Jag Duggal: belief

Transcript context

…I like that that's a record no one can break because it was the first one. That's a sneaky way to get a record. That's hilarious. So my sense is the reason that NewBank thrived and made it is, there's this obsession with building a product that customers are fanatical about. The stat that I shared of 80% to 90% of growth is word of mouth. And this idea of growing through word of mouth in this way is the dream of every company, whether you're consumer business, B2B, a bank especially, very unlikely that you grow at this rate through word of mouth. So I want to try to help people learn from what you guys have figured out about how to drive such massive word of mouth growth. And maybe just to start from the product perspective, how do you build a product team and a product development process that enables you to build a product that people get fanatical about. And just want to tell all their friends about? Yeah, I think there are a few things that are the fundamentals of making that happen. And to be clear, a lot of this predates my joining the company a little short of five years ago, but I think is an incredible story and is part of what inspired me to join. But first I would say, really think hard and tap into a very deep pain point. The large incumbent Brazilian banks were amongst the most profitable in the world, they were also amongst the most hated in the world. And my personal experience with that is early in my career, 20 years earlier in the late '90s, I had done a consulting project in Sao Paulo. And I remember walking to lunch one day with the client, who's a friend of mine, and we were going to Classic Churrasque Korea in Sao Paulo. And we were walking by his bank branch, and we were at a stoplight, and he basically said, that's my bank and I hate them. It was 1997. And it always stuck in my head. It stuck in my head for 20 years later when David first reached out to me. So we were tapping into a deep pain point, we can go into exactly why. But that was one thing. The second thing that I would say, and this is very intentional from David, and Ed, and Chris, our founders, is we have a culture at NewBank, which is the most alive in our employees' minds that I've ever experienced. Having worked at Google, and Facebook, and other places like that, I would bet that probably 80% to 90% of our employees could recite the five values to you if you stop them in the hall. It's not just on the wall somewhere. And the first of those values is a very peculiar phrase, set of words strung together. We want our customers to love us fanatically. And I remember when I interviewed at NewBank for the first time, and actually flew down to Sao Paulo, I remember seeing that phrase and thinking, "These are my guys. These guys are taking this seriously." And a lot of my interview process from my side was really vetting if that was real, or if that was a sign on the wall. So you start with the intent that you are going to make your customers love you. And there are a million reasons, operational, convenience, short-term financial viability, which is a real thing when you're a venture-funded startup. Any number of reasons why you can compromise those things on the edges, and in a decision day to day, minute to minute, "We can cut the edges, cut the corner here on that." And look, I don't think we have been perfect on that, but we try very hard. And when there are hard decisions to be made, we bias in favor of the customer. The customer's love, will they want to tell their friends, and neighbors, and family about it? And so I think that's the heart of it. Once you get those things right, the deep pain point, and a culture that is maniacal about making your customers fanatical, then you start to do the trade craft of product development. You make sure that you focus on customer discovery before you start building. lture that is maniacal about making your customers fanatical, then you start to do the trade craft of product development. You make sure that you focus on customer discovery before you start building. You make sure that that discovery is focused not simply on asking the customer, but on innovating on their behalf. You make sure that you take techniques from all over the place, from Procter and Gamble, to Google, to you name it, of maybe you can't ask the customer to tell you what massive new innovation they would love. You've got to observe them, and find their pain points even when they aren't noticing it. And then as you build, you commit to measuring whether they in fact love the product, not fooling yourself about that. And iterating like crazy over and over and over again until you get it just right. So those are some of the principles, but I think the trade craft follows the focus on finding a real deeply held, emotionally held pain point, and a culture that says, that's your North Star.…

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