A Founder’s Guide to Pivoting Without Killing the Company | Misha Esipov

Speaker A: People's feeling of worth in a company is ultimately a function of, of whether you are winning. And if you're not winning for too long of a period of time, no one wants to be on that team anymore. And there was a quote that, ah, you know, an investor advisor said to me that, you know, really resonated, um, which is something like, you know, ships are safest in harbor, but that's not what they're built for. And so I went out in front of, you know, our virtual all hands every couple weeks and that was the COVID slide.

Speaker B: Today on the Eric Ries show, I sit down with Misha Esopov, the co founder and CEO of Nova Credit, a series D credit infrastructure company. Working with thousands of institutions, including some of the world's largest like Chase, HSBC and Scotiabank. Misha's story is quintessentially American. He and his parents immigrated to this country when he was only three years old. They came from Russia and had to adjust not just to language and culture, but he had to watch his parents rebuild their lives from scratch. When he came of age, he set out to solve one of the most painful problems immigrants face, being shut out of the financial system. In this conversation, Misha shares how NovaCredit was born inside Stanford's startup garage. How the team survived a near death moment when Covid completely erased their market practically overnight. Remember, there was no immigration happening at all. And how they rebuilt the company into a market leading platform powering fairer financial access for millions of people.

Speaker C: If you care about courage, product, market

Speaker B: fit, or what it truly takes to build new civic infrastructure inside one of the most entrenched industries in America, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.

Speaker C: All right, Misha, thank you very much for uh, coming on.

Speaker A: Pleasure to be here.

Speaker C: So I want to talk a little bit about your path into entrepreneurship because Nova Credit, you know, it's so much about connecting with immigrants and being a financial support to immigrants. Like you yourself have a really interesting immigration story. So I wonder if you could share a little bit about the background, how you came to this country. And you know, when was the first time that you encountered the idea of entrepreneurship as like a potential career that you could have.

Speaker A: So, uh, I was born in the Soviet Union, um, and uh, my parents were scientists and we immigrated to the States when I was a little kid, right after the fall of the, of the wall. And um, you know, like many people that move to the States, kind of start out, um, you start over when you immigrate, right? You don't have the. You have to learn a new language. You oftentimes have to retrain professionally. Uh, and on top of that, you don't have, um, the same social safety net. And I mean, I can spend a lot more time talking about the immigration journey and why I've dedicated such a large percentage of my career to, to it. Um, but, uh, to make a long story short, you know, we started a business that, uh, really helps make immigration easier. Uh, and from that have gone on to serve a lot more, uh, opportunities, uh, in the space. And in terms of my own path to entrepreneurship, I mean, I've always kind of been, been, Been curious about it. Um, I ended up studying math in, uh, undergrad and starting my career, uh, working in finance, um, because that was kind of the thing to do living in, in New York at the time. Uh, and, uh, in terms of just like early innings of entrepreneurship, I mean, I was a paper boy back in the day, live in the Midwest, lived in Madison, Wiscon. And that's kind of like running your own small business in a way, in terms of the routes that you get. It's one of my first jobs. Um, and, you know, I can go. I can go through a few more examples like that.

Speaker C: What do you remember of your time in the Soviet Union? Were you, were you young enough to, to remember that at all?

Speaker A: I, I moved when I was two, uh, and a half years old, so I don't really remember that. But every summer I would go back and see, uh, some extended family and make sure I continue to improve my language. Um, so every summer growing up from 3 to 18, I'd actually spend it in, in Russia.

Speaker C: Did your parents ever talk about what it was like being a scientist in the context of the Soviet Union?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a country that really prizes, um, uh, science. Right. I mean, that's a very, very strong scientific, uh, discipline. And, uh, as soon as the Soviet Union fell apart and people could actually physically leave, uh, the country, there was this massive brain drain of scientists who left. Um, you know, many came to the States, many came to Europe, many went to Israel. And so we were part of that exodus. We were part of this, you know, over a million people who left the Soviet Union in pursuit of, uh, a new life.

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Speaker C: You talked about kind um, of going into finance as the thing that everybody did growing up in New York. That's, I mean it's such a common, such a common trajectory too, uh, in first generation. But how did your parents feel about it? What was that like for them?

Speaker A: The way I kind of appeased my parents is I studied something that was difficult, which was math. And so that ended up being my major. And uh, I think it helped me think uh, bigger and think clearly. And you know, I am a big believer in first principle thinking and how you build and build, uh, a team, build a product, build a company and you know, finance was the kind of the safe path. And so when I, you know, I moved to New York when I was uh, when I was 18 in 2006 and like tech wasn't nearly anywhere near where it is today. Uh, and the most prestigious thing you could go and do out of college was go work at Goldman Sachs. And so I kind of put my head down and did that and that's what I figured out how to do. And then I, you know, did that for a few years and I went to a big private equity fund called Apollo and did that for a couple years. Then I found my way a little bit into that path and I was kind of lost around what I wanted to do. And that's ultimately what drew me out to California.

Speaker C: Yeah. What was the culture clash like landing at Stanford? GSB coming from. It's like such a story of culture transitions. Now we're talking about going uh, from east coast to West Coast. What was that like?

Speaker A: Very different environments. I mean the firms I had worked for in New York are notoriously sharp elbowed, uh, very sharp. I have a lot of um, uh, respect for the people I worked for and I learned a tremendous amount working for them. But culturally wildly different way of operating than um, and on, on the West Coast. And you know, you, you, you, you land at Sanford and you, you uh, you immediately hear about this infamous class called Touchy Feely which is all about, you know, training self awareness and being more in tune with, you know, how you are perceived. And that's just.

Speaker C: They didn't do that at Apollo.

Speaker A: You didn't really do that at Apollo. Exactly. And so, you know, I think there's a lot of merit to uh, uh, you know, the, the Stanford discipline around some of this stuff. But I also think there's a, uh, you know, there's a way it can go too far where if you're so um, uh, if you're, if you're over tuned to how you're perceived, you lose sight of what's most important uh, in you know, and which is like driving something forward.

Speaker C: Yeah. And you conceived the idea for Nova Credit at Stanford. Do I remember that right?

Speaker A: That's right. Yeah. We started out uh, in uh, you know, one of these entrepreneurship courses, um, called Startup, ah, Garage, which is at the, at the gsb and did that for a little bit. And then we got into Steve Blank's lean launchpad, uh, which is uh, where we ultimately kind of iterated on the early versions of the product and ultimately incorporated business.

Speaker C: So this is like what 10 years ago about, is that right?

Speaker A: Yeah, Almost exactly. Almost 10 years ago.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Almost a completely different world. Entrepreneurship and technology speaking wise. But I love these stories. We see them a lot on this show where we have this kind of like overnight success that was 10 years in the making and Yeah, I mean

Speaker A: it's, yeah, uh, it's a hard business to get off the ground. Yeah.

Speaker C: So can you remember like how did you, how did you, what did you originally think the business was going to be? Can you share some of those early challenges? Because at this you were on the long flat part of the hockey stick for a long time. This was a grind and it makes sense because of the scale of the ambition of what you're trying to do. So talk to us a little bit about, like, some of those early learnings. What was. Maybe if I put it this way, if I could go back in time and talk to your younger self, like, how would you have pitched the company to me? What was the vision at that time? And then how has it evolved as you kind of figured out what the world actually needed?

Speaker A: I mean, the earliest versions of the business really stemmed from curiosity about how students make financial decisions. So, like, I was in a great university, I was surrounded by classmates, and, you know, there were businesses, like, so far, and Credit Karma at the time, who, you know, who were taking off and have gone on to become great, great businesses. Um, and so I was interested in this question of, like, how do students make financial decisions? And I started doing a ton of user research, talking to my classmates, talking to friends, talking to anybody who would give me the time of day and asking them, you know, do you have a credit card? Do you have a student loan? Uh, where did you get those products? Um, you know, what, what, who did you go to for advice on how to decide to do, to. To get those? And it was through that user research that we uncovered, uh, a fairly obvious problem, which is that if you are, um, uh, you know, international student, you can't access credit. Right? So half of the people I was speaking with just so happened to be international students, and 100% of that half would tell me some version of the problem that we've now solved. Um, and so that was sort of the, the early versions of the, of the problem statement. And there were other problem statements that we kind of uncovered, but that was the one that we, that we gravitated towards. And then, then it was specifically in the, uh, Lean Launchpad class where, uh, we started, you know, pursuing the MVP methodology that, you know, a thing or two about and iterating on, you know, what the early versions of the product could look like, getting it out into the field, uh, and ultimately making our way to a business that we incorporated and called Nova Credit. And, uh, the basic idea was that, you know, when you come here and apply for credit as someone who's new to the country, you get turned down because there's no information about who you are. And, uh, you know, at the same time you just came here, you need to get a place to live, you need to open a bank account, you need to get a credit card like you are at this point of, like, peak need. And, uh, we had this sort of crazy idea which was that, like, well, hold on most of the people that have the means to come here have had experience with financial services before. They've had a bank account, they've had a credit card. Therefore there is, you know, evidence of them being a presumably a good borrower in their home country. So like, why can't we just help them bring that evidence with them to the US and so it was that sort of semi obvious idea that we naively, uh, went out to, to, to turn into a reality.

Speaker C: Do you have any fun, Steve Blank stories from, from those pretty early on

Speaker A: in Lean Launchpad, he was like, never satisfied with the number of interviews. Like his whole thing early on was like, if you're not each doing 10 plus interviews a week, you're not trying, you know. And so like you have, if you have a team of three, four people and you're each doing 10 interviews a week, that's 30, 40 conversations. That's uh, that's uh, actually a pretty impressive amount of velocity of new.

Speaker C: The data set you're generating is incredible if you, if you follow his advice.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So that was like, uh, and that's something I still am a huge, huge, huge, huge believer in. Like anytime, anytime I'm lost or, you know, the business is struggling, the way you find your way is go talk to the customer.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's the ground truth. Steve always, Steve would always yell at me not to make sure my decisions were being based in the ground truth. I remember that very well. So, yeah, that's, he's, he's got a gift for that. Okay, so you're, you're kind of settling in on this idea of immigrants coming to the United States. They don't have a credit history, so you want to establish credit history on their behalf based on what they were doing before. What I think is really interesting about that is I could easily see some of your MBA classmates being like, isn't that kind of limiting? You know, because then, um, you can only. You're very limiting your market only to immigrants to the United States, only to countries where you have, you can build those relationships. Like, I get to see people be like, shouldn't you do something that's more general purpose, something bigger? And that's such a classic trap that entrepreneurs fall into trying to, you know, do everything for everybody instead of being able to narrowly focus what was it that drew you to this specific market? And like, yeah, uh, how did you overcome the fear? It's like classic MBA fear, that this ultimately wouldn't be a big enough business to matter.

Speaker A: I mean, that you hit it right on the head, which is, which is like, you know, great businesses often come from uh, solving very acute problems faced by very narrow segments of people and doing that very well and then from that foothold expanding and compounding into adjacencies and that, you know, to make a 10 year story short, that is what Nova Credit has, has done. Um, I wish it was as clear and deliberately as I just put it. It's sort of, you know the market forces forced us to evolve into a very different business over, over time. But early on that was, that was the belief. There is this population of people, um, and if you throw a few stats out, ah, at you, um, about 350 million immigrants around the world. So similar size to the entire US population. US has about just over 50 million of them, you know, legally here, not even including the undocumented segment which is, you know, a different um, segment and not our core market. And then every year there's about uh, 10 million visas that get issued and 2 million of those are roughly, you know, what's called here to stay. So folks who are here on H1BS and student visas and other various employment, uh, visas and so that was the core market. We're like, if we could help those 2 million people every year, you know, land here and instantly get access to all the products they need, we could build a reasonably sized business and from there we could enter um, this uh, incredibly well protected credit bureau space. So I don't know how closely you've studied the space. Probably not as much of a credit bureau nerd as I am at this

Speaker C: point, but I wish I knew less about it to be totally honest. It's a really arcane and very frustrating business. But, but I'm sure we have a lot of listeners who have, you know, they've interacted with a credit bureau in their own life as like a place that provides the score that you have to get for certain documents. But interacted with um, credit bureaus personally, you know, if they had to, you know, to, to get a car loan or home loan or something like that, but probably don't have very much of an understanding of what that is as a business. In fact I've had plenty of people who don't actually understand what kind of a thing is a credit bureau. Like is it a business, is it an institution, is it a government thing? Like what is it? So maybe just give us a little bit of an overview. You're entering into a market that's just incredibly, incredibly controlled by a very small set of institutions. What Was that like.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I mean we knew relatively little about the credit bureau industry at the time and started doing a ton of you know, desktop research and talking to experts and you know, getting as, as, as smart as we could as quickly as we could. And uh, the, the credit bureaus to put along, you know, to, to boil it all down, uh, are the gatekeepers to financial access. Um, what they do is they uh, receive information from every bank and lender out there and then they sell that same data back to them. And so they have this amazing um, you know, data moat and network effect in their, in their business, uh, where you know, they can take a customer, you know, customer for them would be a lender. They receive data from them for free, then they attach that data to other data and then they sell it right back to them. Uh, and from the perspective of a consumer, like this is your record, like this is your history of, of uh, borrowing and repaying your obligations. And uh, it's an industry that's been around for over 100 years. Uh, it is incredibly protected by uh, data moats, by regulatory, uh, moats, by sales cycle moats. Uh, and there are, prior to our existence there had never really been a venture backed business that had managed to find a foothold in this otherwise impenetrable space. And so we found uh, a gap in the industry which is you know, this uh, cross border problem which is for the 2 million folks who come to the US every year. And from that we've managed to find a foothold and then from there we've attached more products and capabilities and expanded our reach. But the, you know, the credit bureau space is incredibly uh, critical to the US economy. It supports financial access, it helps power a more, you know, safe and sound financial system, allows lenders to constantly go out and lend and provide capital. Um, and so it's ah, it's one of these spaces that is incredibly important and therefore ever more important to innovate in.

Speaker C: So I don't know if you'll understand, even understand this question, but I want to try because credit bureaus are an example of what I call civic infrastructure. Like they're, they're kind, they're, these are, they are private companies, but they don't sell a product in the normal way that we can sit down. We think about companies that sell a product. You know, you even, even financial services. You're like I go to a bank, I borrow money from the bank. The score, the metadata that the bureaus provide. As you say, that's like a gatekeeper into a much bigger industry. So in some ways they govern or control who can have access to the entire universe of American fintech products. That's a, if you think about the ratio of the market cap of the credit bureaus to the market cap of the entire US financial system, they are tiny players that have this kind of over governance or oversight role over a much larger pool. And I've just known so many entrepreneurs over the years who've gone to start a business and when they realize that in order to create a business they're going to have to enter into this category of becoming civic infrastructure, they basically run for the hills and they're like, um, you know what? Actually I just want to sell a product. Can I just like find something that I can sell on Amazon? Or I could be the next day like they're trying to do something like they, they thought it was still wanting, they thought they wanted something really ambitious. But then when it gets into these like bigger civic dimensions, which requires then taking on, you know, very complicated business development, taking on entrenched competitors, but also taking on a lot of moral responsibilities because obviously when we're doing gatekeeping then we have questions of bias and fair access, we have questions of who should be excluded and who should be included. And uh, then obviously the regulatory and compliance dimension of it, I don't have to tell you, is like really intense and you have to get it right. Um, so I'm curious, did you have a moment where you considered like, is this actually too hard, this actually makes sense to take on as a, as a business? Or like were there moments where you, you or your co founders like hesitated or maybe where someone gave you the advice like to do something simpler? Like did you, does it make sense to you, what I'm talking about, this kind of distinction to an ordinary business and this kind of higher level kind of business.

Speaker A: If you don't have a business that is generating profit, uh, it is not enduring and therefore it will not exist in the long term. And so you can have all sorts of altruistic ambitions and want to save the world, but if you're not doing so in a way that's sustainable, then you know, you're, you're not building something that'll actually have a lasting impact. And so I think you have to believe that whatever path you, you choose, um, can be, you know, can generate a profit, right? You have to ultimately, you know, achieve, break even and become a self sustaining business. And so it's really a question of like viability, right? Like it can be A great idea, it can help a lot of people. But if there isn't a great business model, uh, at the end of the, at the end of the road, then it's, it's, you know, energy and money wasted. And so, yes, there was a tremendous amount of fear, uh, along the way. And I think particularly people that have, you know, a, ah, professional services background and come from an environment about, you know, risk and reward and you have to hedge this exposure and particularly business school types who, you know, you know, think about optionality and maximizing the number of doors that they can keep open for as long as they can. Um, you know, I think though, you naturally gravitate to a world of, um, de risking everything. And that's just not, not what, that's just not what entrepreneurship is. And there's a, a particular quote that, um, really resonated with me at the time, um, when I was struggling with whether or not to actually take the plunge to go and, you know, give this a shot, go see if I could will this into existence. Uh, which was, um, something like, uh, you can never cross a chasm in two steps. It always takes one giant leap. And what I loved about that is, you know, as, uh, as someone who is trying to decide, am I going to go and spend the next chapter of my life doing this? I kept finding myself eager to go look, you know, look around the next corner, right, go get a little bit more information and de risk the decision. But at the end of the day, there was still a leap of faith required. There's still all these unknowns and unknowns, unknowns that uh, you'd have to navigate through to go and make it to the other side and become a sustainable business. Uh, and that helped me, that metaphor helped me dimensionalize the fact that it just takes courage. You have to find the courage to just leap and not know all the answers and work hard to figure it out.

Speaker C: Where do you think you got that courage from? Did you ever reflect on that as it was happening? Like, I just, again, I know a lot of people that chicken out when faced with that irreducible fact. You know, you, what you said is so right. There's a, there's all the mat you do, all the de risking you want. At a certain point, you have to commit yourself to take the leap to do the activity, even just then to spend the energy doing the de risking like it's doesn't make the risk go away. All we can do is try to manage as best we can. So where do you attribute that, that Sense of courage to do it from where did that come from?

Speaker A: I don't know. I think about it in two ways, probably one. One is, um, like, believing that success or fail, uh, you know, whatever that means to you. Like, there is a lot I will learn along the way. And on the other side of that, like, I am forever employable, and, uh, many doors will open based on the lessons learned. Um, and probably the second piece of it, and I can go into that in a lot more depth. The second piece of that is probably looking at, you know, my parents and particularly my mother who, you know, came to the States not speaking any English and, like, became an incredibly successful businesswoman. And, you know, the courage that that takes is, you know, way larger than someone graduating from a great business school with great degrees and a lot of great work experience, like, taking a leap of faith on, like, a startup idea for, you know, what could be just a few months.

Speaker C: Totally. Yeah.

Speaker A: So it kind of like puts. Puts your, like, you know, you're overthinking this, like, professional intellectualization, uh, over optimization, uh, to the extreme and puts it back into, like, you know, back into the real world. Like, this is. This is trivial amounts of courage relative to what, you know, my parents had to take what millions of people have to take when they come here, and that helped me, uh, ever so slightly take, you know, find the faith to go and do it.

Speaker C: Yeah. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you was, you know, if people have been following the timeline, I'm sure some of, some of our listeners have already figured out where this is going. Because you build a business that is based on the premise of supporting immigration, and then, you know, just a few years later, the whole world shuts down and there's. There's no travel, let alone any immigration. Like the, the pandemic rips through this business. I know how hard that was, and I just feel like for so many businesses, that would have been automatic death blow. You know, just how could you possibly be helping people do anything when. When the very thing that is, like, prerequisite for your business to exist just, it's. It's just gone. And, you know, there are other businesses, like, you know, of course, business and travel and entertainment, you know, like Airbnb or, uh, you know, there's a lot of businesses were affected by this. Okay, so I don't mean to say that you were the only one, but being a startup, being still relatively new, you know, I think I remember reading that the scale at that time was still relatively small. So it Wasn't like you had a big cushion to absorb some, like, some of these bigger companies. Like, can you first talk us through, like, when did you have. Do you have. Do you have, like, a memory of when this. You realized that this was going to be a major deal? Like, I, you know, was there. Was there a moment for you where you connected the fact that there's this, like, new illness and it's not just going to affect you personally, but it's going to have, like, you know, potentially existential stakes for the business.

Speaker A: Covid eliminated our addressable market. There was no more immigration for the first time in a century. And that's a death sentence for a business that's driven by immigration. And so we found ourselves with, uh, you know, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, you know, we had just closed our Series B. We raised a $50 million round that closed two weeks before, uh, lockdown.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: With no market to go after. Um, and, you know, I remember this distinct moment. We had just signed, you know, one of the largest banks in the country. And, uh, you know, it took me after, like, you know, a period of having, you know, engagement every week with them. All of a sudden they kind of went. Went cold. Understandably. They're dealing with, you know, work from home and all sorts of other existential challenges. And I finally get them back on the phone, and I was like, hey, like, we're supposed to kick off the implementation here in a few weeks. You know, just want to check in, make sure that's still the plan. Our team is standing by. And they're like, yeah, about that, about that. That's going to take us.

Speaker C: I had that meeting quite a few times. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Why don't we check back in at the end of the year? Because right now, you know, we have these burning fires that we didn't have a few weeks ago. And so our plans are changing. And, uh, you know, I think what made that, uh, the impact of that so difficult is that for a business like ours, that is infrastructure that sells into, you know, very long sales cycle customers like banks, um, once you lose your momentum, it takes years to regain it. Right. Because of how long those cycles are. And so we basically had to start over, you know, four or five years into the company's journey, uh, and find a new way.

Speaker C: Do you remember if Covid came up during the due diligence of the round? Like, it must have been churning around. Like, was there any possibility that it was going to affect you or were you all blindsided by it?

Speaker A: Um, no one had really thought about it. I mean what. We closed our seed round, uh, the day that Trump got elected the first time. So there was plenty of discussion and debate about how our business and our path to uh, value is impacted by differences in uh, outlook for immigration and rhetoric towards immigration and you know, had all, all sorts of answers for that. But no one had really underwritten or contemplated a world that was frozen with no more, you know, flows of people around.

Speaker C: Okay, so you raised this money, you have no business. How big was the team at that time?

Speaker A: Probably about 50 people.

Speaker C: Um, yeah, so yeah, 50 freaked out people and no business. Like, like, just like I think a lot of people would just. I said, you said it was like a death sentence and I just, I know there's a lot of people who listen this right now who are like, okay, then why are you still alive? Like, okay, like it's just, I think most people will be like, okay though. You know, life deals you uh, a hand like that. You know, you got, it's like you're at the poker table, you got the worst possible hand, your opponent has the best possible hand and you're going to lose that hand. So to just walk us through, like what, what allowed the team to come together and survive, you know, what would have been, I think several years in the wilderness here where you just, you could not operate commercially and yet we're still burning a lot of money, still dealing with tremendous stress. I'm sure everybody in team's dealing with the same trauma everybody else did about the lockdown and pandemic already being stressful in itself. What do you attribute that survival to?

Speaker A: So, I mean the first few weeks were just adrenaline, like uh, like everyone else is just trying to find, find your footing, making sure that people can work from, from home and still continue to coordinate and somewhat operate. Um, and uh, you know what, I did a lot of soul searching at the time and I had embarked on starting this business to solve this problem of cross border access for people who are new to country. And I was um, unwilling emotionally to let go of that. Uh, even though intellectually the right decision would have been burn the ship, move in a totally different direction. Um, but at the same time I knew that uh, if we just sat around uh, and prayed that you know, vaccines would roll out and the world would reopen, that all of our best people would attrit. Because if you're not winning, you know, you're, you're, you're going to lose all your best people, right? Culture and people's feeling of worth in a company is ultimately a function of, of whether you are winning. And if you're not winning for too long of a period of time, no one wants to be on that team anymore. And there was a quote that, uh, you know, an investor advisor said to me that you know, really resonated, um, which is something like, you know, ships are safest in harbor, but that's not what they're built for. And so I went out in front of, you know, our virtual all hands every couple weeks and that was the COVID slide. It was, it was that we were going to go and we're going to sail into the night, into the dark ocean. We're going to find something else to work on. And you know, knowing everything I know now, having, you know, this is my first company, become a far more experienced operator than I was, you know, even even halfway into our journey five years ago, I would have, you know, operated quite differently. But you know, basically what, what we did is, you know, my co founder took the core business and kept trying to make progress on it and we made some, you know, progress. It took time, but did make progress on it. And I went out with a small team and uh, worked on a search and rescue mission where we, uh, tried to find a new, a new hard problem to, to go and work on that we were well positioned to go out and crack. And uh, you know, to make a long story short, we found that and we doubled down on that and we put more and more energy into it. And now that represents, uh, you know, close to 70% of what we do.

Speaker C: So tell us about that new business because some ways it's like you had to found the company all over again.

Speaker A: That's right. I mean basically what we had to do and if you look at the, the people at the company, you know, there was the year of the great resignation that a lot of folks have talked about. 2021, when we got hit super hard. Uh, that year we lost a lot of great people, um, because you can only take so many quarters without winning, right? And you add on top of that, you know, the crypto boom and the fintech boom and you know, 2020 was still like crazy days. And we were once a darling and you know, in a particularly tough spot. And I don't say that to tell a sob story. That was just the, the hard reality of, of.

Speaker C: No, I remember that extremely well. And people just uh, I feel like there were a lot of people where. Yeah, first of all, you have people that just like every other company is just crushing it. So, you know, I was in the similar space as you and, you know, doing something really, really long term. And so we weren't having the kind of daily dopamine hit of success. Well, in normal times, I think people have an easier time handling that, but when their personal life is in crisis in the world is, is so crazy. Like, there's a lot of people that just frankly couldn't handle it. And I don't, I don't, you know, I, I don't wish them ill. I think, uh, I'm very compassionate about it. I remember that feeling extremely well. It was very, very difficult. But as a business, you, you have to deal with the consequences of it, whether you, you know, no matter whose fault it is. So it's just a reality that we all had to deal with. And it's, it's funny now, reliving those years. I haven't thought about it now this, A couple years, like each year was like a completely different business environment for several years in a row. And it just was a level of uncertainty and chaos that is really unusual. So for a lot of us, uh, that was a really dark time. Is there for you, like, what was the lowest moment or the darkest moment? Like, was there a moment when you really felt like you got the closest to giving up you've ever been?

Speaker A: Definitely. I mean, there is a moment I remember very distinctly. I was out on a long walk with my, with my executive coach, you know, strolling in circles around Dolores, trying to Doris park in San Francisco, trying to decide am I going to continue to, you know, dedicating more years of my life to, to this, to this path? And it actually, that moment wasn't in 2020. Like, the adrenaline of, of all the change that happened in 2020 and pursuing a new business kind of powered, um, me and the company through that first year is actually in, in 2021, when we started seeing a lot of, uh, attrition and you know, the new investments weren't quite showing, you know, weren't yet sprouting new shoots for the business. There was a distinct moment in. I, uh, think it was like, uh, Labor Day. I got back from Labor Day. I, like, took my first couple days off in what felt like, you know, two years. And I come back and uh, you know, a number of, of leaders in the company, like my whole product and engineering leadership was, you know, came to me on the same day, not, not like as a collective, but over the course of like two or three days actually, and they were like, hey, like it doesn't need to be sudden, but I just want you to know that, like, I want to have a conversation about transition. And, uh, I found myself doing everything I could and spending, uh, so much of my, uh, Of. Of my time trying to retain people who are no longer wanting to be on the team. Right. And I went into a. You know, our. I think it was our Q3 board meeting. Q3, 20, 21 board meeting. And I kind of, you know, what some would refer to as, like, I broke the glass. I kind of was just like, you know, this person wants to leave, this person wants to leave, this person wants to leave, this person wants to leave, this person wants to leave. And I'm not sure I can keep this house of cards, you know, standing. And I'll. I'll never forget this one. One of my, um, board members at the time, Jeff. Jeff Reitman, um, who was at Canopy Ventures, said to me. He said, misha, the most precious thing in the company is not money. It's not time. It is your energy. And whoever is a drain on your energy, get them out of the building right now. And because I was, like, coming to that point of running out of energy to keep getting on the stump and rallying people. People around. And, you know, over the course of the next, you know, few days and weeks, we transitioned all those folks out, and it was, you know, dumpster fire for a few weeks of, you know, management and trying to keep the house of cars together. But we. We worked our way through it and ultimately found some new leaders and stabilized the business. But it was a really dark and stormy few months there.

Speaker C: Oh, yeah, I'm. Gosh, I remember that time so well. I remember learning, um, try to attribute this to the right person. But. But I want to say it was even from Mark Cuban, of all people who taught me that in a crisis, you basically find out, like, who's it. Who gives you energy and who takes energy away? Because, like, that's when everyone's at their heightened, like, most vulnerable and that the people that give energy to their teammates, even in a crisis situation, are the people you want to build around, the people that become energy drains. Like, in good times, you can kind of talk yourself into it. Well, they're such a high performer. Whatever, Whatever. But, like, the crisis can actually become that clarifying thing. And I think this connects very much to that feeling you've had of, like, the team came together and now you have the battle scars, and now you have this coherence that you didn't have before. It's not just the experience, it's also the courage to take that darkness and turn it into those decisions.

Speaker A: You know, I think what ultimately um, helped us find our way is exactly what I said earlier. Like when, when you're at the very beginning of this, which is when you're lost, like go talk to your customer and go figure out like, what are the problems they need solving. That's precisely what I did. I, you know, I went out and I talked, called all of our existing customers and called all of our prospects and everyone who, you know, I had built relationships and some semblance of trust with. And I asked them, hey, like, it sounds like you're not interested in this cross border thing anymore. Like, what are you struggling with? Like what is the problem that is high urgency that um, you know, you are desperately looking for a solution for. And yeah, if you, if you rewind to March, April, May, 2020, unemployment went from 3% to 15% in like a few weeks. Right? It's a massive spike, massive economic shock. Uh, and so every lender in the industry was deeply uh, worried about income and the ability for lender, for consumers to repay their, their debt obligations because you don't know if they remain employed when unemployment went through such a spike. And so it was that sort of early insight and hearing that from, you know, literally 10 out of 10 customers who I went out and talked to that sort of set our sales in that direction. Um, and then it was back to, you know, the lean launchpad methodologies of, of quick iterations and trying to find product market fit again. And uh, to make a long story short, we figured it out like we built new products, um, we built a product in income verification where we are a leader in the space. And we built a product in uh, uh, this concept called cash flow underwriting, which is looking at uh, you know, the content of your bank account. So if I look into your account, I can see your direct deposit, I can see your expenses, I can see how much cash you have, I can see whether you overdrafted. So that concept and of understanding what's in your account and ultimately making a risk decision of should I approve or decline you based on what I see in your account, that is cash flow underwriting. And we've emerged, uh, you know, many would say as the leader in uh, that space now supporting folks like Chase and PayPal and many more with it.

Speaker C: And so it's interesting you mentioned in briefly in passing that you didn't want to give up the immigration focus, but these businesses ultimately, you know, that you pivoted into, you know, were super successful. So talk about that, like, talk about that tension. Did people give you the advice to only focus on one thing? I feel like that's so common in startup circles. Did you, did you consider it? And then like, ultimately, why was it important for you to do to, to keep that root idea? Like, why, how, how did you explain that to your team? How did you explain that to your investors?

Speaker A: Why is it important to startup, uh, general venture wisdom is you can never do one hard thing, more than one hard thing. Well, and so until your first product is doing, you know, north of 10, like arguably north of 20 million in revenue, do not engage in product number two. Like, that is traditional venture wisdom. And knowing everything I know, we've all heard it.

Speaker C: We've all heard.

Speaker A: I would probably say that's still right. Um, but I did not have the discipline as an operator at the time to let go of my baby. Like, I started this business for the credit passport. That's the original cross border business. That was our identity, that was the company's mission. Uh, and I was not willing to give up on it because we were so close to, you know, for this idea to be, you know, either proven or disproven. Uh, and so we embarked on, you know, what is a really hard thing to do, which is to do more than one hard thing at a time. And so we had, fortunately we had the team to pursue continue investing in the core while also investing in the new. And it was, you know, it was a drunken walk for years. It was a, you know, a drunken walk. 20, 20, 21, 22, arguably much of 23 before we really helped bring the products together onto a single platform solution. Uh, and now we've, you know, you could argue we've got one core product which is our platform, which can do a lot of different and cool things. Um, but that was a really difficult period of finding our way. And through that period, you lose a lot of people who aren't quite tracking. You get stuck in, you know, the molasses of coordination across different, um, products trying to serve different use cases in different industries. Like all sorts of mistakes that we made that, you know, would sink a company if you don't learn from it. Unfortunately, we had a team that was dynamic and willing to learn and adapt and that's ultimately what helped us find our way.

Speaker C: We did an episode with Todd park, the founder of Devoted Health, and he, he offered what I hope will become the new startup wisdom to replace this old wisdom because he said that their motto was, um, not I hope, I don't, hope I don't butcher this, ah, quote. Uh, he said something like, um, you know, only do what you have to do, but do all of it. And you know, it was like, to me, such a great bit of advice against half measures because oftentimes when people say you should only focus on one thing or only do the simple thing, they're talking about biting off like a small piece of a larger thing and giving up on the vision of solving the whole problem. And sounds to me like what you're describing now with this platform, yes, it started out with these disparate elements, but now they've, they've come together to, to give you the power to do something bigger. Is that right?

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, now the positioning of the company is that, uh, our platform can plug the gaps that exist in the traditional and many would argue, broken credit bureau system.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so we started by plugging one gap, and that was one product. And over time we figured out how to plug multiple, multiple gaps. And all of those gaps that we plug can be pulled together as a platform offering. So when we are out there and selling into some of the biggest and the biggest banks in the country and in other parts of the world, that is what we're positioning. It's like, hey, you've got all these data gaps that you are trying to navigate through and are ultimately turning down, you know, millions of applications that, you know, otherwise could be approved. And with our capabilities, we can help you, uh, plug some of those gaps.

Speaker C: You know, as I'm thinking about it now, when I think about all the different products that you've talked about, the cash flow, underwriting, the, the, you know, the products for immigration, like in some ways what those all have in common is a much more fair way of being a gatekeeper because you're not looking at people's kind of like credential or like they're on paper, you know, how they ought to respond according to some model, but you're looking at who they actually are kind of like breaking through that distance that a lot of financial institutions have with their customers of actually like trying to understand, like, who is this person actually what is their history, what is their behavior? And then underwrite based on things that are within their control versus things that are not within their control. So where you were born is not something you can control, but how, you know, whether you've been responsible with your money is something you, you absolutely can control. So is that, is that like how I'm Trying to like, how do I characterize this, like, bigger vision that you started to lean into? Like, to me it seems like helping financial institutions be more fair in their gatekeeping, not just to immigrants, but really to all consumers.

Speaker A: That's right. I mean, as part of this shift, we, you know, we took our mission, which used to be very immigrant and you know, immigration focused and broadened it, uh, to uh, you know, to power a more fair and inclusive financial system for the world. And that, that broadening of our mission certainly had some opposition. Like, does that, does that mean NOVA doesn't care about immigrants anymore? Of course.

Speaker C: Right, right, exactly. I could definitely feel that, that fear. Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, but we had to broaden our mission, otherwise the business wouldn't survive. Right. And so, uh, had we not done that, NOVA would be no more at this point. Um, and you know, yes, there is still something very clean to the narrative of helping immigrants get access to credit, but I would argue that the, uh, social impact and the financial inclusion benefits of cash flow underwriting far exceed the benefits of cross border credit data for immigrants. And that's because the addressable market is several, is, you know, two orders of magnitude larger. Right. There's over 100 million Americans who struggle with getting basic financial access. And by making cash flow underwriting ubiquitous and making it table stakes for how financial institutions operate, we can help many more within those 100 million plus Americans get more fair, uh, access to the products they need and deserve.

Speaker C: So one of the things that's really interesting to me about this business is that you're asking so many different people to trust you all at the same time. Obviously banks are a notoriously difficult customer segment to sell to because of course they are highly regulated and they have to have tremendous trust to rely on an outside vendor. You're asking immigrants and other people who are being, um, excluded by the modern financial system to trust you that you're going to be a fair gatekeeper. These are people who have often been screwed over, frankly by financial institutions and do not have, are not the easiest customers to convince that you're on their side and you're going to treat them fairly. And then even in this conversation about your own employees, you're trying to get people bought into this really difficult mission and especially this transition from just a narrow focus on immigrants, which I think people have an easier time to see the good in that, to this, like, really much more expansive view of fairness and financial inclusion. So I wonder, like, what are your thoughts on how you translate this really, like, transformative mission into that trustworthiness that allows people to see you as a trustworthy counterparty and therefore someone that they can do business with long term.

Speaker A: I think it just takes like consistency at the end of the day, right? Like when we were starting out we had no brand. You know we didn't have many relationships in this industry. Uh, you know we had to fight for every possible customer to even take a meeting with us. Um, and you get enough referenceable customers who trust you ah, and operate for long enough in an industry where you know there are fly by night companies that come and go and then we've just been at this for Almost, we hit 10 years next year eventually the market starts to uh, trust that you are here to stay. Right. That we're not just a, you know, a seed stage or early stage business that is working on something that may or may not make it through the next economic or funding cycle. Um, like we now have a really exciting base of customers. We support thousands of businesses here in the US and around the world. We work with many of the largest um, banks and property managers and non bank lenders. Uh, and we've built a brand for ourselves, right and that with that brand comes uh, uh, you know a lot of thought leadership, uh comes consistency, comes product innovation. Uh, and now you know I would say most of the financial services industry knows of us as if not the leader, certainly one of the leaders in this alternative data space to um, uh that they can trust and rely on. Now the consumer side of the equation is a harder question. Um because we are at our core and enterprise business, right we sell into the enterprise in service of consumers to create ah a win, win win. Consumers share more data, enterprises can um, approve more customers and we capture a small uh, share of, of the value that we help create. And uh, so building consumer trust is something that ultimately takes more time and more scale.

Speaker C: Uh, give us a little sense of how the company's doing to now like, like you've, you've made this pivot. From what I can tell it seems like it's growing pretty fast. Like you know, market leading in these different segments. Like how, what's it like? Give us a sense of where the company's at today.

Speaker A: Yeah, so we uh, we announced our series D uh a few weeks ago. Um, congratulations. Thank you. Uh, and uh, I mean it's been a really exciting ride I have to say. I mean I've never felt um, ah, product market fit like we're feeling now. Um, and I think that's you know it takes a lot of years to get to this point. And it does still feel, you know, like an uphill battle, uh, oftentimes like these are competitive processes, these are difficult counterparties to work with, um, but we have a much more complete and unique offering than we've ever had. And so with that comes a, ah, really motivated and excited team, comes, uh, some really, um, ah, really powerful market momentum that we are gaining. Um, and we're seeing that across a number of segments that we're focused on. Um, and so, you know, I've never been more excited than I am right now in terms of the business's path. And uh, you know, we've, I think, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of wise words that, you know, I've, I've heard about, you know, businesses that, you know, are battle hardened that ultimately become, um, you know, great, great companies. And I think that's ultimately the truth. Right. It's like, only if. Only when you overcome really difficult adversity and survive as a team, do you learn how to be lean and mean, do you learn how to make tough decisions and have the hard conversations and ultimately steer the business into, into the next chapter?

Speaker C: Yeah. So I want to ask you something a little bit different because the other thing that really struck me hearing you tell this story this time, is how much this company has been countercultural in all these key moments. You know, first being pro immigration at a time of rising anti immigration sentiment, you know, going through the pandemic and having to navigate that, and then now, like having a story of inclusion and access at a time when those ideas themselves have become polarized and are under attack. You know, you've had to navigate as a leader, you know, also dealing with this, with these political moments, and I wonder how you've balanced that. Have you thought about, you know, when, when do you speak out? When do you capitulate? When is the right time to take a stand? You know, how. How have you helped your team navigate? You know, as a business leader, you can't get pulled into every last culture war fight. It would be exhausting and distracting. But on the other hand, you've seen a lot of companies have been revealed, basically have no principles at all. And that's actually been very costly to them as they put their finger to the wind and just jump on whatever the latest bandwagon is. So I'm curious how you've navigated those tensions and how have you decided to be a company that's willing to stand for something even when it seems like the whole rest of the world is moving in a different direction.

Speaker A: I mean, I'm flattered you think that. Um, I think at the end of the day, uh, our business uses data to help more people fairly access the products they need. And you can spin all sorts of narratives about what that is. You can use the word financial, uh, inclusion, like we are helping more people be included in the, in the uh, in the financial system. And I know the word inclusion is what is the I in dei and that has all sorts of repercussions associated with it. Um, but I try to not make the business politicized. I try to make the business very principled about our mission, which is like we exist to serve both the businesses and the consumers. And if you over index on one or the other, uh, you ultimately are not building a sustainable system. Right. So if all we are doing is giving all consumers access, like we are fudging the numbers, we're changing it. We're all, we're trying, we're just trying to get all the consumers access. What will happen is banks will lose a lot of money and they will shut us off. And uh, those, you know, that temporary improvement in access will go away. Um, and so we have, we have to ultimately uh, you know, create a product and a service that is sustainable. Coming back to the very beginning of our, of our conversation and only then can you actually uh, credibly serve and will your mission into existence.

Speaker C: To me it seems like one of the guiding lights that has been a theme throughout this whole story is simply committing yourself almost like a fiduciary to act on behalf of these customers. So not just a fiduciary to your shareholders, but like to say no, you know, we are looking out for the long term financial health of our financial institution partners and to our consumer partners. And so even if someone on the team was like, I've got a good idea, you know, let's do something that like temporarily juices the numbers, you know, but it's actually be bad for people's long term health. You know, you would, you would have an ethos that would say no, we're not, we're going to do that. That's going to betray our commitment to somebody that we really care about.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean my, one of my board members, um, Nicole Mustard, who's the founder of Credit Karma, she has this saying, uh, which is uh, don't lick cookies. Which basically means like in business there are these, these cookies that are out there which are like quick, quick wins or things that could like ever so temporarily juice the Numbers. Oh, sure, but you can't live on cookies, right? Like those, those cookies might give you a little bit of a sugar rush, but then that sugar rush turns into a crash. And so like you have to be investing in products and segments that are ultimately compounding, that ultimately continue to create long term value and don't just come and go. And I think we, in a business like ours that has the length of sales cycle that we have, like, you have to be thinking long term. Um, otherwise you could spend an eternity trying to, um, get something into market that is very fleeting and therefore waste a ton of calories and not actually create any value.

Speaker C: You said before that you think the key to being trustworthy is being consistent in your behavior. But I want to push back on that just a tiny bit because when you were talking about the cookies thing, it reminded me of something Jim Senegal, the founder of Costco, once said, which is basically like, there's all these behaviors that you can do. In your case, it would be like raising prices, a small amount, you know, on the hot dog. And there's some of their key items. They could add hundreds of millions of dollars to the bottom line of pure profit anytime they want. He, like, once you start that, it's like taking heroin. And once you start you, like, once you go down that road, it's really, really difficult to stop because now people come to expect that you're going to keep doing that and those numbers are going to be baked into your financial projections. And it occurred to me that like a drug addict is also extremely consistent in his or her behavior. And yet you do not, you would not trust such a person. You'd be like, wait a second, I, I know for sure that they're going to betray me at the first opportunity. So talk a little bit more about like, what is that other element that is required here? Like, even, even strikes me even in your early days, like that you had to work so hard to get these meetings with financial institutions and yet most startups can't get any meetings with financial institutions. They can work out it all they want. Like, there's something else to this story that is more than just consistency that you've been able to enlist. People call it mission enlistment. You know, enlist them in this mission, in this vision of how the world could be different. Just talk about that aspect of it. Like, what is, what is the element beyond consistency that is required to get people to trust you?

Speaker A: Um, in the words of Mr. Mackey from south park, drugs are bad. Okay? And so I think in your Example, at the end of the road, what makes the consistency of a drug dealer bad is that they're like, what they're giving you consistently is bad for you. Uh, and I think that the difference, uh, in terms of what we are giving consistently is that, uh, is that it's good for you at the end of the day. But more data results in better decisions, uh, not worse. And, um, so long as that holds true of the data and the analytical products that we are building, building, then what we are selling, uh, is, is good for you as, as, as a bank. Right? It helps a bank, uh, approve more people. Those are people who are going to repay. Uh, and we see that in the data, uh, and that will ultimately help them build their business and retain more customers. And so it's consistency in terms of your, um, your message, your values, the reliability of your systems and your product, but also making sure that, like, that which you are selling, you would actually buy. Uh, and I think, um, there's a great Charlie Munger quote on this, which I'm For I'm. It's escaping me right now, but it's basically that, like, don't sell something you wouldn't buy. Uh, and, uh, if you ever find yourself in the business of selling a product that you wouldn't buy, like, you're, you're, you're on the wrong, you're on the wrong track. Like, you got to go figure something else out. And so I, you know, we stand behind the products that we built. Like, these are products that we would buy. These are products that we think help the financial system. These are products that we think help consumers get into the financial system. Uh, and therefore, I think, you know, with consistency comes something that is sustainably good for business.

Speaker C: All right, The Munger quote is, in fact, don't sell something you wouldn't buy. Um, and, and no. And that's so right on. I really appreciate you saying that, because one of the things we live in a time when we've kind of lost the plot. I think about, like, what kinds of making money are good and which ones are bad. And I kind of feel like we're in an era of people, like, if anyone makes money by any means necessary, people are like, well, at least you gotta hand it to them. At least they made a lot of money. And I just feel like people who actually, like, build things for a living find this kind of, like, secretly offensive, but I feel like it's become, like, taboo to say it out loud. They're like, actually, no, we don't gotta Hand it to them. Like, not all forms of making money are actually beneficial to the customer being served. And I just, I really like you holding the line on this basic principle. Sounds so simple, actually. It's like, look, I just want to build products and sell them to people where they actually benefit. They, like, we improve their flourishing from the act of making a profit. That, to me, sounds really simple, but in our world, that's become like, basically a radical act. And I wonder, have you ever encountered pressure either from employees who were tempted by a shortcut or from an investor who was looking for a quick winner? Maybe a potential investor was like, hey, have you ever considered doing this? Like, have you experienced that temptation or that pressure to do something that would be beneficial for you but not necessarily beneficial for your customers?

Speaker A: We face it all the time, right? Like there's. I give you a fairly tactical question that, you know, we ran into, you know, over the course of this year, which is if some players in our space, uh, where we have to compete head to head on, like, the analytical value of what we are producing, uh, are using things that we think are illegal to use in how credit decisions are, are made. And so in some of these analyses, we will periodically lose, uh, because we are playing a different game. We're playing a game that is much more in the middle of the fairway that we think that every major financial institution is the, that's the game that they want to play. Um, but there are other players who are, you know, willing to go off to, into the edges. And for certain customers who want to buy that and play that game, like, we don't want to do that business, like, that's not, that's not for us. Um, because we don't think it's ultimately sustainable because maybe it's not this administration, but the next administration or the following will look at this and be like, that's not a fair game to be playing. And so ultimately you will run into this issue of whether this is a, you know, whether this is a sustainable product. Uh, and so if it's not, then you're destroying value. You're taking company resources in pursuit of something that will not be around five, ten years from now. And so I, I do my best and, you know, not by no means am I perfect at this, but to always play the long game, uh, and it's how we do business. Um, that's, you know, when a customer gives us tough news, we, you know, we, we take it like a champ and we play the long game because that, that person may Very well change their mind. They may come back around for something else. Uh, or they may move to a different company and want to talk to us about something.

Speaker C: Totally. And they'll remember, they'll remember how you treated them and they'll remember what you stood for. Especially when those other products eventually blow up and get people in trouble.

Speaker A: Yep, that's right.

Speaker C: Remember they stood up for what was right. Yeah, absolutely. It's been awesome. You know, before we wrap, put yourself now back in the shoes of someone who wants to get into. Build something like what you've built. You know, someone who wants to break into fintech, who wants to build new civic infrastructure, who wants to do something, you know, that is, I don't mind calling it financial inclusion. Like that actually has this idea that they want to build something that makes the world a better place. What Tim Radley called create more value than you capture. So they've got this, this desire to do that, but maybe they're thinking themselves. Gosh, it seems really daunting to break into finance. Seems really difficult. Maybe even they're afraid that finance can be corrupting. Like I think one of these really interesting about this story is how much money you've been able to process, how many, how many deals you've been able to do with like really ruthless financial institutions and, and, and cling to your own integrity. So, like, what would advice would you give to somebody who's just starting out or who's thinking about starting out, trying to go down the same path that you've gone down? What do you wish someone would have told you back then?

Speaker A: Maybe I think you have to be prepared to spend at least a decade on an idea. I think that that's how long it takes to will something of value into existence. And if the idea that you are pursuing is not one that you could possibly see yourself spending a decade of your life working on, it's not for you, right? If this is like a quick, a quick win and you think you'll be in and out of this thing and you know, 18 months, it's probably not the right path. There's a, there's a mental model of this that I forget who told this to me, but something to the effect of like, you know, assume you choose this path and you're going to spend, you know, five years working on this direction and you have like, you know, decent progress and you're going out, you know, in front of the company. You're getting up on your stump at all hands and you're giving the all hands like, how does that feel? You know, five years? And do you feel like you are ready to keep getting on that stump and keep hitting the message and keep talking about the mission? And if that doesn't feel like in your bones, in your heart and your gut, that, like, this is a mission I could continue to talk about and rally people around, then you will inevitably give up. You will quit. Because it's going to be hard, it's going to be painful, it's going to be much more painful than joyous, uh, along the way. And if at the end of the day, like, what it is that you are in pursuit of is not something that you see as part of your legacy as a person, it's not your path, uh, and so, I don't know, that's always rung true, true to me. And, you know, we've had, uh, you know, a dark and stormy road along, along the way, but at the end of the day, I really believe that every inch we've won is an inch that will outlast. Like it will. It will sustain, it will outlast me. Uh, and I feel really proud of the work that our team has done, you know, these last nine years.

Speaker C: Well, that's a great note to, uh, end on. You know, on behalf of everybody who's going to be a beneficiary of the more fair financial system that you're going to help build, wanted to say thank you for coming on. Thanks for all the work that you're doing and thanks for sharing your story.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me on. Eric.

Speaker C: You've been listening to the Eric Ries Show. The Eric Ries show is produced by Jordan Bornstein and Kiki Garthwaite. Research by Tom White and Melanie Rehack. Visual design by Reform Collective. Title theme by Deepey Music. I'm your host, Eric Reese. Thanks for listening and watching. See you next time.