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Okay.
Can I get another round of applause for our speakers?
What a wonderful lineup today.
Thank you all so much for sharing your perspectives and insights.
I've, as you've seen, I've invited everyone back up here and with the exception of Adrian, who you heard needs to catch a flight.
So now is your chance to ask them anything.
I'm actually gonna start, 'cause I have the mic, so I get to do that.
My first question actually is for Wes.
Wes, you talked about deposit switching, which is really exciting.
So I wanna hear more and the crowd wants to hear more about how that came about.
Yeah. It's interesting 'cause during the break somebody in this room came up to me and said like, Hey, we saw Atomic here.
And by the way, is Jordan here?
Is he, is he out there? No, we need some house lights.
He just stepped out. Oh, he just stepped out.
Oh, bummer.So Jordan from Atomics here, like, isn't your deposit switching gonna compete with that?
I was like, oh no. It's powered by Atomic.
And so with a really great partnership with Jordan and his team that's actually what powers our deposit switching.
And we're really excited about that partnership.
In fact, there's a press release out today about that.
So, you know, we're excited to see like the seamless experience this brings to your users and it just wouldn't be possible without Atomic and the team.
Great. Okay. I think one important point on that is one of the things that we have seen as a company a lot is that we get so excited about solving a critical step.
And then we're like, man, once we hand this off, this data or this insight, the bank's just gonna run with it.
I mean, how, like the FI the whatever and we always, it just seems like the obvious thing.
Then we find that getting out of your own way.
We find that we hand it over and then they're saying, oh, this is amazing.
The things we can do with this, whatever.
We're like, awesome. Come back a week, a month, a year later.
What did you do with it? Nothing.
And we're like, no, no, no, no.
They were, they were like insights that showed you exactly the person that needed this exact product from your bank that like, and it's an insane percentage of your user base, or it's a huge amount of dollars.
It would completely change the financials of your bank.
And it's nothing. So each time we have to move it.
The next step, what we're doing right now is we have all this data and enrichment and insights.
We've now driven it all the way here.
This next step, we're finding all the right partners to say we need to actually move the money.
We need to move, switch the deposits.
We need to transfer the money with them.
We need to, so we're now working on white gloving it all the way through and then it cycles all the way back to, we can detect it through the in, uh, the insights and the data that the money actually moved, that the credit card balance changed, that the loan moved and now we have a full cycle.
And so that way we're no longer being that partner where we're saying we took it 90% of the way there.
You drive it in, right?
Yeah. Okay.
We have mic runners, so if you have a question, raise your hand.
While we're doing that, Lita I'm going to ask you a question.
We've got a breakout panel this afternoon that asks people to imagine what an ideal banking system would look like.
If you could wave your magic wand, what is the one thing that you would change to ensure that we're not in your words, getting in the way?
How long have I gone? I think we, we often imagine the answer to that question from the solidity of our offices.
Right? But the reality is 200 years a long time, but it's not that long.
Yeah. Take it from the Greek. Right? It's not that long.
So the reality is none of what we have around us needs to exist.
And, although I agree with Adrian Citibank's not gonna stop existing, none of these organizations will, I think the starting point of the discussion can't be and shouldn't be what is our evolution?
But working backwards from first principles, What does it have to look like?
And the reality is that we have technology capabilities right now that allow us to create extremely cheap financial services that would be amazing for inclusion.
When you look at the retail side of world development, the cost to serve for providing financial services actually could be a fraction of what it is.
But for that to happen, we need to first imagine what it needs to look like, then allow it to be profitable, and then go back and look at our own organizations and go, yeah, I guess the mainframe will have to go now.
Yeah, and these are hard decisions, but they can't be about, oh, what's the ideal customer experience?
Because it's not about that anymore. Yeah.
I love the concept of first principles.
Wes and I are like elbowing each other over there while you were speaking the whole time.
Like, yes, this is what you're doing. Okay.
I can't see because this is very blinding.
So if there are questions, I think Regina, I see Regina.
Okay. Thank you. Gosh, I feel like I need to stand up 'cause I'm the shortest in the room.
I'm sure. So, I can't remember who talked about it, probably Wes.
But as we think about putting all of these financial tools in front of our customers and measuring what is it really doing for our customers?
Because we are bought in and we know the value and we are really striving to give that financial wellness to our customers.
How do you guys think about how, how are we going to truly measure that?
Metrics, KPIs? What do you think about that?
Yeah, it's something we've been working on over the past couple years and beyond that, I mean, we are a data company and it can't just be about putting experiences out there and as Jeff said, having that gut around, we think this will work, right?
Has to be based in data and a lot of what we've been working on is just fully instrumenting those experiences and having a theory and a hypothesis around what will it actually take to move the needle here?
What is our hypothesis around this?
And then how do we actually measure that?
How do we measure increases in conversion?
How do we measure deposit switching and improvements there?
And so I think that’s what Leda's presentation really, really resonated with me.
And I think instrumentation and telemetry is one of those things that often gets kind of bolted on after the fact or not at all.
And so products will get out there and we'll be like, well, does this work?
Well, the users seem to like it.
We're getting customer feedback, but data is gonna show you everything.
And so that's our approach has been, we, are a data company and so as we build experiences and products, our product teams are laser focused on building in that telemetry to really understand are these hypothesis working or not?
And, also what changes can we make to improve that?
I think it also goes back to what your goals are.
You know, is it to move more loan volume?
Is it to increase deposits?
Is it to, you know, get new customers in, decrease churn?
All of those things that when you start, when you go into these exercises with these are our high level company priorities, what are the tools that we're looking to get?
The ideal outcome is you're improving the financial outcomes for your customers or members and you're include improving financial outcomes for your organization.
Like it really is those two main data points. That's right.
Hi everyone. J Chu golden.
One question for all of you what would be one succinct message that we should take back to our corner offices, you know, on this side of the stage, how do we win?
We do difficult things in a difficult landscape that gets even more difficult with time.
How do we win over the next 10 years?
It starts with the data. That's my quick one.
I'd say focus.
I think one of the biggest challenges is that our jobs are complicated.
Our days are fragmented.
Chances are you're in back to back half hour meetings that you don't even remember what they are before you go in.
The more senior you are, you are the most important meeting in other people's calendars.
They spend weeks, maybe months preparing what they're gonna talk to you about in the process of preparing it.
They worry about how you will perceive them, not the idea.
So it's oversimplified, boiled down to something that is bland and useless in a way that infantilizes you isn't that awful?
So how do you make your time more effective? You do less.
There is no other way.
There is no way to do all the things and make all the decisions.
So focus. It's a very big conversation I'm happy to pick up over lunch, but there are ways to create directional rails for your organization and take away some of the decisions and make them in the right places in your organization.
Think of the most expensive headset in the world perhaps that allows you to focus on the things where you're the most appropriate person to make decisions.
And then allow the things you're not gonna do to not be something we keep an eye on, but really fall by the wayside.
'cause I would argue that not doing something at all is actually going to be less of a drag on your resources than sitting on the fence for a long time.
Somebody said earlier, not making a decision is a decision.
And it's absolutely true.
So relentless focus. Do less, both as an organization and as a leader.
I'll actually use your leader's words too as a plus one, who is this in service of?
I love that picture of that slide because it should be processed, but it should also be our products and our partnerships.
And who is this in service of?
I I mean, I think like this, the idea of focus and ruthless prioritization is like one of the most important things in execution.
I think just to tie it all together, how much you talked about first principle thinking, but like that idea of first principle thinking, if you guys don't understand it, I would go research it because it is core to the idea of how you start with a strategy and drive alignment.
And first principle thinking can come from a lot of things, but ultimately what it means is that you are starting with something that's inarguable, right?
That is something that you know is true.
So in, you know, again, there's like a little bit of bastardization of how you apply this in business.
'cause it comes from physics, right?
So physics is a totally different world than business.
I'll give you a couple examples.
So I right now work in digital transformation in the golf industry.
So I work for a company called Tru.
We manage about 850 golf courses globally.
We're the biggest third party management company of golf courses globally.
But, you talk about an industry that needs digital transformation, golf is one, it's just hugely behind in a lot of ways as we think about what our goals are.
And the only ways that you can get goals are through first principles.
And the only ways that you can be prioritizing and do ruthless prioritization is by having goals that everyone's aligned on that are very clear.
When I think about one of the things that we think is a first principal's approach to goal setting, it's our goal is to help our golf courses drive more revenue, right?
Can anyone argue that that's a bad thing, right?
Does anyone say it's bad that golf, well maybe if it's gouging golfers, so our goal is also to help golfers play more golf and enjoy golf more, right?
So there's like these two very, and then how do we measure this?
And then how do we look at everything we do in the lens of, is that in service of that goal?
Right? That's the way you get ruthless prioritization.
So I'll give you one other story around this, which is that I've worked at the biggest company in the world, Microsoft.
And Microsoft was resource constrained, if you can believe that, right?
I've worked at Twitter, which is obviously a pretty big company.
And when I worked there I was leading data science and analytics and the CFO at the time was a guy of Anthony Nodo, I'm sure some of you guys have come across as he's the CEO of SoFi now.
But at that time he was the CFO and he had previously been the CFO of the NFL.
And during my time at Twitter, right, in 2015 or 16, we signed a deal with the NFL to start covering NFL games, the Thursday night games exclusively as their online partner.
Now let's think about this for a second, right?
And one, I'm a huge sports fan and Anthony came to me the day that we signed the deal and he was so happy.
He goes, Jeff, did you see we did this?
And he was like, expecting me to high five him.
And I was like, Anthony, let's think about first principles.
Like who went in the world… 'cause I, I know the data of Twitter, the average user visits for a couple minutes, Who in the world is coming to Twitter to consume long form content?
They're not right?
This is not happening, right?
They're here to get a quick dopamine hit of like information or whatnot.
And then, you got two minutes between meetings or whatever.
That's what they're doing, right? They're not consuming long form content.
So it's sort of a violation of like the idea of first principles thinking in terms of this making sense.
And then he said, well, well, you know, you realize how cheap it was?
And I was like, what do you mean cheap?
And he said, well, it cost us about a million dollars a game.
It was like $10 million for 10 games.
And I said, well, how do you measure cheap?
What are we not gonna be able to do because we do that?
And when the NFL asks us for reporting or the NFL asks us for this feature are we gonna say no to the NFL?
No, of course not. We're gonna say, so how many people are gonna be on this dealing with this?
Is that cheap and what can we not be doing? Right?
So it wasn't a popular answer to him, but it was the right answer in my mind. So, absolutely.
Yeah. I I think it comes down to, if you want to actually put something, implement something, you gotta think five years, 10 years out, set a timeline that's far enough out and think in a long term perspective, because I agree strongly with the ruthless prioritization and being very focused on those things.
But the way that you get there is you say, okay, 10 years out, if I can have one metric and you have to use something that's measurable, it's not subjective, it's objective, gimme one metric and you force yourself to do this.
You're like, well there isn't one metric.
'cause if I did this thing but it's failed here, that's still failed.
I get it, but which is the metric, if you could only do one, figure out what that is and then you say, okay, great, how do I get there?
And then you can allow it to expand a little bit.
So, okay, if I had two metrics, okay, if I had three metrics, right?
But then you think about where you need to be and then everything else that doesn't get you there, you let go of.
Yeah, absolutely. and that is ruthless focus that prioritization is because it comes from a long-term perspective of something that you're like, I know from a first principles, there's no way that if I get here, I won't have succeeded.
Like your golf course example, right?
That's a metric, you know, more revenue, you're not gonna hate that, right?
But the reality is even if you got more revenue but made a horrible golfing experience, eventually you'd affect your revenue.
So if you're thinking long term enough, there's almost no way to kind of cheat that game, right?
So that's what I do for prioritization of saying, okay, where do we need to be further out?
And then everything has to either support or enable that and it has to do it in a prioritized way or it gets deprioritized and that's painful, but you just gotta do it.
Yeah. I think there's, sorry to, to jump in there.
I was just thinking that there's something we haven't said enough, and Jeff mentioned it in his talk, you might get it wrong.
Like you have to stick to the, the thorough principles of going back to your first principles, actually knowing what your purpose is, what your business is, relentless focus on the metrics.
But at the end of the day, leadership is about decision making on incomplete information.
And you have to lean in and say, that's why they pay me the big bucks.
And I have the corner office.
I have to take accountability and I will do everything in my power to not get it wrong.
But the one thing I won't do is sit on the fence so that I don't get it wrong.
We all come into this knowing to paraphrase what we said earlier, we're gonna lose some and we need to move away from the doing too much hedging our bets in order to not lose some, because then we actually end up losing more.
Sorry to jump in there, but I just thought I should have taught that in my presentation.
That's a hundred percent. And look, my answer's not gonna be, um, sexy.
My answer is you gotta do the unsexy stuff. Yes. It's hard.
It's like, it's hard to make a decision to go and fix that tech that's not working or that you have to deprecate.
Like no, you know, I do.
But not a lot of people get excited about those things, but they're so critical.
And when we talk about like, kind of the ticket to play, I was talking with some folks last night, they know my daughter's an artist, she's actually an amazing artist.
And I was showing them some of her, some of her drawings.
And one of the things that I've kind of talked over with her is like, you don't see, and I love sports analogies as well, 'cause I think that's the best meritocracy, that's the best exhibition of, people who put in the work.
And you don't just go to the NBA and all of a sudden you're out there and you're shooting three pointers.
Like you look at the folks that are at the top of their game and they're spending hours and hours and hours and hours a day getting brilliant at the basics.
And they make it look easy, but they're doing all of the hard work.
It's not fun to get up at four or five in the morning and shoot baskets for three or four or five hours.
It gets monotonous, gets repetitive.
And so when I look at like my daughter when she's doing her art, it just, it looks amazing.
But I see her and she's studying the anatomy of animals and she's studying how they crouch and how they move.
And she's studying how light refracts on water.
And she's doing all the hard work to like, make it look easy, but it's hard.
It's that ticket to play.
It's like doing the very unsexy very hard work because then it's a lot more fun to do the stuff that comes after that.
And when we think about it from an MX perspective, getting to that place where you can innovate faster and faster, I was so excited with your presentation.
Like that's my people there.
Just not ignoring the stuff that's so critical and it just adds up and adds up and adds up.
And if you can take care of those things, you can move faster.
You can address more of your customer concern and honestly the people on your teams can have a lot more fun.
So you got all that right Jay? All to take it?
Take that all back. Yeah.
So a question for Jeff, Leda, and Jane.
'cause I'm curious, this is a very US-centric crowd.
So I'll start with Jeff.
'cause you talked about doing the tour after your mom's stroke and going over to Asia and being over there culturally, what's different when it comes to data and decision making that you've seen in lead?
I'm gonna ask you the same thing.
And Jane, what do you see different around decision making around data and what we are seeing as far as, great innovation coming from different parts of the world as compared to the U.S.?
I don't have what I would consider to be a great answer from a standpoint of business, but what I would encourage everyone to do, and I'll just give you a personal anecdote.
So I think up until 2008 or 2007, I'd probably been like to four or five different countries, period.
My parents had taken me to China, which is where they were from.
I'd gone to France and I'd gone to the Caribbean, all that kinda stuff.
But I hadn't really traveled.
And so when I sold the company that we sold to Yahoo, I did not want to work at Yahoo.
It was like a time when Yahoo was kind of getting s**t on.
Like Yahoo Finance was probably the only thing that really Yahoo Finance and fantasy sports were like the two things that were like keeping that.
It was before Marissa got there.
And so I left, I wrote a book and I traveled and I think over the next three months, three years, I probably went to 40 different countries.
So I remember when I got to Indonesia, and realized how big Indonesia was from a population standpoint, I just felt like an idiot.
I felt like so myopic as someone that lived in the United States that thought, again, pardon the language, but I thought our s**t didn't stink.
Like there was so much going on in these countries.
And one of the biggest examples of this is I remember when we used to fly domestically around these other countries, how bad their airlines were compared to the U.S.
Now if you go fly internationally in these domestic airlines, they're so much better than ours.
And there's just so much that's happening in the world right now outside of the U.S.
that, I don't want to get into politics, but our political system is just screwed right now.
Like, we can't agree on anything. We can't do anything.
It's like a clown show to see what's going on.
And when you look at other countries and what's happening there, I just encourage everyone to understand that there's a lot going on outside of the United States and understanding that like there is a lot going on out there and trying to seek that from a standpoint of learning.
Yeah, I had the opposite experience.
I first traveled to the US as an adult and the first time I got here it was like, no wonder they forget about the rest of the world.
This place is so big and present and vibrant and so much is possible here.
And of course it is no wonder that the rest of the world has to assert itself in a way that is meaningful.
And it was not a happy thought.
It was like, oh, I was born in the wrong place.
Don't tell my mother.
She gets very upset when I say that.
To go to the specifics of your question, Sam, around data, I would say three things I've worked on most continents other than South America.
I'd say three things, right?
The first one is depending on the political regime and the culture of the place you're in, who the data belongs to is pretty fundamentally radically different.
So I worked in the Gulf for a few years.
The data that flows through belongs to the government.
So the decision to create a digital identity asset that allows you to transact differently was a policy decision.
So the first thing is, it's a governance rather than government question, but who does the data belong to?
It's actually very, very different depending on where you are.
And you know, I live and work in Europe at the moment where GDPR regulation and regulation are data retention, even if it doesn't have to do something with a consumer, means that all of our thinking and leaning into what is possible is a little bit back to front, right?
So who does it belong to? It is radically important.
The second, and Indonesia is a really really good example, is that some societies were leaning into things before they became mainstream.
Indonesia had one of the most advanced sort of digital wallet ecosystems before the rest of us knew how to spell it.
So the way that you in a particular economy, the art of the possible is always determined by what was done recently.
So I think that's the second thing.
The third thing I'll say before I sort of hand off to someone who should talk about Australia more than I do is that depending on the, the makeup of the market you are in, very different discussions emerge around policy regulation.
So Australia is a great example and I've done quite a lot of, of open banking, transformation work out there.
It's far further than you, but they know it and it's a very set market.
And I've actually operated in quite a few markets where there's four big banks, then a bunch of small ones, and that's it.
So you have a very, very different dialogue.
So the way you lean into what is possible, where we collaborate, where we don't, is determined by these sort of three systemic facts that have nothing to do with the science and nothing to do with the technology, but everything to do with the realities of what you operate in, in my experience.
Yeah. I think you're a hundred percent right, I like that.
Right? I have lived and worked in six different countries.
I have had regional roles and global roles.
And from a data perspective, a lot of it comes down to the mix of just culture, right?
Is this something that we are going to dive into and learn from and innovate around?
Or is it, that's just a support function?
So just like business culture and just culture, culture really does contribute, but to Leda's point, is it industry led or is it regulatory led?
And it's pretty binary, you know, country to country.
And I nearly fell off my chair when I saw Australia’s ANZ bank and I can call it ANZ, ANZ bank just last week launched inbound aggregation.
It's the first bank to do it.
And they were like very proud of having this, this is our multi account view.
They've had, you know, a consumer data right in place since 2020.
And this was by far the most ambitious data initiative from a government in it assigns a legal ownership right?
To your data in the US and in most other jurisdictions, what we get assigned and what we will get assigned through 1033 is a legal right to access our data.
We don't own it as humans, but we have the legal right to access.
And so when it boils down to, is it industry led, which the U.S. has been very much so industry led, you might wanna cover your raise, but I think the US has been far more successful in terms of permission data sharing and secure data sharing than pretty much every other jurisdiction combined because it's been industry led because there has been an interoperable standard stood up by FDX and that has been such a… and frankly the regulatory space is gonna have to catch up.
And what we've seen with the CFPB and Ashwin is in the room who was at the CFPB as they were drafting this, you have to start somewhere.
And where we've started from a regulatory perspective is much narrower than the data currently being shared.
And that comes from that industry first perspective.
So yeah, despite my accent, I have been in the US for 20 years and so, and I've spent next to no time as an adult in Australia.
I'm a tourist there too now, unfortunately.
I'll show you around. Thanks.
Thank you for that question and, and the answers, very insightful.
I have a question from the back.
It's a really critical question.
This question is specifically for Ryan Caldwell.
Ryan, have you ever met Eloise?
Yes. You're about to get real familiar with Eloise, right? Oh, Oh my goodness.
Oh, look at that. I'm a dog lover. I didn't know this was planned. Look At that. Tom texted me and said a puppy might come on stage.
And I said, I don't even know what that means, but I'm here for it. Oh my goodness.
But it's, badged.
It's badged, the puppy has a badge. So we're good.
What about my puppy? I love it.
This is so beautiful. What's the context around bringing a dog on stage?
I have no idea what the context is.
It's just to see this man smile. Look at that. It's your puppy now, Ryan. You know that, Right? You know what the dog adds Matt.
I don't know why this came about, but it takes us back to the humanity.
That's awesome. Just that everything comes back to this Well, who wants to follow that?
No one can follow a Puppy.
Yeah well I'm just gonna hold this dog.
You guys keep asking questions. You know, the whole like never have a puppy or a child on stage with you, you know that right?
Eloise is very compliant.
Look at this.
Okay, get her a mic.
Any other animals to bring on Stage? or questions?
Hannah's got a question up front here.
Oh, there's one I want a dog.
Thanks.
You can't not have a question about 1033.
I know a lot of us are using a lot of our brain power right now to think about what we need to do to be prepared.
I am curious to know from either the consumer or financial service provider perspective, what changes or benefits you're most excited for the regulation to usher in? So I guess Jane Yeah, The Master. I'm most excited just to see a framework in place.
And this comes actually from a deeply personal place.
I don't talk about this a lot. My first career was in marketing.
The reason I left was ad tech.
To see the vast troves of data that gets sucked into data brokers and ad tech players on every single person in this room on a second by second basis.
And to have monetization of deeply personal and private things about you being sold to the highest bidder is kind of gross.
So I am really excited for this very first step.
Like this is the first big test of the data economy in the U.S. anyway, to have a framework around, you know what, unless that person permission that data, that's not yours to sell.
That's not yours to do with what you want. So let's go.
Thanks. Ashwin, I have a question for you, Wes.
So we've talked a lot about building the foundation.
Can you just share with us how you think about balancing building that foundation maintenance, sustaining what we have built and innovation?
Yeah, I think the mindset tends to be around those being mutually exclusive.
And I don't see it that way.
Um, it's kind of like if you have a, a house that just sits there vacant forever, it starts getting decrepit.
The floorboards start falling apart.
And what's really interesting is if that same house, if somebody's living in that house, the materials haven't changed, nothing about that house is inherently changed.
But if that house doesn't have attention, if there's not actually people looking after it and keeping it nice, it falls apart.
You literally have to raise it and start over.
And so for me it's just about hygiene and maintenance.
And when we talk about being brilliant at the basics, it's not different than getting up and brushing your teeth and taking the constant every day.
How do we keep our systems modernized?
How do we keep them healthy?
How do we keep the hygiene there?
And when you over index on, you're just looking at building new products.
Like when you start out, you've gotta like get something to market that's understandable.
But as you mature and as you build and as you want to scale, it's like if you're not paying attention to that house and things are falling apart it's not gonna be good for you.
And so I look at it as not mutually exclusive, but actually a really good flywheel.
Yeah. If you're taking care of it, if you're actually, giving cycles to that, to that constant hygiene around your systems, the modernization of your systems, understanding your single points of failure, understanding what technologies are out there, and not just adopting them because they're sexy, but because they have real practical use and application for your customers and for your business.
And when you do that, you find you move faster every day.
It's not a trade off. They go hand in hand.
It becomes a trade off when you don't treat it that way.
It becomes a trade off down the road when you say, oh my gosh, we've got this catastrophe that's about to happen, but yet we have these features and functionality we have to get out.
And when you let it get to that point, then you're making really hard decisions.
Now, the decision at that point should be, we've gotta shore this up, right?
So if you get to that catastrophic point, you've gotta make the decision, we've gotta make this better.
And that requires investment.
That requires time, that requires really hard decisions because no one ever gets popular by saying, Hey, we're gonna move to the cloud.
Now it sounds sexy, it's cloud, five, 10 years ago was the AI of today, right?
And so people are like, we're gonna move to cloud.
It's like, why? Well cloud, think like every slide I have has a cloud on it, right?
This isn't even a picture of a cloud, do you even know what the cloud is?
It's just somebody else's data center.
But there were real reasons to move into cloud and very strategic reasons to modernize tech stack to do that.
And so if you're making those assessments as you go along and say what's good for our business?
How do we ensure that we can continue to grow, continue to scale, continue to build amazing experiences, they go well hand in hand.
And so you just can't let it get to that catastrophic point where you then have to make trade-offs.
But if you do and you start to make trade-offs on building more and more product, you're just headed for disaster.
Yeah. And I couldn't agree stronger there.
The interesting thing is that every time you wanna deploy, if you want to innovate with great product innovation, you can't do it fast enough.
'cause 90% of what you wanna do every time you wanna do a new innovation is complicated or the cost of it, because you don't have a good infrastructure, you can't deploy code quickly and efficiently and test it rapidly in real time.
Once you can do that, you can now experiment with things and adjust.
And so the idea that we're gonna perfectly predict exactly how a user's gonna interface with something's just not gonna happen.
Even right now, the way that we're, which we're looking at AI, looking at our data, it's telling us that the users actually did something that we wouldn't have expected and they actually want it in a different way.
So we need to be able to innovate with that.
Once you laid the foundation, you've now cut out 90% of the cost of your innovation.
You can innovate so rapidly, so quickly that that's how you win.
So it's not that that two aren't in conflict, it's not the two that are just complimentary.
It's that you can't effectively innovate if you don't have your basics done. Solid. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, we are at time.
I'm going to have Ryan just share some parting words.
But before we do that, a couple of items, I wanted to just take a moment to send some good thoughts and good vibes to our colleagues in Florida and the East coast.
We really hope everyone stays safe.
We certainly had some partners who weren't able to make it.
And we see that, you know, there's a lot going on there.
So we do have a QR code if you want to donate in support of hurricane relief, you can simply scan the code up there.
And then next we have our breakout sessions that we'll start at 1:15.
We have lunch right outside.
So as we wrap here, go have lunch, go take a break, and then come back at 1:15.
Ryan to send everybody off to lunch, any parting words from you?
Well, first of all, I still don't know why I'm holding an adorable little puppy, but I do like the fact that my team keeps me on my toes.
So I appreciate that. I just wanna say thanks for, for the great speakers that we had.
I enjoyed the talks tremendously.
The relevance on the betting is just so apt to our industry.
I mean, it's one of those things where we are constantly, I mean, I love the concept of thinking in bets.
I love the whole idea of it doesn't, and your story of losing 50,000 then losing 50,000 is so painful.
But it's true that it's just like, look, we have to take these risks and have to take these, these bets.
But in the long run, if we have the right goals set, if we thought about first principles, things that aren't a fad, but that are true fundamentals, and we shoot towards those over the long term, we're gonna be fine.
Right? And so it doesn't matter if it seems like it's not working initially, it doesn't matter if it's taking a little bit longer in those first few months or even years, it will pay off.
And so that belief and that understanding, I just thought it was tremendous.
It was really good for everyone.
It was very relevant. And so thank you for being here and thanks for doing our AMA with us.
And we'll all close. Thank you. Bring your books out to the lobby Leda's gonna be signing copies.
Enjoy the rest of the day. Thank you all so much.
Ask Me Anything: Q&A with Keynote Speakers
Industry experts respond to burning questions about the biggest challenges facing the financial industry today and how they can prepare for the future.
Watch Next
Jeffrey Ma, Kingpin of the Famous MIT Blackjack Team
How to Win with Data
Adrienne Harris, New York State Dept. of FInancial Services
Fireside Chat with Adrienne Harris
Dr. Leda Glyptis, PhD
The Digital Transformation of Financial Services
Transcript
Can I get another round of applause for our speakers?
What a wonderful lineup today.
Thank you all so much for sharing your perspectives and insights.
I've, as you've seen, I've invited everyone back up here and with the exception of Adrian, who you heard needs to catch a flight.
So now is your chance to ask them anything.
I'm actually gonna start, 'cause I have the mic, so I get to do that.
My first question actually is for Wes.
Wes, you talked about deposit switching, which is really exciting.
So I wanna hear more and the crowd wants to hear more about how that came about.
Yeah. It's interesting 'cause during the break somebody in this room came up to me and said like, Hey, we saw Atomic here.
And by the way, is Jordan here?
Is he, is he out there? No, we need some house lights.
He just stepped out. Oh, he just stepped out.
Oh, bummer.So Jordan from Atomics here, like, isn't your deposit switching gonna compete with that?
I was like, oh no. It's powered by Atomic.
And so with a really great partnership with Jordan and his team that's actually what powers our deposit switching.
And we're really excited about that partnership.
In fact, there's a press release out today about that.
So, you know, we're excited to see like the seamless experience this brings to your users and it just wouldn't be possible without Atomic and the team.
Great. Okay. I think one important point on that is one of the things that we have seen as a company a lot is that we get so excited about solving a critical step.
And then we're like, man, once we hand this off, this data or this insight, the bank's just gonna run with it.
I mean, how, like the FI the whatever and we always, it just seems like the obvious thing.
Then we find that getting out of your own way.
We find that we hand it over and then they're saying, oh, this is amazing.
The things we can do with this, whatever.
We're like, awesome. Come back a week, a month, a year later.
What did you do with it? Nothing.
And we're like, no, no, no, no.
They were, they were like insights that showed you exactly the person that needed this exact product from your bank that like, and it's an insane percentage of your user base, or it's a huge amount of dollars.
It would completely change the financials of your bank.
And it's nothing. So each time we have to move it.
The next step, what we're doing right now is we have all this data and enrichment and insights.
We've now driven it all the way here.
This next step, we're finding all the right partners to say we need to actually move the money.
We need to move, switch the deposits.
We need to transfer the money with them.
We need to, so we're now working on white gloving it all the way through and then it cycles all the way back to, we can detect it through the in, uh, the insights and the data that the money actually moved, that the credit card balance changed, that the loan moved and now we have a full cycle.
And so that way we're no longer being that partner where we're saying we took it 90% of the way there.
You drive it in, right?
Yeah. Okay.
We have mic runners, so if you have a question, raise your hand.
While we're doing that, Lita I'm going to ask you a question.
We've got a breakout panel this afternoon that asks people to imagine what an ideal banking system would look like.
If you could wave your magic wand, what is the one thing that you would change to ensure that we're not in your words, getting in the way?
How long have I gone? I think we, we often imagine the answer to that question from the solidity of our offices.
Right? But the reality is 200 years a long time, but it's not that long.
Yeah. Take it from the Greek. Right? It's not that long.
So the reality is none of what we have around us needs to exist.
And, although I agree with Adrian Citibank's not gonna stop existing, none of these organizations will, I think the starting point of the discussion can't be and shouldn't be what is our evolution?
But working backwards from first principles, What does it have to look like?
And the reality is that we have technology capabilities right now that allow us to create extremely cheap financial services that would be amazing for inclusion.
When you look at the retail side of world development, the cost to serve for providing financial services actually could be a fraction of what it is.
But for that to happen, we need to first imagine what it needs to look like, then allow it to be profitable, and then go back and look at our own organizations and go, yeah, I guess the mainframe will have to go now.
Yeah, and these are hard decisions, but they can't be about, oh, what's the ideal customer experience?
Because it's not about that anymore. Yeah.
I love the concept of first principles.
Wes and I are like elbowing each other over there while you were speaking the whole time.
Like, yes, this is what you're doing. Okay.
I can't see because this is very blinding.
So if there are questions, I think Regina, I see Regina.
Okay. Thank you. Gosh, I feel like I need to stand up 'cause I'm the shortest in the room.
I'm sure. So, I can't remember who talked about it, probably Wes.
But as we think about putting all of these financial tools in front of our customers and measuring what is it really doing for our customers?
Because we are bought in and we know the value and we are really striving to give that financial wellness to our customers.
How do you guys think about how, how are we going to truly measure that?
Metrics, KPIs? What do you think about that?
Yeah, it's something we've been working on over the past couple years and beyond that, I mean, we are a data company and it can't just be about putting experiences out there and as Jeff said, having that gut around, we think this will work, right?
Has to be based in data and a lot of what we've been working on is just fully instrumenting those experiences and having a theory and a hypothesis around what will it actually take to move the needle here?
What is our hypothesis around this?
And then how do we actually measure that?
How do we measure increases in conversion?
How do we measure deposit switching and improvements there?
And so I think that’s what Leda's presentation really, really resonated with me.
And I think instrumentation and telemetry is one of those things that often gets kind of bolted on after the fact or not at all.
And so products will get out there and we'll be like, well, does this work?
Well, the users seem to like it.
We're getting customer feedback, but data is gonna show you everything.
And so that's our approach has been, we, are a data company and so as we build experiences and products, our product teams are laser focused on building in that telemetry to really understand are these hypothesis working or not?
And, also what changes can we make to improve that?
I think it also goes back to what your goals are.
You know, is it to move more loan volume?
Is it to increase deposits?
Is it to, you know, get new customers in, decrease churn?
All of those things that when you start, when you go into these exercises with these are our high level company priorities, what are the tools that we're looking to get?
The ideal outcome is you're improving the financial outcomes for your customers or members and you're include improving financial outcomes for your organization.
Like it really is those two main data points. That's right.
Hi everyone. J Chu golden.
One question for all of you what would be one succinct message that we should take back to our corner offices, you know, on this side of the stage, how do we win?
We do difficult things in a difficult landscape that gets even more difficult with time.
How do we win over the next 10 years?
It starts with the data. That's my quick one.
I'd say focus.
I think one of the biggest challenges is that our jobs are complicated.
Our days are fragmented.
Chances are you're in back to back half hour meetings that you don't even remember what they are before you go in.
The more senior you are, you are the most important meeting in other people's calendars.
They spend weeks, maybe months preparing what they're gonna talk to you about in the process of preparing it.
They worry about how you will perceive them, not the idea.
So it's oversimplified, boiled down to something that is bland and useless in a way that infantilizes you isn't that awful?
So how do you make your time more effective? You do less.
There is no other way.
There is no way to do all the things and make all the decisions.
So focus. It's a very big conversation I'm happy to pick up over lunch, but there are ways to create directional rails for your organization and take away some of the decisions and make them in the right places in your organization.
Think of the most expensive headset in the world perhaps that allows you to focus on the things where you're the most appropriate person to make decisions.
And then allow the things you're not gonna do to not be something we keep an eye on, but really fall by the wayside.
'cause I would argue that not doing something at all is actually going to be less of a drag on your resources than sitting on the fence for a long time.
Somebody said earlier, not making a decision is a decision.
And it's absolutely true.
So relentless focus. Do less, both as an organization and as a leader.
I'll actually use your leader's words too as a plus one, who is this in service of?
I love that picture of that slide because it should be processed, but it should also be our products and our partnerships.
And who is this in service of?
I I mean, I think like this, the idea of focus and ruthless prioritization is like one of the most important things in execution.
I think just to tie it all together, how much you talked about first principle thinking, but like that idea of first principle thinking, if you guys don't understand it, I would go research it because it is core to the idea of how you start with a strategy and drive alignment.
And first principle thinking can come from a lot of things, but ultimately what it means is that you are starting with something that's inarguable, right?
That is something that you know is true.
So in, you know, again, there's like a little bit of bastardization of how you apply this in business.
'cause it comes from physics, right?
So physics is a totally different world than business.
I'll give you a couple examples.
So I right now work in digital transformation in the golf industry.
So I work for a company called Tru.
We manage about 850 golf courses globally.
We're the biggest third party management company of golf courses globally.
But, you talk about an industry that needs digital transformation, golf is one, it's just hugely behind in a lot of ways as we think about what our goals are.
And the only ways that you can get goals are through first principles.
And the only ways that you can be prioritizing and do ruthless prioritization is by having goals that everyone's aligned on that are very clear.
When I think about one of the things that we think is a first principal's approach to goal setting, it's our goal is to help our golf courses drive more revenue, right?
Can anyone argue that that's a bad thing, right?
Does anyone say it's bad that golf, well maybe if it's gouging golfers, so our goal is also to help golfers play more golf and enjoy golf more, right?
So there's like these two very, and then how do we measure this?
And then how do we look at everything we do in the lens of, is that in service of that goal?
Right? That's the way you get ruthless prioritization.
So I'll give you one other story around this, which is that I've worked at the biggest company in the world, Microsoft.
And Microsoft was resource constrained, if you can believe that, right?
I've worked at Twitter, which is obviously a pretty big company.
And when I worked there I was leading data science and analytics and the CFO at the time was a guy of Anthony Nodo, I'm sure some of you guys have come across as he's the CEO of SoFi now.
But at that time he was the CFO and he had previously been the CFO of the NFL.
And during my time at Twitter, right, in 2015 or 16, we signed a deal with the NFL to start covering NFL games, the Thursday night games exclusively as their online partner.
Now let's think about this for a second, right?
And one, I'm a huge sports fan and Anthony came to me the day that we signed the deal and he was so happy.
He goes, Jeff, did you see we did this?
And he was like, expecting me to high five him.
And I was like, Anthony, let's think about first principles.
Like who went in the world… 'cause I, I know the data of Twitter, the average user visits for a couple minutes, Who in the world is coming to Twitter to consume long form content?
They're not right?
This is not happening, right?
They're here to get a quick dopamine hit of like information or whatnot.
And then, you got two minutes between meetings or whatever.
That's what they're doing, right? They're not consuming long form content.
So it's sort of a violation of like the idea of first principles thinking in terms of this making sense.
And then he said, well, well, you know, you realize how cheap it was?
And I was like, what do you mean cheap?
And he said, well, it cost us about a million dollars a game.
It was like $10 million for 10 games.
And I said, well, how do you measure cheap?
What are we not gonna be able to do because we do that?
And when the NFL asks us for reporting or the NFL asks us for this feature are we gonna say no to the NFL?
No, of course not. We're gonna say, so how many people are gonna be on this dealing with this?
Is that cheap and what can we not be doing? Right?
So it wasn't a popular answer to him, but it was the right answer in my mind. So, absolutely.
Yeah. I I think it comes down to, if you want to actually put something, implement something, you gotta think five years, 10 years out, set a timeline that's far enough out and think in a long term perspective, because I agree strongly with the ruthless prioritization and being very focused on those things.
But the way that you get there is you say, okay, 10 years out, if I can have one metric and you have to use something that's measurable, it's not subjective, it's objective, gimme one metric and you force yourself to do this.
You're like, well there isn't one metric.
'cause if I did this thing but it's failed here, that's still failed.
I get it, but which is the metric, if you could only do one, figure out what that is and then you say, okay, great, how do I get there?
And then you can allow it to expand a little bit.
So, okay, if I had two metrics, okay, if I had three metrics, right?
But then you think about where you need to be and then everything else that doesn't get you there, you let go of.
Yeah, absolutely. and that is ruthless focus that prioritization is because it comes from a long-term perspective of something that you're like, I know from a first principles, there's no way that if I get here, I won't have succeeded.
Like your golf course example, right?
That's a metric, you know, more revenue, you're not gonna hate that, right?
But the reality is even if you got more revenue but made a horrible golfing experience, eventually you'd affect your revenue.
So if you're thinking long term enough, there's almost no way to kind of cheat that game, right?
So that's what I do for prioritization of saying, okay, where do we need to be further out?
And then everything has to either support or enable that and it has to do it in a prioritized way or it gets deprioritized and that's painful, but you just gotta do it.
Yeah. I think there's, sorry to, to jump in there.
I was just thinking that there's something we haven't said enough, and Jeff mentioned it in his talk, you might get it wrong.
Like you have to stick to the, the thorough principles of going back to your first principles, actually knowing what your purpose is, what your business is, relentless focus on the metrics.
But at the end of the day, leadership is about decision making on incomplete information.
And you have to lean in and say, that's why they pay me the big bucks.
And I have the corner office.
I have to take accountability and I will do everything in my power to not get it wrong.
But the one thing I won't do is sit on the fence so that I don't get it wrong.
We all come into this knowing to paraphrase what we said earlier, we're gonna lose some and we need to move away from the doing too much hedging our bets in order to not lose some, because then we actually end up losing more.
Sorry to jump in there, but I just thought I should have taught that in my presentation.
That's a hundred percent. And look, my answer's not gonna be, um, sexy.
My answer is you gotta do the unsexy stuff. Yes. It's hard.
It's like, it's hard to make a decision to go and fix that tech that's not working or that you have to deprecate.
Like no, you know, I do.
But not a lot of people get excited about those things, but they're so critical.
And when we talk about like, kind of the ticket to play, I was talking with some folks last night, they know my daughter's an artist, she's actually an amazing artist.
And I was showing them some of her, some of her drawings.
And one of the things that I've kind of talked over with her is like, you don't see, and I love sports analogies as well, 'cause I think that's the best meritocracy, that's the best exhibition of, people who put in the work.
And you don't just go to the NBA and all of a sudden you're out there and you're shooting three pointers.
Like you look at the folks that are at the top of their game and they're spending hours and hours and hours and hours a day getting brilliant at the basics.
And they make it look easy, but they're doing all of the hard work.
It's not fun to get up at four or five in the morning and shoot baskets for three or four or five hours.
It gets monotonous, gets repetitive.
And so when I look at like my daughter when she's doing her art, it just, it looks amazing.
But I see her and she's studying the anatomy of animals and she's studying how they crouch and how they move.
And she's studying how light refracts on water.
And she's doing all the hard work to like, make it look easy, but it's hard.
It's that ticket to play.
It's like doing the very unsexy very hard work because then it's a lot more fun to do the stuff that comes after that.
And when we think about it from an MX perspective, getting to that place where you can innovate faster and faster, I was so excited with your presentation.
Like that's my people there.
Just not ignoring the stuff that's so critical and it just adds up and adds up and adds up.
And if you can take care of those things, you can move faster.
You can address more of your customer concern and honestly the people on your teams can have a lot more fun.
So you got all that right Jay? All to take it?
Take that all back. Yeah.
So a question for Jeff, Leda, and Jane.
'cause I'm curious, this is a very US-centric crowd.
So I'll start with Jeff.
'cause you talked about doing the tour after your mom's stroke and going over to Asia and being over there culturally, what's different when it comes to data and decision making that you've seen in lead?
I'm gonna ask you the same thing.
And Jane, what do you see different around decision making around data and what we are seeing as far as, great innovation coming from different parts of the world as compared to the U.S.?
I don't have what I would consider to be a great answer from a standpoint of business, but what I would encourage everyone to do, and I'll just give you a personal anecdote.
So I think up until 2008 or 2007, I'd probably been like to four or five different countries, period.
My parents had taken me to China, which is where they were from.
I'd gone to France and I'd gone to the Caribbean, all that kinda stuff.
But I hadn't really traveled.
And so when I sold the company that we sold to Yahoo, I did not want to work at Yahoo.
It was like a time when Yahoo was kind of getting s**t on.
Like Yahoo Finance was probably the only thing that really Yahoo Finance and fantasy sports were like the two things that were like keeping that.
It was before Marissa got there.
And so I left, I wrote a book and I traveled and I think over the next three months, three years, I probably went to 40 different countries.
So I remember when I got to Indonesia, and realized how big Indonesia was from a population standpoint, I just felt like an idiot.
I felt like so myopic as someone that lived in the United States that thought, again, pardon the language, but I thought our s**t didn't stink.
Like there was so much going on in these countries.
And one of the biggest examples of this is I remember when we used to fly domestically around these other countries, how bad their airlines were compared to the U.S.
Now if you go fly internationally in these domestic airlines, they're so much better than ours.
And there's just so much that's happening in the world right now outside of the U.S.
that, I don't want to get into politics, but our political system is just screwed right now.
Like, we can't agree on anything. We can't do anything.
It's like a clown show to see what's going on.
And when you look at other countries and what's happening there, I just encourage everyone to understand that there's a lot going on outside of the United States and understanding that like there is a lot going on out there and trying to seek that from a standpoint of learning.
Yeah, I had the opposite experience.
I first traveled to the US as an adult and the first time I got here it was like, no wonder they forget about the rest of the world.
This place is so big and present and vibrant and so much is possible here.
And of course it is no wonder that the rest of the world has to assert itself in a way that is meaningful.
And it was not a happy thought.
It was like, oh, I was born in the wrong place.
Don't tell my mother.
She gets very upset when I say that.
To go to the specifics of your question, Sam, around data, I would say three things I've worked on most continents other than South America.
I'd say three things, right?
The first one is depending on the political regime and the culture of the place you're in, who the data belongs to is pretty fundamentally radically different.
So I worked in the Gulf for a few years.
The data that flows through belongs to the government.
So the decision to create a digital identity asset that allows you to transact differently was a policy decision.
So the first thing is, it's a governance rather than government question, but who does the data belong to?
It's actually very, very different depending on where you are.
And you know, I live and work in Europe at the moment where GDPR regulation and regulation are data retention, even if it doesn't have to do something with a consumer, means that all of our thinking and leaning into what is possible is a little bit back to front, right?
So who does it belong to? It is radically important.
The second, and Indonesia is a really really good example, is that some societies were leaning into things before they became mainstream.
Indonesia had one of the most advanced sort of digital wallet ecosystems before the rest of us knew how to spell it.
So the way that you in a particular economy, the art of the possible is always determined by what was done recently.
So I think that's the second thing.
The third thing I'll say before I sort of hand off to someone who should talk about Australia more than I do is that depending on the, the makeup of the market you are in, very different discussions emerge around policy regulation.
So Australia is a great example and I've done quite a lot of, of open banking, transformation work out there.
It's far further than you, but they know it and it's a very set market.
And I've actually operated in quite a few markets where there's four big banks, then a bunch of small ones, and that's it.
So you have a very, very different dialogue.
So the way you lean into what is possible, where we collaborate, where we don't, is determined by these sort of three systemic facts that have nothing to do with the science and nothing to do with the technology, but everything to do with the realities of what you operate in, in my experience.
Yeah. I think you're a hundred percent right, I like that.
Right? I have lived and worked in six different countries.
I have had regional roles and global roles.
And from a data perspective, a lot of it comes down to the mix of just culture, right?
Is this something that we are going to dive into and learn from and innovate around?
Or is it, that's just a support function?
So just like business culture and just culture, culture really does contribute, but to Leda's point, is it industry led or is it regulatory led?
And it's pretty binary, you know, country to country.
And I nearly fell off my chair when I saw Australia’s ANZ bank and I can call it ANZ, ANZ bank just last week launched inbound aggregation.
It's the first bank to do it.
And they were like very proud of having this, this is our multi account view.
They've had, you know, a consumer data right in place since 2020.
And this was by far the most ambitious data initiative from a government in it assigns a legal ownership right?
To your data in the US and in most other jurisdictions, what we get assigned and what we will get assigned through 1033 is a legal right to access our data.
We don't own it as humans, but we have the legal right to access.
And so when it boils down to, is it industry led, which the U.S. has been very much so industry led, you might wanna cover your raise, but I think the US has been far more successful in terms of permission data sharing and secure data sharing than pretty much every other jurisdiction combined because it's been industry led because there has been an interoperable standard stood up by FDX and that has been such a… and frankly the regulatory space is gonna have to catch up.
And what we've seen with the CFPB and Ashwin is in the room who was at the CFPB as they were drafting this, you have to start somewhere.
And where we've started from a regulatory perspective is much narrower than the data currently being shared.
And that comes from that industry first perspective.
So yeah, despite my accent, I have been in the US for 20 years and so, and I've spent next to no time as an adult in Australia.
I'm a tourist there too now, unfortunately.
I'll show you around. Thanks.
Thank you for that question and, and the answers, very insightful.
I have a question from the back.
It's a really critical question.
This question is specifically for Ryan Caldwell.
Ryan, have you ever met Eloise?
Yes. You're about to get real familiar with Eloise, right? Oh, Oh my goodness.
Oh, look at that. I'm a dog lover. I didn't know this was planned. Look At that. Tom texted me and said a puppy might come on stage.
And I said, I don't even know what that means, but I'm here for it. Oh my goodness.
But it's, badged.
It's badged, the puppy has a badge. So we're good.
What about my puppy? I love it.
This is so beautiful. What's the context around bringing a dog on stage?
I have no idea what the context is.
It's just to see this man smile. Look at that. It's your puppy now, Ryan. You know that, Right? You know what the dog adds Matt.
I don't know why this came about, but it takes us back to the humanity.
That's awesome. Just that everything comes back to this Well, who wants to follow that?
No one can follow a Puppy.
Yeah well I'm just gonna hold this dog.
You guys keep asking questions. You know, the whole like never have a puppy or a child on stage with you, you know that right?
Eloise is very compliant.
Look at this.
Okay, get her a mic.
Any other animals to bring on Stage? or questions?
Hannah's got a question up front here.
Oh, there's one I want a dog.
Thanks.
You can't not have a question about 1033.
I know a lot of us are using a lot of our brain power right now to think about what we need to do to be prepared.
I am curious to know from either the consumer or financial service provider perspective, what changes or benefits you're most excited for the regulation to usher in? So I guess Jane Yeah, The Master. I'm most excited just to see a framework in place.
And this comes actually from a deeply personal place.
I don't talk about this a lot. My first career was in marketing.
The reason I left was ad tech.
To see the vast troves of data that gets sucked into data brokers and ad tech players on every single person in this room on a second by second basis.
And to have monetization of deeply personal and private things about you being sold to the highest bidder is kind of gross.
So I am really excited for this very first step.
Like this is the first big test of the data economy in the U.S. anyway, to have a framework around, you know what, unless that person permission that data, that's not yours to sell.
That's not yours to do with what you want. So let's go.
Thanks. Ashwin, I have a question for you, Wes.
So we've talked a lot about building the foundation.
Can you just share with us how you think about balancing building that foundation maintenance, sustaining what we have built and innovation?
Yeah, I think the mindset tends to be around those being mutually exclusive.
And I don't see it that way.
Um, it's kind of like if you have a, a house that just sits there vacant forever, it starts getting decrepit.
The floorboards start falling apart.
And what's really interesting is if that same house, if somebody's living in that house, the materials haven't changed, nothing about that house is inherently changed.
But if that house doesn't have attention, if there's not actually people looking after it and keeping it nice, it falls apart.
You literally have to raise it and start over.
And so for me it's just about hygiene and maintenance.
And when we talk about being brilliant at the basics, it's not different than getting up and brushing your teeth and taking the constant every day.
How do we keep our systems modernized?
How do we keep them healthy?
How do we keep the hygiene there?
And when you over index on, you're just looking at building new products.
Like when you start out, you've gotta like get something to market that's understandable.
But as you mature and as you build and as you want to scale, it's like if you're not paying attention to that house and things are falling apart it's not gonna be good for you.
And so I look at it as not mutually exclusive, but actually a really good flywheel.
Yeah. If you're taking care of it, if you're actually, giving cycles to that, to that constant hygiene around your systems, the modernization of your systems, understanding your single points of failure, understanding what technologies are out there, and not just adopting them because they're sexy, but because they have real practical use and application for your customers and for your business.
And when you do that, you find you move faster every day.
It's not a trade off. They go hand in hand.
It becomes a trade off when you don't treat it that way.
It becomes a trade off down the road when you say, oh my gosh, we've got this catastrophe that's about to happen, but yet we have these features and functionality we have to get out.
And when you let it get to that point, then you're making really hard decisions.
Now, the decision at that point should be, we've gotta shore this up, right?
So if you get to that catastrophic point, you've gotta make the decision, we've gotta make this better.
And that requires investment.
That requires time, that requires really hard decisions because no one ever gets popular by saying, Hey, we're gonna move to the cloud.
Now it sounds sexy, it's cloud, five, 10 years ago was the AI of today, right?
And so people are like, we're gonna move to cloud.
It's like, why? Well cloud, think like every slide I have has a cloud on it, right?
This isn't even a picture of a cloud, do you even know what the cloud is?
It's just somebody else's data center.
But there were real reasons to move into cloud and very strategic reasons to modernize tech stack to do that.
And so if you're making those assessments as you go along and say what's good for our business?
How do we ensure that we can continue to grow, continue to scale, continue to build amazing experiences, they go well hand in hand.
And so you just can't let it get to that catastrophic point where you then have to make trade-offs.
But if you do and you start to make trade-offs on building more and more product, you're just headed for disaster.
Yeah. And I couldn't agree stronger there.
The interesting thing is that every time you wanna deploy, if you want to innovate with great product innovation, you can't do it fast enough.
'cause 90% of what you wanna do every time you wanna do a new innovation is complicated or the cost of it, because you don't have a good infrastructure, you can't deploy code quickly and efficiently and test it rapidly in real time.
Once you can do that, you can now experiment with things and adjust.
And so the idea that we're gonna perfectly predict exactly how a user's gonna interface with something's just not gonna happen.
Even right now, the way that we're, which we're looking at AI, looking at our data, it's telling us that the users actually did something that we wouldn't have expected and they actually want it in a different way.
So we need to be able to innovate with that.
Once you laid the foundation, you've now cut out 90% of the cost of your innovation.
You can innovate so rapidly, so quickly that that's how you win.
So it's not that that two aren't in conflict, it's not the two that are just complimentary.
It's that you can't effectively innovate if you don't have your basics done. Solid. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, we are at time.
I'm going to have Ryan just share some parting words.
But before we do that, a couple of items, I wanted to just take a moment to send some good thoughts and good vibes to our colleagues in Florida and the East coast.
We really hope everyone stays safe.
We certainly had some partners who weren't able to make it.
And we see that, you know, there's a lot going on there.
So we do have a QR code if you want to donate in support of hurricane relief, you can simply scan the code up there.
And then next we have our breakout sessions that we'll start at 1:15.
We have lunch right outside.
So as we wrap here, go have lunch, go take a break, and then come back at 1:15.
Ryan to send everybody off to lunch, any parting words from you?
Well, first of all, I still don't know why I'm holding an adorable little puppy, but I do like the fact that my team keeps me on my toes.
So I appreciate that. I just wanna say thanks for, for the great speakers that we had.
I enjoyed the talks tremendously.
The relevance on the betting is just so apt to our industry.
I mean, it's one of those things where we are constantly, I mean, I love the concept of thinking in bets.
I love the whole idea of it doesn't, and your story of losing 50,000 then losing 50,000 is so painful.
But it's true that it's just like, look, we have to take these risks and have to take these, these bets.
But in the long run, if we have the right goals set, if we thought about first principles, things that aren't a fad, but that are true fundamentals, and we shoot towards those over the long term, we're gonna be fine.
Right? And so it doesn't matter if it seems like it's not working initially, it doesn't matter if it's taking a little bit longer in those first few months or even years, it will pay off.
And so that belief and that understanding, I just thought it was tremendous.
It was really good for everyone.
It was very relevant. And so thank you for being here and thanks for doing our AMA with us.
And we'll all close. Thank you. Bring your books out to the lobby Leda's gonna be signing copies.
Enjoy the rest of the day. Thank you all so much.
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