Nearly two decades ago, I watched a wonky, distrusted industry get forced into the mainstream overnight — and spent the next decade translating it for reporters, regulators, and confused, anxious consumers. That industry was fintech, and the moment was the 2008 financial crisis. Today, I'm watching it happen again in energy: aging infrastructure, extreme weather, electrification, and AI's insatiable appetite for power have turned a niche, technical category into a daily headline, and the same skills — translation, empathy, patience with complexity — are just as essential now as they were then. Here's what that parallel looks like up close, and what it means for anyone doing comms in a sector under sudden, enormous pressure.
The Mint.com Story
In summer 2007, a trusted investor flagged an opportunity with his latest bet, a fledgling personal finance startup that was hoping to take on Quicken and would launch weeks later at the first TechCrunch (then) 40. It was the early days of Web 2.0, a longstanding term Tim O’Reilly had recently popularized, and it was driving a massive surge of investment activity, and thus projects for my firm at the time (RIP Atomic).
We almost passed on the opp, but as a debt-laden 20-something, I was super into thinking about how new technology could make a burdensome should-do palatable, and it kicked off decades-long expertise (from a starting point of general financial illiteracy).
Mint.com (also RIP) won the $50,000 top prize at that inaugural TechCrunch40, and soon after we were in NYC doing a series of desksides (third RIP?) with reporters from Fast Company to Money Magazine to InStyle Weddings and more. The tech was beautiful, the founder brilliant. But our big comms unlock was telling stories about people’s emotional ties to money, what they were hoping to do with it, and eventually what we could see in user behavior. Getting out of debt. Saving for a wedding. Shopping at the holidays.
None of that was luck. Mint's own growth lead later credited our team with deliberately steering coverage toward mainstream outlets like Walt Mossberg, Good Morning America, and The New York Times over the Web 2.0 press pack, on the theory that the people who actually needed a budgeting tool weren't reading TechCrunch.
When Fintech Became Front-Page News
It was a dream client, and forced a rapid and deep immersion into micro and macroeconomics, from the regulatory landscape to the various institutions and products on the market and everything in between. Who knew I’d one day talk fiat currency at a party? When Lehman crashed almost exactly one year after Mint’s debut, kicking off the ‘08 global financial crisis and sinking the country into The Great Recession, we’d already established an accessible, consumer-friendly expert for a new generation of reporters suddenly charged with helping millions navigate an unprecedented time. Fintech became a popular category, and we were at the debut gatherings of now-massive annual events, like the first Finovate when it was just a bunch of banking nerds in a hotel ballroom. Wild.
By the time Intuit bought Mint, PR Week was already naming names: it reported the team from my former agency would stay in place; CMO Donna Wells put it more bluntly i her own retrospective on Mint's marketing: the earned media was a deliberate growth driver, credited in her words to an "an awesome PR partner (Martha Shaughnessy now of The Ke PR)", alongside her team's work on Digg. It's a case study that's outlived its own news cycle - a decade-plus later, growth writers like Neil Patel point to that PR work as the channel that actually moved users. In an era of AEO/GEO, strategic communications is again a power play!
Energy Is Having Its Fintech Moment
Why, dear reader, am I waxing poetic about this time long since passed?
Because it struck me recently how similar our current work in energy is at The Key. We started working with Renew Home early in its life as an independent company dedicated to bridging the gaps among grid reliability, consumer affordability and emissions commitments in an American energy landscape that was facing massive strain from what we’ve lovingly named The Four Horseman of the Energy Apocalypse (™): aging infrastructure, an increase in extreme climate events, electrification trends, and the one that has suddenly brought the world’s brightest spotlight: AI and the energy-thirst of the data centers that make it possible.
Like fintech back in the day, energy has gone from niche and wonky to a daily topic of conversation with a huge amount of emotion and fear tied to it. Reporters are having to learn a highly complex landscape very quickly. The stakes are enormous. There are complex regulatory structures and a challenging tension between institution and individual. In an SAT test, one might say Bank is to Borrower as Utility is to Energy Consumer. There is pain and grievance in both pairings, but they are also marketplace businesses that require a nuanced and layered understanding to communicate well.
What the Parallel Demands of Practitioners
Some key elements practitioners in this space should consider that help deepen the parallel:
- Both have consumer and regulatory skepticism toward new, tech-driven products.
- Both require thoughtful translation, turning complexity into plain language people trust.
- Both require deep empathy, especially for people outside The Valley (writ large) and unfamiliar with the industry terminology.
- Both will benefit dramatically from innovation, and the decisions made today (as those made in ‘08 and the years following) will impact people for generations.
The Stakes — and the Opportunity
And perhaps most exciting? It’s essential. Truly. The status quo had broken in 2008, and people needed new knowledge and new tools. The regulatory landscape shifted. Institutions failed, and others were born. Some of our fintech clients that followed in that time have stadiums named after them now. Would I have bet in our first meeting at SoFi’s Presidio office that I’d one day watch World Cup games in their sponsored stadium with my pre-teen kids? Or become a season ticket holder for a professional women’s soccer team that plays home games at PayPal Arena?
No. But past me would be stoked on all fronts (also shoutout Rakuten, another former client with a dope sports connection that doesn’t fit this particular story).
In fintech, what started with a consumer-facing personal financial product turned into deep reporter relationships, work at every level of the category from banking infrastructure to mobile apps, across B2B and consumer programs, from seed-stage disruptors to public companies. We still work in and love the sector and now are thinking about the rails that’ll safely shepherd the industry into the agentic AI era, as well as what a next generation of consumer products needs to deliver as the OG adopters of digital finance age into the sandwich generation and retirement.
In energy, we’re in early days, but it’s clear the seeds are being planted for similarly massive change. Working on what matters is crucial for engagement as a comms professional, and getting to choose the kinds of companies I work with is part of why I built The Key in the first place.
Choosing the Good Fight
At an event Aaron Zamost recently hosted for comms folks and journalists about the early days of Recode, many of us lamented the shift of tech being the scrappy Davids of an emerging story to the gluttonous Goliath of today.
But with a portfolio of earlier-stage companies looking to turn VC dollars and technical know-how into positive impact across a number of industries, we at The Key stand firmly in the camp of pushing the good into an overall negative narrative, and hope more column inches and energy are dedicated to this side of things, even as the must-cover madness continues to surge.
If you’re in tech comms, what’s keeping you passionate about the work we do?
Martha Shaughnessy
Founder, The Key PR
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marthashaughnessy
