In in the present day’s episode, I’m joined by Adam Nash, CEO of Daffy, a not-for-profit group constructed across the easy thought that everybody ought to put one thing apart for these much less lucky than themselves. Should you’re excited by signing up for Daffy, you need to use this promo code to say $25 for a charity of your selection.
Adam and I cowl a variety of matters, together with:
Being a Prime Product Chief:
Adam is obsessed with product administration and product management. When he first began his profession, Adam observed that there was not loads of thought management round product administration and began running a blog about his experiences. As he grew to become extra skilled by way of his time at eBay and LinkedIn, he often shared his learnings. Adam has seen profitable product managers come from quite a lot of backgrounds — together with technical, design, and technique backgrounds — so long as the person takes accountability for the product. You possibly can hear Adam speak extra about being an important product chief right here.
Adam’s Work at Wealthfront:
Adam was an early buyer at Wealthfront, signing up just a few weeks after the primary product launch in 2011. Adam remembers speaking with Andy Rachleff concerning the firm’s progress early on, significantly concerning the significance of scaling AUM. Adam remembers worrying early on that prospects could also be gradual to belief computer systems to handle their cash — a far cry from the place the {industry} is now. Adam took over as President and CEO of Wealthfront in 2013.
Founding Daffy:
Whereas working at Greylock, Adam saved a listing of various monetary merchandise that had not been reinvented but, together with a donor-advised fund. Adam had a donor-advised fund of his personal on the time however realized that most individuals didn’t learn about this product. Primarily based on his time at Wealthfront, his time on the board of Acorns, and his time at Greylock, Adam began asking himself:
“What if those self same options, all that behavioral finance, all these intelligent ways in which we discovered how one can get individuals to belief software program with cash, what if as a substitute of simply serving to individuals to spend or serving to individuals to avoid wasting, what if we helped them to provide?”
That is precisely what Adam got down to do with Daffy.
Daffy’s Enterprise Mannequin:
Adam goals to make Daffy accessible to as many individuals as doable. He notes how different rivals require vital minimums to open donor-advised funds ($25K to open and 60 BPS in a single notable case). Daffy is free to open if investing below $100 and fees solely $3/month if investing over $100. Adam is a agency believer that the AUM mannequin is unhealthy for donor-advised funds and unhealthy for the {industry} general. By means of Daffy, Adam hopes to make giving a behavior. He believes that if he can automate giving, the {industry} would see an analogous transformation because the retirement financial savings house. Additional, he cites analysis displaying that giving will increase by 32% if there’s a degree of pre-commitment from the person.
Tendencies in Fintech:
Adam highlights the next three developments in fintech as ones he’s significantly excited to see play out:
- Target market: Early fintech corporations struggled to seek out customers that have been tech-forward sufficient to undertake their product. The pandemic modified this mindset and now fintech’s buyer base has elevated throughout all age teams.
- The usage of “multi-player” video games: Adam believes that we are going to see extra funding in monetary purposes that contain a number of individuals, together with the monetary issues of roommates and group financial savings merchandise.
- Distinctive monetary purposes: Adam believes that the following period of fintech purposes gained’t solely take present monetary merchandise on-line, however develop totally new merchandise that don’t exist proper now.
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Adam Nash:
Adam is a confirmed advocate for improvement of merchandise that transcend utility to thrill prospects. At Dropbox, he led the groups accountable for progress, product technique, product administration & product analytics for a platform with over 600 million registered customers with accountability for all of Dropbox self-service income (~90% of all firm income in 2019).
Earlier than Dropbox, Adam served because the President & CEO of Wealthfront, the place for 4 years he championed the creation of a brand new class of automated funding providers. Whereas Adam was at Wealthfront, the corporate grew its consumer base by over 60x, and grew property below administration 45x from lower than $100m to over $4 billion. Throughout his tenure, Wealthfront delivered industry-leading improvements together with Direct Indexing, the Single-Inventory Diversification Service, and the primary automated 529 Faculty Financial savings Plan.
Previous to becoming a member of Wealthfront, Adam was Vice President of Product Administration at LinkedIn. Adam led LinkedIn’s Platform & Cell merchandise, together with the launch of LinkedIn’s open developer platform and their extremely profitable native purposes and cellular internet experiences. Adam was the founder and architect of LinkedIn Hackdays, a seminal program for driving the innovation tradition on the firm. He additionally was accountable for main LinkedIn’s search & cloud efforts, in addition to forming and main their person expertise & design staff.
Previous to becoming a member of LinkedIn, Adam held quite a lot of management roles at eBay, together with Director of eBay Specific, an modern new website centered on new, fixed-price merchandise. Beforehand, Adam additionally held strategic and technical roles at Atlas Enterprise, Preview Techniques and Apple.
Adam holds an MBA from Harvard Enterprise Faculty in addition to BS and MS levels in Laptop Science with a concentrate on Human Laptop Interplay from Stanford College.
Adam was born and raised in Silicon Valley the place he lives along with his spouse, 4 kids and a golden retriever.
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In regards to the Writer:
Anirudh Singh is a second-year MBA Candidate at The Wharton Faculty, the place he’s a part of the Wharton FinTech Podcast staff. He has a ardour for financial improvement, enterprise capital, monetary providers, and all issues FinTech. Don’t hesitate to achieve out with questions, feedback, suggestions, and alternatives at singhan@wharton.upenn.edu.
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