Thanks for hanging in there with me while I was on vacation. Taking it (somewhat) easy on the MS front for a couple of weeks is funny in 2026 because it’s enough time for a phoenix play to come back… and effectively die again. 

This is a spiritual successor to this post, and it leans on some OG wisdom from my all time favorite MEAB post. 

These events got me thinking about how best to be efficient when probing new plays – and more importantly, new plays with longevity. 

There’s a lot of churning manpower spent on keeping the always be probing mantra alive. Between credit union fee schedules, fintech industry publications and crypto app charts, there’s a plethora of places for tracking down your next unicorn. 

Honestly, once you know what you’re looking for, it’s not that hard to start finding the kind of plays that easily add a nice bump to your bottom line.

Significantly more difficult is finding one that is both scalable enough to be meaningful, while also being tolerant enough to be more than a one time boost – most of us end up with one or the other.

There are many elements that play into the scalability and risk tolerance of any given target, but like many other things in life, it always comes back to money. Factors like which department the budget is tied to, the total assets under management, or the size of the venture capital war chest all play a part. 

Why? Because they determine what KPIs are being used to measure success, how big a loss is before it becomes a problem, and most importantly, who is actually footing the bill for all of these interchange fees. 

Adding this extra layer of evaluation will help you prioritize where to send that first deposit or test spend while improving your ability to do the napkin math on how long you have before someone there asks, “what exactly is your use case for this product?”

Pictured: Lion hearted MSer butterboy on his way to Harris Teeter

While not all of this info is available publicly, you’ll get better at inferring it over time. And anything related to AUM and funding is generally part of public filings, so that should be easy to find. It’s time to add Crunchbase as yet another place to query in your probing toolkit.

For example – if I was probing fintechs, I’d be happy to see a big funding round led by a name like Paradigm, Sequoia or a16z. Meanwhile, while probing credit unions, I’d be disheartened to see AUM much smaller than their competitors. 

The overall size of a target from a financial perspective is also useful for inferring the headcount of the company and the red tape that comes with it.

While this is far from a blanket statement, in general, large companies are required to move slower, need more approvals to take action, and are likely to have their data spread across disparate sources.  

This can be an advantage as an MSer, because it will take them longer to realize that MSers aren’t exactly profitable customers and even longer still to actually do something about it. 

Speaking as a cog in the machine at a large conglomerate – it takes overwhelming pressure for anything to actually change as a result of the insights generated by the doers. 

On the flip side of this, the agility and agency that smaller companies have can also be helpful to MSers, because new technologies and platforms that fit into your MS tool belt are more likely to be implemented quicker at smaller places. 

My major takeaway from this little tome is that there’s opportunity at every size and scale of target, but that there are other indicators outside of the obvious that you can use for your vetting to help you choose where to start first.

If it were me, I’d keep my eyes open for the low hanging fruit at archaic corporations (likely stable, but with a scalability cap) and at small startups (potentially valuable, but probably short-lived) while looking for unicorns that fit some additional criteria.

Targets somewhere in that shmedium-medium range that are forward-thinking enough to have intriguing functionality while also having the financial resources (and aggressive growth goals) associated with institutional backing would be my call for the first rock to check under.

Good luck on the hunt this week.

Sorakan!