Rocket Card (fka Truecard)

My involvement in Rocket Card (fka Truecard) began at inception. In late 2020, we began thinking about a card program. Along with Truebill’s cofounders, I evaluated dozens of partners to work with (i.e. partner banks, program managers, issuer/processors, Visa/MC, debt servicers, etc.). After 6 months of diligence and product discovery, we decided on a product construct (unsecured credit card), lightweight GTM, and partner (Deserve). In July 2021, we hired a GM for the program and I transitioned into a product lead role.

Over the ensuing year and a half, I led a growing team of PMs and engineers to hit the following milestones:

1. Within 4 months, we launched an internal beta with all of the card’s core features in place within the Truebill native mobile app.

2. Within 9 months, we launched the full product to our waitlist of ~150k members.

3. Within 1.5 years, we rebranded the card (after being acquired) and relaunched it to the public on an entirely new BIN & processor structure.

Today, the product has thousands of cardholders and incredibly strong spend retention.

Net Worth

Net Worth is a new (and 5th & final) tab in the Truebill mobile app. At its core, the net worth product allows members to track their net worth, assets, and debt in a single place. I led a team of 4 engineers over 6 months (50% time) to build and launch the experience. Unfortunately, as a result of shifting company priorities, I transitioned to focus on Truecard before our team could iterate on the product and watch it scale. Today, the product has ~250k users.

“I love it so far! Way better than having to do a manual excel sheet or check everything online. I love that it gives a lot of info about how net worth works for folks new to it. I grossly miscalculated mine by forgetting a number of loans.”

Pay Advance

I joined Truebill in Sept 2020. The pay advance product was launched in that same month prior to my arrival, so it was fresh. Due to incredibly low eligibility, most members were unable to use the product. I led a team of 3 full-stack engineers over 9 months (30% time) to improve eligibility from 5% to 60%. As a result, we were able to scale the product by 6x (200 → 1300 advances/day). Around the time of Truebill’s acquisition in Dec 2021, the broader company decided to shut down the product in order to focus resources on a new audience segment.

“It worked! I was in desperate need of that advance, I appreciate you so much.”

“Truebill has really put my spending into perspective for me and i love the pay advances!”

**See the full, updated list of neobanks here.

Neobanks (or ‘challenger banks’) exist to disrupt financial services and bring better products to consumers at more affordable prices. Most are in their nascent stages and have yet to gain a critical mass of users. Some are on the brink.

Although digital banking is no longer a novel concept to the average consumer, neobanks are not digital banks. The following criteria set a neobank apart from a digital bank.

Criteria #1 to qualify as a neobank: Must not be a subsidiary of a larger financial institution, unless acquired and still operating as a separate entity. Examples of digital banks that naturally do not meet these criteria are BankMobile, Marcus, Axos.

Fintech companies are not necessarily neobanks either. The following criteria set a neobank apart from many fintech companies.

Criteria #2 to qualify as a neobank: Must provide the most fundamental service of a modern bank — the ability to deposit money and pay for things. More specifically, the bank must offer an account that has a routing number attached to it, if not a debit card. Examples of fintech companies that do not meet this criterion are Affirm, Tala, and Upstart.

*The nitty gritty around savings, checking, and ‘cash’ accounts quickly makes identifying a neobank more complicated.

The final, general criteria:

Criteria #3 to qualify as a neobank: Must be fully digital (no branches allowed). Mobile and/or desktop.

In addition to the aforementioned non-negotiables, neobanks also typically…

1. Appeal to technology-savvy consumers.
2. Use technology to develop novel products and experiences.
3. Target underbanked or unbanked populations (low-income, immigrants)
4. Maintain a mobile app for delivering financial services.
5. Are inexpensive (if not free)
6. Do not possess a banking license, but rather work with an FDIC-insured partner bank.

In the last 6 months alone, neobanks that are headquartered or operate in the U.S. have raised a combined $1.1B+ in funding.

Some only offer a waitlist for a coming product release.

Some only offer one product.

Others are full-scale banks meeting the majority of customers’ financial needs.

Below is a complete list of consumer neobanks that are headquartered or operating in the US. It does not include business-focused neobanks like Mercury, NorthOne, and Novo.

The List:

1. Dave
2. Monzo
3. N26
4. Robinhood
5. Chime
6. SoFi
7. Revolut
8. Varo
9. Simple
10. Zero
11. Betterment
12. Acorns
13. MoneyLion
14. Sable
15. Wealthfront
16. Point
17. Transferwise
18. Step
19. Aspiration
20. Qapital
21. Current
22. HMBradley
23. Stash
24. Greenlight
25. Empower

**See the full, updated list of neobanks here.

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A Complete List of U.S. Neobanks was originally published in The Capital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet proclaims:

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Through Juliet, Shakespeare effectively describes a name as a meaningless convention and focuses all emphasis on whatever it is that the name refers to. Inherently, it seems as though Shakespeare has a fundamental misunderstanding of the importance of names: he neglects to recognize the importance of a name in informing someone about whatever it is that the name refers to.

To employ Shakespeare’s example, calling this particular flower by its respective name (a rose) insinuates that the flower smells sweet. Although the flower will still smell sweet if it is purposefully or accidentally referred to as a “trashcan,” one may not already be familiar with the fact that “the flower we call a rose” smells sweet. Consequently, the flower’s name is imperative in indicating that the flower smells sweet.

Let us extrapolate from this example that in other scenarios, names also have the power to express certain attributes and create certain feelings around whatever it is that they refer to. Take startup company names for example.

Yes, there are seemingly ridiculous names like Cake Technologies, Fat Lama, and Purple Squirrel (Techcrunch). Although some (if not all) of these names may seem a bit odd, they were in fact created in a deliberate manner to express certain characteristics about their underlying businesses. Cake Technologies, for example, lets you pay your bar tab efficiently, so the name ties the company to the food-service industry. Fat Lama, which allows neighbors to borrow items from each other via an online platform, intentionally chose a weird name to appeal to its early users (creatives and freelancers) who were “a bit out there” (Forbes). Appropriately for private job referral network Purple Squirrel, its name refers to a job candidate whose education, experience, and skills are perfect for a particular job.

Similarly, there are other startups whose names allude to their business…

Morty for smart home mortgages.

Neighborly for investing in local municipal bonds

Herb for medical cannabis.

Penny for tracking your income and spending.

Compass for buying, selling, and renting homes.

Zero for fee-free mobile banking.

Station for a single app that integrates all others.

Cover for instant insurance on anything.

Outreach for sales engagement.

Pitch for presentations and content collaboration.

…and finally a fan favorite, Slack for team productivity.

Of course, not all names are particularly telling of the business to which they refer. The crazy insurtech industry provides a particularly marvelous and peculiar example.

Hippo, Lemonade, and Luko for home and renters insurance.

The Zebra, Goji, and Marshmallow for car insurance.

Pluto for travel insurance.

Oscar for health insurance.

Trov and Pineapple for single-item insurance.

Huckleberry, Jones, and Zego for liability and workers compensation insurance.

Although many of these startups have achieved varying levels of success, should their names have been more telling of their core businesses, they may have attained even greater success. Slack and Airbnb, two exceptionally successful “startups,” are a testament to this theory.

Sorry Shakespeare, names are important.

If you’re looking for a job, internship, fellowship, program, or other experience that you think may be the next step in your career, but you’re not too sure how to go about finding the right “thing” for you, consider going down the rabbit hole. It is a technique I use daily and have been using for the past few years to bring some strategic structure to my fledgling career. Not only may you find that next “thing,” but you will also most certainly learn a tremendous amount in the process.

So what exactly does it mean to go down the rabbit hole? In a metaphorical popular culture context, the saying means “enter the unknown.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, for our purposes, it has the very same meaning. You will literally enter into the unknown by exploring what the internet and digital media have to offer. You will do so in a manner that follows no particular strategy other than merely following old, budding, or completely new interests.

You may be wondering how to literally explore what the internet and digital media have to offer…

1. Get inbound content

So, newsletters straight to your inbox. I don’t care what newsletters you subscribe to as long as they provide a constant stream of high-quality content that is ideally linked to other content. I subscribed to about a dozen newsletters in the onset and then narrowed them down to 2 daily (The Hustle and Fortune Term Sheet), 3 weekly (Accelerated, Fintech Collective, and AngelList Weekly), and a few other miscellaneous newsletters. The key is to only subscribe to content that you will read in full, otherwise, you are really just clogging up your inbox. It doesn’t matter what you read so long as you read content that you find interesting. For example, I found this peculiar bit from the Hustle particularly interesting…

2. Switch your social media

Maybe you peruse Facebook a lot. Maybe you don’t. Maybe it’s Snapchat and Instagram stories that suck up your attention. Maybe it’s not. Whatever it is, ditch it. Start perusing LinkedIn instead. You will quickly find that the platform’s curated professional content is of significantly higher value to you and your career than really anything you will find on FB, Snap, or the Gram. Let’s make this concept an easier sell with the following image.

You can either listen in on a free webinar to learn about building a technology accelerator in an emerging market OR learn how to order Five Guys like a pro. You see my point?! Over time, spending more time on LinkedIn will translate into more targeted and exciting professional interests.

3. Follow the path

No matter where you start whether it be online or offline, trust that following the path will expose you to new opportunities. Here are a variety of examples of paths I have taken within the past few years that may spark your interest in going down the rabbit hole.

1. A company comes up in conversation with a friend or family member. Later, I proceed to look up the company’s website, learning that they operate in an industry I had only recently heard of. The company is fairly small, so on the team page, I notice a variety of the employees are located in the Boston area. That’s my hometown, so I open up a new tab and search up the company on LinkedIn. From here, I peruse the full list of employees working out of the Boston office to see if I have any mutual connections. I notice there are a few with whom I have a mutual connection and one that went to my alma mater. Now I move over to the Jobs page and check out any open positions. There aren’t many openings, but according to the company’s LinkedIn page, they have grown 300% over the past 2 years. Something seems off, so I check their Crunchbase page and it turns out that they just raised $5 million this month. From this piece of information, I know that they will be posting a slew of jobs soon. I decide to reach out to that one employee from my alma mater to learn more about the company and inquire about future job opportunities.
   Company name → potential job opportunity
2. One morning, I’m reading an article synopsis in my newsletter about the unique growth of a particular company. The article really intrigues me, so I click on the link to the full article located on Techcrunch. After reading the entire article, I click on the name of the founder that is linked in the Techcrunch article. The link brings me to her LinkedIn page where I can distinctly see her career path. She started off in consulting, which is something I had never considered as a career path. I click on a variety of the other high-level employees at the firm who are all located directly on the right side of the page. I notice that many of them also started off in consulting and are now in business development roles. This prompts to begin reading more about consulting as a first step in my career.
   30-second article synopsis → entirely new potential career path
3. Late one night, I’m reading one of my newsletters from the previous day because I honestly forgot. I notice that one of the companies featured at the bottom just raised $12 million from an investor I have never heard of. The company, which makes an app for investing and money management, peaks my interest. However, instead of looking up the company, I look up the investor because they may have invested in a variety of other cool companies. I read a bit about the investor (an early-stage venture capital firm) on their website, as well as on their Medium blog. Their investment strategy seems interesting, so I check out the bios of the lower-level team members on the team page. Two of them seem to have participated in the same fellowship before working at the firm. So, I look up the fellowship. It sounds like an awesome opportunity, so I move over to LinkedIn where I look up past fellowship recipients. One of them lives in the town over from me at home. Using Hunter.io to find his email, I reach out to him asking to set up a coffee while I’m home over Christmas break to learn more about the fellowship and see if it’s the right fit for me. After having coffee, I realize the fellowship is a perfect fit and the fellowship alumnus offers to refer me.
   Random company → exciting potential fellowship opportunity

The concept of going down the rabbit hole may seem intangibly useful at first, but I can assure you that it translates into tangible results over time. I can attribute almost all of my internships (1 in Honolulu, 1 in Tel Aviv, and 2 remote) and other extra-curricular endeavors to voluntary online exploration.

“Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.” ~Mark Twain

Every startup journey begins with the entrepreneur’s dream and vision for the company. Despite the unmistakable need to raise money on this dream by convincing investors of its potential, raising money is still the most difficult part of building a successful startup. It is difficult for both first-time and serial entrepreneurs due to its time-consuming nature and strategic complexity. Regardless of how arduous the process is, it is absolutely imperative that the entrepreneur ensures their startup will have the ability to raise enough money at each stage. To do so, the entrepreneur must think strategically about the longterm trajectory of the company in every facet, whether it be funding rounds, user growth, or product development milestones. Unfortunately for the entrepreneur, there is one major pitfall to avoid early on in his or her strategic thinking. What is that fatal pitfall you may ask?

The entrepreneur does not raise enough money at the seed stage.

There are two primary reasons why the entrepreneur may fail to raise enough money in the early days of the startup.

1. Lack of Experience. The entrepreneur is perhaps a first-time entrepreneur and therefore does not have the experience necessary to understand to what extent they will need funds to run their business. As a general rule, it is suggested that the entrepreneur raise twice as much money as he or she deems necessary.
2. Avoid Dilution. In this scenario, the entrepreneur is experienced enough to understand that they may need significant funds to run their business, however, they are fearful of getting diluted by issuing a large number of new shares. Rather than get diluted, they prefer to raise less money at the seed stage and spend that money carefully until their A round.

Regardless of the reason for not raising a sufficient seed round, there is a plethora of consequences that can in some cases lead to the startup’s failure. If the entrepreneur does in fact not raise enough seed money, the startup will enter death valley.

The Perils of Death Valley

The entrepreneur does not under any circumstances want to be in death valley for the sake of their startup. Death valley is most often situated between the seed and series A rounds when the entrepreneur is still lacking the experience necessary to make strategic growth decisions. There are two major perils in death valley that will severely punish the entrepreneur:

Stagnant Growth

When the CEO is consumed with raising additional money either in another equity round or a convertible note, he or she is not focused on orchestrating the business’s growth at a pivotal time. Not only may the team miss key growth milestones due to lack of strategic vision from the CEO, but monetary constraints will also kill the team’s moral. In total, while the CEO is scrambling to raise more money (often a difficult task without key milestones to exhibit concrete progress), the business will grow slowly and hesitantly.

Discounted Round

Ironically, when the entrepreneur intentionally raises less in a seed round to avoid dilution (and then runs out of money), he or she gets diluted even more when it comes time to raise a series A round. The entrepreneur must raise a sort of intermediary round to propel the company to a series A round, but does not want to begin the dreaded discussion around company valuation. The discussion becomes difficult when the entrepreneur feels that the company has made significant progress and therefore should be valued higher than its seed valuation. However, due to lack of funds and the inability to run far, this progress can seldom be quantified by commercial KPIs, and therefore does not necessarily present an objective justification for a higher valuation than at the earlier seed stage. Therefore, a convertible note is used to raise money quickly and delay the valuation discussion until the series A round. Unfortunately for the entrepreneur however, the note has a nice cap and discount for the investor which severely dilutes the entrepreneur’s shares in the series A round.

Take the following scenario to illustrate the perils of death valley.

*Note: In this example, a $2 million convertible note is issued with a $6 million cap. The note therefore converts to 25% equity in the series A round.

1. Sara founds StrongBit, a cloud-based data analytics platform that integrates multiple big data sources into one dashboard.
2. Due to her experience as an entrepreneur, Sara is able to bootstrap her startup until she raises a $500,000 seed round for 20% equity, hoping it will take StrongBit to a strong series A round.
3. 6 months later, Sara realizes she does not have enough runway to position StrongBit for a strong series A round. With the $100,000 she has left, Sara knows she will not be able to lead her team to secure those 10 paying enterprise clients necessary to impress VCs for a series A round. This puts Sara in a predicament.
4. Due to StrongBit’s lack of tangible progress and arbitrary valuation, Sara chooses to issue a convertible note for $2 million with a $6 million cap and a 20% discount. The kicker is coming…
5. Finally, StrongBit secures 10 paying enterprise clients, has a valid CAC, and brings on two new advisors. Things are looking good, so Sara decides to raise a $5 million series A round at a nice $12 million pre-money valuation. During this same series A round, the note converts to equity at a $6 million cap, which substantially dilutes Sara’s shares.

In the end, although Sara was able to bring StrongBit to a high valuation, she gets screwed on the terms of the convertible note, which was necessary due to lack of sufficient seed money in the onset. In this scenario, her shares are diluted more than they would have been if she had raised that same $2 million in an equity round.

As the company’s valuation rises past the cap on the convertible note, the entrepreneur’s dilution potential also rises. So if the series A round values the company at $20 million, as opposed to $12 million, the entrepreneur will be diluted significantly more, as illustrated below.

How to Avoid Death Valley — If You Love Your Shares, Set Them Free

In order for the entrepreneur to avoid death valley and the potential failure of their businesses, it is critical that they maximize the value and potential of their dream. Similarly, it is imperative that the entrepreneur maximize their ability to raise seed money on this dream and thereby properly equip the company to reach a solid series A round.

Invest in…

companies that leverage technology to expand access to financial knowledge and prosperity on a global scale.

92 characters.

“Financial Prosperity”

There are 3 problematic trends that inform my assertion that there is a market opportunity for providing products that improve financial prosperity.

Rising wealth inequality

Over the past 50 years, the wealth gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. has grown drastically and will continue to do so as we approach 2030. Now in 2018, the top 1% own ~40% of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 80% own less than 7% of all wealth according President Obama’s 2014 State of the Union Address. More specifically, the top 1% own ~38% of stock market wealth and the bottom 80% own less than 8%. This particular disparity enables the wealthy to have significant passive income that furthers the wealth gap. Those who are not wealthy do not feel the benefit of cyclical reinvestment of stock market earnings, but rather invest most of their earnings in savings accounts and home ownership, neither of which yield a high ROI.

Rising healthcare costs

According to an OECD report in 2015, healthcare in developed countries will become effectively unaffordable by 2050 without significant policy reforms. Unless costs can be contained, public healthcare expenditures will increase from 6% to 9% of GDP on average (among OECD countries) by 2030. That is a 50% increase overall! Not only are healthcare costs expected to increase in developed countries, but they will also rise ~7.5% in transition economies by 2020. Consumers still pick up a large portion of the bill for healthcare and so it becomes an imperative issue to address in the search for widespread financial prosperity.

Rising student loan debt

To add to the already dire looking situation with regards to healthcare costs, student loan debt is an increasingly apparent problem throughout the U.S. Tuition and fees have risen by almost 600% over the past three decades, whereas median family income has only risen by 200% according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. As a result, millennials feel the deep burden of student loan debt when they attempt to establish their financial stability.

Taking into consideration the rising wealth gap, rising healthcare costs, and rising student loan debt, it becomes clear that characterizing today’s society as “financially prosperous” is far from the truth.

“Financial Knowledge”

Only one simple fact is necessary for demonstrating the need for enhanced financial literacy among consumers:

Almost two thirds of Americans cannot pass a basic, 5-question financial literacy exam. More here.

“Global Scale”

Over the next 2, 5, and 10 years, consumers in developing nations will increasingly be able to take advantage of the many digital products tackling financial literacy and prosperity due to the emergence of widespread internet connectivity and other infrastructure development. For example, this trend can be demonstrated by Amazon’s creation of a ‘lite’ mobile app for Indian consumers where internet connectivity is limited. More here. And here. And even here.

A few companies I admire that fit this thesis:

Betterment, Hedgeable, Wealthfront, Grove, Prosper, Robinhood, Wealthsimple, Moneylion, Stash, Neighborly, Chime, Monzo, Aspiration.

Regardless of how one chooses to define the excel community, it is certainly one composed of individual relationships, many of which overlap between professional and social. Despite religious, professional, and often social similarities, excel fellows are geographically diverse, thereby demanding individual relationships that are strong and can be maintained across thousands of miles. It is this geographic diversity that perpetuates such a robust community, a community of one-on-ones. Here are a few examples in no particular order.

My Roommate

Jason Spector is my roommate by chance, so thank God for chance. He is a fantastic roommate, friend, and fellow explorer. We spend ample hours exploring the different beaches Tel Aviv has to offer, as well as the many bars and cafés scattered throughout the city. Not only is Jason a friend in a social sense, but also in a professional sense. Many nights we find ourselves discussing the latest hot acquisition or the future of certain industry trends. Jason pushes me to question my knowledge on various topics, both those that I am quite familiar with and others that are foreign to me. Together, we created a bond that will surely last.

My Israeli Peer

Alon Malin is a soldier in the Israeli Intelligence Corps. However, like the excel community, that is just one way of describing him. He is fantastically quirky and an interesting conversationalist. For me, he is a great way to connect with Israeli life and culture. We discuss everything from the enigmatic projects he works on in the IDF to the lectures he gives on curiosity at local libraries. My relationship with Alon is one that I will always cherish in both a social and professional context.

My Madricha

Shani Pereg is perhaps the most amazing madricha I have had on any organized trip or experience in recent memory. She is again another invaluable ticket to a more authentic Israeli experience and a constant support in times of need. When I was unable to load my bus pass for over a week and I let Shani know, she immediately called me out of concern to inquire about my situation. Regardless of when or where, Shani and I always throw jokes at each other and continue to foster a relationship that brings us closer together.

My Mentor

Ido Pollak is a Partner and Group CTO at TheTime, the Israeli venture capital firm and incubator where I work. He is an exceptionally knowledgeable investor with a rich technological background. Ido and I built a relationship that is founded on solving a fast stream of problems related to internal investment research, as well as portfolio ad-hoc projects. Although Ido is new to the excel community (as this is his first time as an excel mentor), he is seemingly well-versed in providing me with a constant stream of interesting problems to tackle. I trust that my work will demonstrate that TheTime should continue to work with excel fellows in the future.

As I write this piece, I am sitting with a good friend of mine from excel who is also writing alongside me. Our individual relationship is just one of many other examples of one-on-ones within the Excel community.

What it is

Naturally, when we think of democratization, the concept of a democracy surfaces as a sort of familiar foundation for this perhaps less familiar term. So, if we all understand a democracy to be a structure that includes the input of many, as opposed to a select few, we can then understand democratization to be the process of making something more inclusive. Not only does democratization have to do with inclusivity, but it also ties deeply into accessibility. In fact, describing democratization as a process that creates accessibility as opposed to inclusivity is slightly more accurate because inclusivity infers the voluntary participation of a group of people. Access merely insinuates the potential for participation. However, when democratizing products are built firmly with the user in mind, inclusivity typically follows.

Ok, maybe that was a bit confusing.

Let me give you an example of how democratization creates access and subsequent inclusivity. So there’s this company called Robinhood. Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t. Nevertheless, to put it simply, Robinhood is designed to democratize investing. With their app and web platform, anyone can invest their money in the stock market for free. Oh, and to squash all those concerns that just popped into your head about hidden fees, I can assure you they do not exist. Robinhood makes money another way.

So picture a free investment platform that provides everyone with access to the stock market. No longer is investing in the stock market only accessible to those who can meet minimum balance requirements and/or afford to pay all sorts of fees. Thanks to Robinhood, investing is now accessible to everyone. Remember, the inclusivity only comes into play when people actually take advantage of the access. Have no fear though, Robinhood’s user base is growing exponentially, so the inclusivity is absolutely there as well.

Robinhood is by no means the only company in the business of democratizing investments. Three other startups (Betterment, Wealthfront, and Wealthsimple) combined with Robinhood have raised a total of ~$1.2 billion from VCs to democratize investments around the world.

What happens when it happens

Despite enabling increased access for consumers, developers, and others alike, the process of democratization has a stark flip side. When democratization acts as a sort of creative destruction, it slowly eliminates the desire for products and services provided by incumbents that perpetuate a noninclusive ecosystem. For example, Robinhood is slowly eliminating the need for traditional banks that offer passive investment vehicles with fees, as millennials and baby-boomers alike switch to their insanely user-friendly investment platform. More here.

Why you should care

Through technology, startups like Wealthsimple are democratizing investing in a way that addresses one of the great inequalities in the U.S.: the ever-growing wealth gap between the rich and the poor. If you’re not familiar with the U.S. wealth gap, just take a peak at the graph below and you will quickly understand the gravity of the issue.

“If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”

Warren Buffet said that. For many years, it was only people like him that had the access to complex and even simple financial instruments that would enable his wealth to grow. Now, many of those same instruments (i.e. public equities) are available to everyone for little or no cost. To make the situation more tangible, consider the following figures:

If the bottom 80% for example take advantage of the free investing tools offered by Robinhood and the like, stock ownership will slowly flow from the top 10% to the bottom 80%, thereby diminishing the wealth gap.

The democratization of investments is being used as a powerful tool to close the wealth gap in the U.S. and it will continue to be employed far into the future. Read more here.

If you have questions or just want to discuss this topic further, feel free to ping me at noahbbrown97@gmail.com

Un·bun·dl·ing: “a process by which a company with several different lines of business retains core businesses and sells off assets, product lines, divisions or subsidiaries” (more here)

Many financial service companies have been unbundling over the past decade. However, despite the common definition, the unbundling of traditional financial service companies is largely involuntary. Wells Fargo did not sell off their “investing and retirement” business, rather their users were stolen by startups like Robinhood and Stash. Wells Fargo also did not voluntarily give up its “financing and credit” business to startups like Kabbage and Fundera. The list goes on, as traditional banks have also lost users to startups offering alternative personal finance, insurance, and payroll platforms.

Since the great recession in 2008, fintech startups have capitalized on two important trends in the financial services industry. The first is the lack of digital innovation demonstrated by the traditional financial institutions. As digitization becomes cheaper and more accessible, it will quickly become the norm (if it has not already) for all companies attempting to maintain their existing user base and attract new users. By not implementing new internet platforms with more intuitive UIs, utilizing AI, and now investing in blockchain technologies, traditional banks quickly saw an exodus of users. Those users were gobbled up well-funded fintech companies, just chomping at the bit to show users what truly consumer-oriented financial services look like.

The second trend is the increasing lack of trust that millennial consumers have in traditional financial institutions. Considering millennials will soon inherit ~$41 trillion from baby boomers, they are the user base traditional banks desperately want to retain. Nevertheless, millennials do not feel the same as baby boomers about the ever-powerful and inherently experienced Goldman Sachs banking system with its silver plaque on the wall. They are willing to switch to a system of à la carte financial services, especially after traditional banks f*cked up in 2008. Fintech startups are quickly gaining the trust of millennial consumers via insanely easy-to-use UXs and UIs, as well as through transparent company branding and structure. According to a study conducted by Ipsos MediaCT and LinkedIn, “less than half of Millennials (46%) see themselves staying with their current financial services companies over the next few years. And about half of affluent Millennials (48%) say they’re open to switching to another company offering better products and services.”

The fact of the matter is that millennials no longer trust the blue-suited guy on wall street and prefer to trust the robo-advisor or bankless bank.

One day, Max the buffalo got a bit too comfortable eating grass out on the plains. A pack of hyenas came along and instead of killing the buffalo, proceeded to bite off bits and pieces of the buffalo’s flesh, very slowly, until it succame to its injuries and died. See any parallels?

Traditional banks realize that the hyenas will not stop and so they must somehow adapt. Perhaps a quick thrust of the horns and quick burst of speed to the brush…

In 2016, Goldman Sachs created a service, Marcus, offering no-fee personal loans in an attempt to appeal to millennial consumers. The service is intended to compete with companies like Affirm, SoFi, Lending Club, and Prosper. It remains to be seen whether traditional banks like Goldman Sachs will succeed at maintaining a large millennial client base. Will the buffalo make it to the brush and survive?

A brief list of hand-selected fintech startups by industry to peak or extend your interest:

Consumer Banking:
1. N26
2. Simple
3. Monzo
4. Starling Bank
5. Monese

Lending:
1. Affirm
2. LendingClub
3. LendingUp
4. Better Mortgage
5. Kabbage

Payments:
1. Venmo
2. Adyen
3. Gusto
4. Square
5. Stripe

Investments:
1. Robinhood
2. Betterment
3. Wealthfront
4. Neighborly
5. Hedgeable

Personal Finance:
1. MoneyLion
2. Even
3. Credit Karma
4. Earnin
5. Grove

Insurance:
1. Lemonade
2. Metromile
3. Oscar
4. Clover Health
5. Insurify

If you have questions or just want to discuss this topic further, feel free to ping me at noahbbrown97@gmail.com

This is a guide to LinkedIn. Information, techniques, and methods can be found herein. The goal of this guide is to appeal to a wide variety of job and internship seekers. Therefore, some “things,” for lack of a better overarching term, will seem fairly basic to some, but revolutionary to others. A few techniques will be fairly advanced, however when used properly, can prove to be highly beneficial.

Moreover, this guide will primarily focus on LinkedIn as a tool for finding, pursuing, and securing jobs/internships. It will not focus on the optimization of the LinkedIn profile or the LinkedIn newsfeed, although both are important to the LinkedIn experience.

The following “things” are listed in an arbitrary order as different people may find different “things” more beneficial than others. However, they are organized into two sections (Jobs and People), as LinkedIn is useful for searching both job postings and specific people.

Jobs:

Thing 1: Step 1

When beginning a search from the jobs page, click the search button right away, instead of filling in either the search description or search location. This will prevent you from narrowing your search more than you would like to in the onset. For example, if you don’t care about the job description or location, but you do care about the industry, then you can filter by industry later.

Thing 2: Viewing Options

The job search platform has two views: classic and split. The split view is far more functional, as it allows you to view everything about a job without actually clicking on it. There’s just one problem. You will not be able to manage your saved job searches from the split view. So, if you want to access them, switch over to classic view and they will show up on the right side of the page.

Thing 3: Filtering

There are numerous filters you can use to specify which jobs you actually see in your search. Some of the more useful filters are “job type,” “location,” and “industry.” Think of filters as a tool to find the right jobs, not exclude the wrong jobs. This is an important differentiation because by doing so, you will avoid filtering out too many jobs. With too much filtering, you risk excluding jobs that in fact, you may actually be interested in. The key is to slowly add more and more filters after looking through the search results periodically.

Thing 4: Saved Searches

Yup, you can save searches, meaning specific combinations of filters. You can even tell LinkedIn to notify you of new jobs for that search every day, week, or month.

People:

Thing 1: Finding Alumni

Searching for your school’s alumni can be exceptionally helpful when it comes time to apply for jobs. Alumni are great for informational interviews, referrals, and just connections in general. To find alumni, just filter your search (in the general search bar) by a school. This simple step will produce a list of all of your school’s alumni. However, you may already have a list of companies that interest you. In this case, you can go one step further by filtering the results by company or companies (in addition to school). This particular filtering tactic has been instrumental for me in the past. In early 2018, I was able to connect with an alumnus at Catalant Technologies where I later interviewed and was given an offer. The company happened to only be recruiting at certain schools in the Boston area, but with my alumni referral, I was able to get my foot in the door.

Thing 2: Finding Employees

Filter that general people search by company. You’ll find all of the employees at pretty much any company you could imagine. (Be careful as there may be multiple companies with the same name.) Before filtering any further, it is important to scroll through the employees and begin to observe job titles. Depending on the size of the firm, you may be able to get a better idea of the company’s structure, as well as who is doing the hiring. (Extra tip: At companies with less than 20 employees, c-level executives are typically doing the hiring. At companies with 20–300 employees, hiring managers or “talent people” are doing the hiring. At companies larger than 300 employees, your first point of contact will typically be a recruiter and you may transition to a hiring manager later.) Click on different employees and read! Everything has value. Profile descriptions will help you understand company culture, past positions will shed light on paths towards working at that specific company, and schools will help you determine what types of schools that company hires from.

Thing 3: Secondary Connections

Of course, you probably have connections on LinkedIn, but where the true value of LinkedIn begins to become apparent is in those secondary connections. These are people who are connected with your connections, but not with you. Just be doing a basic search (maybe filter by school, company, etc.) you will begin to see some people listed as secondary connections. You can also filter by just secondary connections to remove everyone else. Let’s use an example to uncover the power of secondary connections. Take your aunt for example. She works at General Electric. Perhaps you see that there are three people in your list that share her as a mutual connection. You could ask her to introduce you to any of those people in order to get your foot in the door at a specific company. Maybe one is even a hiring manager!

P.S. These things led me to five internships during my undergraduate career.

And no, I do not have a specific obsession with Dr. Seuss.

A Guide to LinkedIn was originally published in Student Voices on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.