#1362 Noah Kerner | Invest In Bitcoin & Build Wealth With This App

Noah Kerner is the CEO & Chairman of Acorns, the financial app helping everyday citizens invest with spare change. In this conversation, we talk about building a brand, design & product decisions, why they are serving such a unique customer, surprises, and what Acorns looks like in the future. ======================= Join me at Consensus 2024 May 29-31 in Austin, Texas. This year marks the tenth annual Consensus, making it the largest and longest-running event dedicated to all sides of crypto, blockchain and Web3. Use code POMP to get 20% off your pass at ⁠https://go.coindesk.com/3Q60F2Q⁠ ======================= In this podcast, we dive into the revolutionary concept of PropyKeys, an application that allows anyone to mint home addresses all over the world on blockchain. PropyKeys.com is a part of the Propy ecosystem, that has a grand mission to make homeownership more affordable and user friendly. Join us as we discuss the Propy’s latest collaborations, including Coinbase, and its new fun project PropyKeys. X (Twitter): @PropyKeysWebsite: Mint an address at propykeys.comdApp: https://dapp.propy.com/ ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Today's episode is with Noah Kurnan. He is the CEO and Chairman of Acorns. Yes, the financial app that you've probably heard of. Most of you probably actually use it as well. In this conversation, we talk about building a brand, how they make different design and product decisions, why they're serving such

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  a unique customer, what's some of the things that have most surprised him over the years, how he ended up building a whole separate business that was recently acquired, and what is Acorns going to do in the future in terms of continuing to help their customers improve their financial lives? Noah's built a great business. The product is beloved by people all across the United States, and I think that you all will really enjoy this conversation. Here is an episode with Noah Kurner.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Consensus 2024 by CoinDesk. On May 29th through the 31st, I'll be heading to Austin, Texas to speak at Consensus, the world's most established global event for all things crypto, blockchain, and Web 3. I'll be sharing my thoughts on what the next bull run will look like, how it will differ from previous run-ups, and the broad macro investment thesis for Bitcoin and crypto more broadly. That's not all. Consensus has tailored programming for Bitcoin maxies and multi-chain mavericks alike, covering everything from post-having strategies to mining and more. Plus, get ready for the epic showdown, Bitcoin versus Ethereum at karate. Combat. That's just a taste of what's to come at crypto's only big tent event.

• 2:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Join me in Austin alongside 15,000 other investors, founders, brands, and more to take in all that blockchain has to offer. Get your pass today by clicking the link in the description and using code POMP to save 20%. Again, click on the link in the description and use code POMP if you want to save 20% and I'll see all of you at Consensus 2024. Today's episode is brought to you by Propy. Imagine a world where you could buy and sell your home wallet to wallet. With Propy Keys, you can mint your home address and upgrade it to a real world asset. This not only protects your home's title from fraud, but when you are ready to move, you could sell it through an NFT auction as well as through the traditional way. There's optionality here. Propy Keys is part of the Propy ecosystem.

• 2:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Their mission is to make homeownership more efficient, affordable, and user-friendly. Propy Keys is a fun entry point to placing title on the blockchain. Now, anyone can start their on-chain journey by minting home addresses via Propy Keys and staking them for profit until they are ready to sell their home. Visit propykeys.com to learn more. Again, that's propykeys.com to learn more.

• 3:20Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Noah here with me. Noah, I thought a great place to start this conversation is most people have heard of Acorns, but they probably don't quite yet understand the product that you all have built, who you're serving, and then also a lot of the trends. And the world has changed so much in the last five years in terms of both the economy and society. So maybe you could just start with, you know, somebody who didn't come from the finance world or the tech world. Why did you start this? And maybe walk us through kind of the evolution of the product?

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's nice to be here, by the way. Thanks for having me on the show. Yeah, one of the things like, you know, it's a funny, the phrase fintech kind of annoys me because it implies a type of company, a type of thinking that is not the way we approach the problems that we're confronted by. I think one thing that people don't tend to know about Acorns, I think they think we're very young and that we serve, you know, students, young, young people, 18 to 25 or whatever. Actually, Acorns fundamentally is for everyday people and our customers run the gamut from 98 years old to birth because we're also helping parents, you know, set their kids up. And, and we really serve that everyday person and family and it's not geographically specific

• 4:29Speaker 02

  or anything like that. It's really the American middle class. So the, the, that's the core, that's the core of it. In fact, people like our customer base, there's a, there's a large percentage of our customer base that's over 60 and it's something I'm, I'm super proud of because it means Acorns is resonating across generations, which, you know, which, which was part of our, part of our goal. And from the perspective of fintech versus what we really are, we think of ourselves as a consumer brand and a consumer company. That's not to say, obviously, we, we are in the category of fin and we're in the, we're a tech company because we, we build technology, of course. But first and foremost, it's about the consumer we serve, how they think, what they feel. We just put out a survey called the Money Matters Report

• 5:12Speaker 02

  that we put out every year to understand consumer psychology, consumer emotions, what's on their minds, what are their anxieties, their fears, their hopes. That's really how we start. And I would say, I don't want to call up the conversation because, you know, obviously, and let's keep it super interactive, but like the, um, the way we think about building the Acorns brand in, in the 21st century, zooming out, like what, what are, what is it that resonates with people today and connects with people emotionally while there's a deer walking across my property right now. That's, that's funny. Um, and zooming out, we have this kind of 21st century brand

• 5:53Speaker 02

  framework called heart and desire. And, and that means, you know, conscientiousness, purpose, these kinds of things today should always be, but today they're hugely important, particularly for young generations. Is it a conscientious company that's doing the right thing? And then desire is born out of kind of the, the, the

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Mainstream movement of design becoming more central to products. Obviously, design has been central to products in subcategories like fashion and things like that. But with with Steve Jobs and Apple, this became more center stage generally. So desire is, are you building a are you building a product that's designed in a magnetic way? That that connects with people emotionally and that kind of thing. And at least when I think about, I think those are the two poles of of of brands for the 21st century. And I I would say Tesla is probably the company, the the product and brand that has nailed it right in the center the best. It's got a clear purpose, creating a sustainable future, and it's got great design.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  It's inarguable inarguable that the the cars are designed incredibly well, the software, the the, you know, the the the car itself, all all the things that go into it. And I think they sit right at the center of that. So that's that's how we that's how we think and approach problems, the consumer in the category.

• 7:13Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think of this kind of design component, do you do anything different in terms of coming up with the design? Either sequentially, you know, kind of in the product building process? Or are there certain things that you've learned over time as inputs to this design that you think is such a big differentiator for you all?

• 7:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, starting with human nature. You know, it's it's not necessarily about the process or the product development framework. It's starting with what do people feel? What are they feeling right now? What are their anxieties, fears, hopes, all you know, that? And then and then how how do we create experiences in the product that confront those problems? We focus a lot. The Acorns brand is all about hope. You know, based on the idea of tiny acorns growing into mighty oaks, that that that is the story arc essentially of hope. And so giving people a sense that there's a better future ahead if they take these actions today and stick with them. We have a screen in the product called the potential screen. We purposely did not call it compounding or, you know, or or or some sort of.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Some sort of financial jargon, we called it potential because this is all about what your potential can be and how your future can change over the next 40 years if you do these things. So that's that. I think, starting with human nature and the human mind and what it is that people really connect to, wanting to be recognized, wanting to feel like the future can be better than the present, you know, having a lot of fear and anxiety. In this report I was mentioning before that we just put out, I mean, it was crazy to see that one fourth of the country is afraid that their current financial situation can land them in homelessness. I mean, that's the customers we serve. So if you think about

• 8:52Speaker 02

  that fear, that anxiety, you have to start at that point when building products and experiences, otherwise you're just going to completely miss, you know, kind of ships in the night experience.

• 9:04Anthony Pompliano?

  So when people hear that number, kind of one fourth of folks are worried about their financial position, potentially ending up in homelessness. I think there's a lot of people who would say, oh, come on, there's a, you know, there's these young people, they don't really understand kind of what the financial world, there maybe is fear being driven by social media or problems in their local communities, et cetera. How do you think through, you know, give the customers what they want versus the proverbial, if you would ask people, you know, what do you want? They would have said faster horses instead of a car and kind of, you know, trying to use data and analytics and, and, you know, the brain power that you all have been able to accumulate there in terms of, you know, high quality employees, et cetera. Like, is there a balance when building the product of trying to figure out, you know, what the customers are demanding and then also what you all think maybe they would want but don't yet know?

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I always start with instinct first. I don't, I, you know, it's an interesting thing in this category. You often hear people talk about things like financial goals, budgets, planning. People don't really have financial goals.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  That's probably a, I don't know how that will be received as a statement, but, but, but actually, when you do research, when you, when you ask people what their financial goals are, and this is an interesting nuance to it, to, to, to not appear stupid, people will say that they have financial goals, but the majority of people do not really have financial goals. They may say, "I'd like to not retire poor," or, or, or some sort of broad strokes thing, "or I'd like to take a trip with my family XYZ," but the concept of financial goal, you know, so, so, so people, people don't really know what they want. And I'm, I'm at much, I'm very much in the camp of helping people figure out what they need. And that's, I think that's a big difference between what I see with a lot of people in

• 10:49Speaker 02

  the technology world, and I think people who, who try to create things that are leading people down a particular path. And in our world, we, we say that we're trying to put the responsible tools of wealth making in everyone's hands. If we're just responding to what people want, we're going to offer trading, we're going to offer crypto trading, we're going to offer credit card, you know, we're going to offer all these things. But if we help, if we, if we focus on guiding people to what they need, and frankly, guiding people down a path of how wealthy people really make money, then we're going to put different products into the market. And those are the types of products that we focus on putting into the market. As, as an example, all of our portfolios are diversified portfolios,

• 11:30Speaker 02

  right? You can, you can add some stocks to it, you can add a little bit of exposure to Bitcoin, but it's, but it's created in a way where we're still going to make sure that you're, you're maintaining diversification. And that's really fundamental to our, to our product and product experience. And I think that gets to, to leading rather than following, you know, and, and by the way, that's not to say that we don't listen, because we listen very intense, intently, but we're not building our company based on what focus groups tell us to do.

• 11:59Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think of design, obviously, that's a big part of this, but also you mentioned brand and brand and design sometimes are very closely kind of overlapped. Other times, they can be very different things. So talk about the brand and how much of that comes from the product and the design versus maybe there's other things, the way you've designed, you know, the company or some of the actions you all have taken that really drive that brand.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think of a brand as an amalgam of all the things, the culture, the product, the marketing, the service, it all comes together into what you would say is a brand. And a brand is how people feel about you fundamentally, right? So all those things are going to be inputs into how people ultimately end up feeling about us. And I think if you do a good job of creating a brand with a very clear ethos that stands for an idea, then you have to recognize that every single thing you say, every single thing you do, the way you treat your people, the way that your culture is versus the way that your product is, the values that you have inside of your company, and how those map to the

• 13:03Speaker 02

  values of your product, all of those things have to be synergistic in order to have a singular brand. And that gets into like how you structure the company organizationally as well. And we have just actually, we have at Acorns, we have brought all of our creative groups, advertising, creative, brand design, product design, education, content, all of these groups into one organization, rolling up into the executive creative director that reports directly to me. And that's because of a recognition that brand is all, you know, all of these things.

• 13:41Anthony Pompliano?

  When you start to think about that end user, right, there is, I got to get started, you know, in the journey, and maybe I have no investments, I need to start to get some investments. There is the buying of assets, the holding of assets, getting educated on those assets. But then there's also the participation. I think I've heard you refer to it as like kind of the participation in capitalism. There's shareholder voting and all of this stuff. You're unique in that you built Acorns and had a lot of success there. You also built a shareholder voting platform called Say. And maybe you could talk a little bit about, you know, the buying and holding of assets and even potentially the selling, kind of the financial actions versus, you know, the exercise of voice in financial markets today.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we built, say, as two, in a response to two things. I mean, first, it was born out of irritation, and I think a lot of good companies or ideas are born out of irritation and frustration for how things, for how things exist. And the reality for us early on was we were bringing new investors into investing, everyday people who had not participated in the system that way. And we, we, we wanted to be able to introduce them to the idea that they can vote their shares. And this is not like a well-known thing, particularly for people who are new to it, but it is an empowering thing. You know, investing is very empowering, and so is being able to vote your shares. And those two things sort of go hand in hand.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  But the idea that you are an investor, it means that you're participating in the system to be able to create wealth that you might not have otherwise been able to create. And it also means that you get to exercise your vote and your, and your, and your voice. And we felt like those two things go really hand in hand. So that was part of it. And the other part was, we're a very design-oriented company, as I was talking about before with the desire point. And with the existing company that was sending our proxy communications, we just couldn't get an email that, that worked, that, that looked like an Acorns email. So that was a real point of frustration. So it was like very tactical that way. We wanted to sell, send well-designed emails. And then it was conceptual in that we wanted to give our customers and give investors,

• 15:52Speaker 02

  on the whole, the chance to, who had not understood and did not understand that this is a part of investing, give them a chance to exercise their, their rights as shareholders and participate in capitalism. And I think the more you participate, the more knowledgeable you are, the more you understand this stuff, you know, there's this, there's a kind of back and forth dynamic there, the better an investor you will be, the better you'll be at, at using your voice, the better an investor you'll be. And it sort of feeds on itself that way.

• 16:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, what's interesting about this is the kind of fintech, you know, consumer-facing market, people love some of the brands because of giving them access and pioneering a lot of different, you know, kind of products and features. And then some are hated because they've taken actions that may be, you know, kind of opposed to the users at certain times, whether they needed to or not, just the perception of that. And here you're talking about, you know, even creating a second company or a product to be able to serve the user, et cetera. How do you think about, you know, the relationship between maybe like doing the right thing or integrity with profit? And, you know, obviously, I think most people when asked, they'd be like, "Well, obviously, you know, we do things with integrity."

• 17:04Anthony Pompliano?

  But I mean, in terms of, you know, giving up profit in order to do the right thing and thinking through being a business, but also serving your users. And so what is the relationship there? And how have you guys handled that over the years?

• 17:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do not think most people focus on integrity in their businesses. And I think that applies broadly to this category as well. I mean, integrity is not obviously a buzzword. It's like, is that, is that part of the fabric of how you make decisions? All the way through to, is that your business model? Is your business model predicated on

• 17:39Speaker 02

  on a, on a, on a relationship that comes back to doing the right thing for the customer? And in financial services, particularly if you're talking about, this is just my view, obviously, but particularly if you're talking about everyday consumers. The question is, what are the behaviors that people should be engaging in? What are the behaviors that are healthy for people that create a better life for themselves? How do you make sure that the people who are not necessarily informed about all this stuff, which frankly, nobody is about all this stuff? How do you make sure people are informed before they're making decisions? And generally speaking, what are, so what are the challenges in, in culture today in, in money? Obviously, borrowing can be a hugely problematic thing. You know, sometimes we, we all need to borrow money to, to, to accomplish things,

• 18:23Speaker 02

  but it can be problematic, particularly if the customer doesn't understand the rate at which they're borrowing and the kind of instrument. And this happens a lot to a lot of us, probably all of us at one, one point or another. Trading. You know, I'm a big believer in the idea that everybody has desires to take some risks, to place some bets, all that kind of stuff. But the question is, how much of your money are you trading with? And do you know how much is a good level to be trading with? And I think it's challenging if that's the core business model is predicated on earning money from these types of behaviors, including spending. I mean, spending is a massive culprit, I don't need to tell you, in terms of challenges

• 19:06Speaker 02

  in consumer relationship to money. So when you think about that from the perspective of integrity in a business, if the primary business model has an inverse relationship to the health of the consumer, whatever happens in the end, the business is going to be trying to drive the core business model to an outcome that drives revenue as high as possible, particularly for venture-funded, venture-backed companies, because you have to grow, grow, grow. So then the question is, if your incentive is to drive growth in this area that is misaligned to what's right for the consumer, how do you build a company with integrity? And I'm not saying there aren't various ways to, various business models in the category,

• 19:49Speaker 02

  but we chose subscription pricing for a couple of reasons. But one, because it's very simple, and from the perspective of our goal, which is to get people to save and invest as much as they can, it's not connected to the behaviors that we think get people into trouble. Now, you could debate me and say, well, we have a tier that's $9 a month. That's kind of expensive. That might be, and we can have that debate, but it's $9 a month. We try to be clear about it. We try to give you a lot of value in exchange for it. And ultimately, our goal is, again, get you to save and invest as much as possible. So I think from the perspective of building a company rooted in integrity, if you're going to throw out the word integrity, integrity has to be applied to every single thing you

• 20:31Speaker 02

  do, down to your business model, and whether it incentivizes the people in your company to do the right thing.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  In the process of building the business and then of course, and again, I don't mean to take up too much air, you know, oxygen with this, but then then bring that to how you communicate. Does how you communicate truly align to what it is you're doing and what is right for the customer? Are you being honest in your, in your, in your communication? Or are you saying things that seem interesting or magnetic like they're going to capture people's attention? But it's misleading fundamentally. And I think you have to bring all those things together and be super, super and bring, bring integrity into every decision. You know, that you make in the business and create a, a culture that embraces integrity and understands that integrity is the thing that's respected.

• 21:21Anthony Pompliano?

  So what's interesting about this is um.

• 21:26Anthony Pompliano?

  You spend a lot of time on like how to build a company, how to build a culture, how to build a team. What there, given when you started Acorns, it wasn't your first company. What have you done differently or like, what are the, maybe the takeaways for like, when I start my next company? If I ever do that, here are the like non-negotiables or the things that I've learned are, you know, essential to building something that's successful.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm, I'm, and I'm not sure this is the first point, but it's the first point that comes to my mind. And that's when you establish the values of your company. Do those values align to your values like truly? Because if they're not authentically connected to the person building the company. And frankly, the person, the, the people that you choose to lead in the company, if there's misalignment there. Um, you're going to immediately start having fractures in, in the culture because the culture is a man, the feeling of the culture is a manifestation of the values you set in place. And how authentically you're upholding those values. So I would start with, you know, and I'll, I'll tell you, I'll tell you our values and, and so first is lead with heart.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  Second, make bold decisions. Third, always build trust. Four, never stop growing. And five, find a way. And I really, if I, you know what I'm saying, like if I don't embody those things. And I'm talking to the company and I'm making decisions about our product and our brand and this, that, and the other, like people aren't going to believe it. And you're not going to feel like a singular culture. So I think, I think that's part of it, you know? And I also think.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  You have to take your values to an almost religious level. And by that, I mean, you have to decide that you're going to fire people who are not upholding your values. You know, that's like the most, that's taking your values to real actualization. And that's something I've had to, you know, because that's something I've had to get better at. But I think now we've gotten religious about that. And I think that's really fundamental to say, like, are you going to take it all the way to the line?

• 23:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then what about like on the product side, right? In terms of serving these customers? What surprised you the most as you've kind of built for what I'll call like the everyday American, right? And really kind of the sitting at the intersection of giving them access and participation in financial markets?

• 23:43Speaker 02

  I'm, you know, I would, I would say because, because like what surprised me in a positive way is that we have introduced people to a complicated topic and a complicated industry. And it's easy to imagine that during downtimes and really kind of difficult market conditions that people would run. And people have actually done the opposite. People have stayed, customers have stayed. And that has surprised me in a very encouraging way. You know, when I think about the, you know, the surround sounding anxiety that that confronts

• 24:26Speaker 02

  people every day from the news, you know, from their friends, from social media, from all these different sources, like, it's really easy to come to the conclusion that you should give up and that, you know, it's a really bloody time. And especially as we're going through the pandemic with all these spikes and dips and, you know, all this turmoil. So I, I, I, I think that's, that's a really positive, surprising.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Realization and outcome and you know, people have asked us that a lot along the way like, what's going to happen when there's difficult times, especially because you're talking about people who A, might not have a lot of money and B, might not be used to confronting these kinds of anxieties and this kind of panic. And you know, I think that's probably the result of a bunch of things. But, but I like that people are, that our customers are focused on timing the market, not timing the market.

• 25:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Along those lines, there's what I'll call, you know, kind of good investment practices or behavior, but there's also a large variety of assets they could buy. When I think of acorns, whether correctly or not, I don't think about people like YOLOing into, you know, your long tail of crypto assets. But what are some of the trends, you know, where are people investing their money? Is it more kind of, you know, digitally native type opportunities than say, you know, just the S and P? Or what do you all see the actual consumers doing?

• 25:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was, you know, we spent a lot of time talking about how we get into crypto because in our world, the question ultimately is, how do we make this boring, but not too boring? Because, because we want people to passively invest, we want people to be diversified, but we also want to meet people where they are and provide opportunities that people are interested in, allow people to invest in their passions. So ultimately, the way we approached the Bitcoin question or the crypto question was, we said, let's start with an education campaign and that's called Bits of Bitcoin. And that means like, you should think about this as the sprinkles on top, you know? So that was how we launched our foray into Bitcoin. And the way the product works around that is you can get exposure

• 26:32Speaker 02

  of one to 5%. If you're in conservative, you'll get 1%. And if you're all the way, you know, up to aggressive, you can get 5% exposure. And that's a consumer choice. What we've seen, which is really... I think is really cool is that those customers that are choosing the portfolios that that have some customization but are still well diversified, you know, that can connect to their passions, they're actually stickier. And you probably assume that, but we've seen that play out in the data. And I think that's great because if I can get you 2% exposure to Bitcoin in a in a portfolio that's 98% diversified, and you're going to stick with investing for a much longer time because you're supporting something you're passionate about, but also you're doing the right thing, like that's a fantastic outcome.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  So that's, you know, that's, that's how we're thinking about it. That's how we're building out the the portfolio. Let's call it portfolio selection process. We want to make sure you're well diversified. We want to make sure you can participate in some of your passions. And in the end, we want to make sure you're growing your money over time and benefiting from compounding as much as possible. That's, you know, that's really the the way we approach it.

• 27:39Anthony Pompliano?

  And then a lot of times you can learn not only by who you're building the product for, but maybe like the customers, you know, if you could, you would turn them away. And I think a lot about like, you learn about what you are doing by understanding intimately what you're not doing, who you're not building for, etc. It's like, who falls in that like anti customer bucket?

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. By the way, I love this question and this area, you know, to talk about the the the the customer that we're not building for is the active customer, the super active customer. The customer that we are building for is the customer that wants to fundamentally offload the the management of their money and feels that, you know, that Acorns is a company that will handle it ethically, that will put them in the right products and that will help them. That said, there is a degree of active, like we are inviting customers, as I was saying, to participate and and and custom build their portfolios while still maintaining diversification. But I think you have to be extremely clear about who your customer is and who your customer is not.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  And then one of the things I love about Acorns, back to the integrity question is you can tell as much about Acorns From what we do offer in the product as you can from what we don't offer. And there's a lot of products we do not, you know, we just do not offer. And I think this comes back to the customer that we're serving, where they're at, what's important to them, what we believe is going to be most helpful for them and how to guide them to the best outcomes, you know, financially. And sometimes, look, sometimes it's customers get frustrated with us because they might say, you're too paternalistic, you don't offer enough freedom, like, why can't I do whatever I want? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And you can do whatever you want.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  You can do whatever you want with lots of products, but here we're going to help you do what you should do.

• 29:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And I guess like part of building this company is it does sit at the intersection of finance and tech. It does sit at the intersection of kind of brand and product and kind of design. But also in a weird way,

• 29:55Anthony Pompliano?

  education is kind of sewn through this whole thing. And it's a weird position because you don't want to tell people what to buy necessarily in terms of like, buy this stock, don't buy this stock. But they're going to hear that from somewhere, right? You know, like, if they're on Twitter, they're going to hear somebody telling them about some stock or whatever. How, um, how do you think about education and like maybe information more generally as a way to give them, you know, the framework or the foundation, but stay away from suggesting individual stocks, maybe?

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we have two, we have two approaches to education in the product. And this gets back to the whole conversation around integrity, starting from a fundamental belief that knowledge is power and we should inform our customers as much as possible so they make the best decisions that they can. That said, we also create products that make decisions for people in different ways. So the, the, the way that, that we approach education in the product, we have a section called the Learn Hub. By the way, we've been doing this since the beginning, basically. And in the Learn Hub, you can find out every, you know, you can go through every area of financial services and learn, learn, learn, learn. Obviously, there's a focus on investing and, uh, and learning as much as possible about everything from portfolio construction to the way markets move.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  And then our second strategy, which I think is probably more consequential, is educating at the moment of decision making. And that just means that throughout the product, we, we do, um, educational interventions, let's say, at key moments of decision making. And, you know, that might be if you're on the performance screen, really, we, we really want you to take a long-term view. But of course, we're not going to restrict what you can see. So we have a one-day view. If you're spending a lot of time on the one-day view, we probably want to intervene and, and remind the customer to take a long-term view. Because, you know, you might be getting caught up in, in kind of market panics or what's happening today. And that's not a good way to invest, you know? And that goes all the way through to the deposit screen or the withdrawal screen.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  If you're withdrawing money, we want to make sure you understand the impacts of that. So educating at the moment of decision making is kind of our core product strategy. And that's based off of a, of a fundamental educational insight, basically, which is that active learning is the most effective way to learn. And we have the chance to bridge products and education together in one place. And so we're gonna, you know, we're gonna do that as much as we can. And I think if you, if, if I were to say like, the, the way that most companies approach education in financial services, and I can't say all, but I don't, I don't know many exceptions to this, it's a marketing strategy. You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna serve you up content because I want you to do something in my product.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  Versus, I'm gonna serve you up content because I want you to be a really smart person with your money. And as a result of that action, I think you're going to be more loyal to us because we put your interests first.

• 32:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And then maybe my last question for you is,

• 32:56Anthony Pompliano?

  finance is this very interesting market where if you can establish trust, you can do a lot of things with this relationship with a customer.

• 33:06Anthony Pompliano?

  You know, credit cards and other financial services and mortgages and you know, can you just go down the line of all these things that are involved in the lifetime of somebody who is, you know, 22 years old, leaving school all the way up to they buy their first home, they get married, they have children, you know, and kind of continue to make more and more money. And then they've got their retirement, et cetera. What is the aspiration or the ambition of the company? Like, do you want to touch all of these things? Do you have kind of a good understanding of maybe a smaller box where you're like, we just want to maniacally focus on this. Like, how do you think about maybe the future of what you're built?

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's kind of two things in there. So our third value is always build trust. And say what you mean, mean what you say, do what you say you're going to do. You know, I think trust is the number one most important attribute. I mean, in any relationship and we're in a relationship with our, with our customers. So are we saying what we mean? Do we mean what we say? Are we doing what we say we're going to do? And you know, that has to be through and through in all, in all of our decisions. And so trust is, is at the core, the most important, the most important thing. From the perspective of where we're going and obviously being able to take people, to take our customers down a path, we have to earn their trust. They have to respect us and our decisions. Where we're going is really simple.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  It's where we've been, what we've been working toward since very, very early on. It's called financial, a financial wellness system. And just to give context, you know, to where we are today and where we've been. When you sign up for Acorns, the, the basic signup process is that you start with an investing product. We, we obviously allow you to invest your spare change or you could do $5 a day or whatever kind of recurring deposit that you want to make. And then, you know, you've signed up in a few minutes and you're an investor. And then we introduce you sequentially to our product Acorns later, which is a retirement account or Acorns early, which is a kids account, et cetera, et cetera. Emergency savings, we introduce you to these subsequent products. Financial wellness system is a, is a totally different experience

• 35:02Speaker 02

  that signs the customer up from the beginning for every product.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  As a system, in other words, I'm signing up for Acorns and I'm getting a system of products that we believe you need to affect it, that the everyday person needs to effectively manage their money. And then as you add money, we allocate the money across the products for you. So it's really, you know, it's really the idea of a money manager for everyday people. And when I think of the biggest opportunity in financial services outside of the family system, which I think is a, which is, you know, which is a priority for us, I think a money manager for everyday people is the biggest opportunity because fundamentally, most people don't know the products they need.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  Like the vast majority of people don't know how to think about what, what amount of money should go where. And then in the experience that people have with financial services, generally, most people have so much anxiety and so much uncertainty that, you know, they sort of fall out, fall off or drop out at one point or another. So I think bringing all these things together into one cohesive experience is a very exciting prospect. And the way we're thinking about it is that that will live at our premium, you know, premium tier and we'll be the first to offer a really compelling money manager for everyday people.

• 36:18Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Where can we send people to find you on the internet or find out more about the company?

• 36:23Speaker 02

  Acorns.com. I'm not really on the, I don't do a lot of, I don't, I don't really do much social media. So like, so Acorns.com, obviously you can, you know, you can go to check out all of the stuff about where, what we're doing, where, you know, products we offer. And we're in all the app stores. So just search Acorns. And I would say also, we have a kids product called Go Henry by Acorns, G O H E N R Y by Acorns. It was a deal, an acquisition we made of a wonderful company out of the UK called Go Henry, which, which creates products for kids to help kids with financial literacy. And it's, it's in the United States now. And so you can start, you can start basically engaging with us as a six-year-old, you know, and starting, start, start learning about how to think about money and getting that education you're not getting in school.

• 37:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Go Henry. All right, Noah. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. We'll definitely do it again in the future.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Thanks, man. Good to see you.