Fintech startups have set out to revolutionize the financial world. However, little is known about how successful and innovative these firms actually are. In this paper, we investigate firm failure, funding success, and innovation capacity using a hand-collected dataset of 892 German fintechs founded between 2000 and 2021, which includes detailed founder and company information. We find that founders with a business degree and entrepreneurial experience have a better chance of obtaining funding, while founder teams with science, technology, engineering, or mathematics backgrounds file more patents. Early third-party endorsements and foreign partnerships substantially increases firm survival. Moreover, we obtain the following stylized facts: Fintechs focusing on business- to-business models and which position themselves as technical providers have proven more effective. Fintechs competing in segments traditionally attributed to banks are generally less successful and less innovative. These results have important implications for the early-stage success management of fintech firms, investment decisions of venture capital funds, and government startup programs.