” he said in an email. “Since then the sector has only continued to explode; by some estimates the market size will triple in the next five years. Also, it’s a truly global phenomenon, which is not always the case with some of the industries that Silicon Valley funds.”

He has left Sequoia Capital, which he joined in November 2019 as head of content, to start the new venture.

“As with the early days of dot-com, I have a sense that the mainstream business press doesn’t quite grasp what makes the sector so powerful, at least not to the point of rearranging beat reporters,” he said. “So I see an opportunity to weigh in with FIN, and Substack makes publishing a newsletter about as easy as can be. I’ve already signed up hundreds of readers before publishing, which is encouraging.”

He joined Inc. in February 2014. Before that, he was with Reuters as opinions editor.

Ledbetter has previously been deputy managing editor of CNNMoney.com and Fortune.com. He was the founding editor of Slate’s financial site The Big Money and has published six books, most recently One Nation Under Gold.

The newsletter can be found here.