20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally

Jason Brown is the Founder & CEO @ Tally, the startup that allows you to pay off your credit card debt faster and save money. To date, Jason has raised over $92m for Tally from the likes of Mamoon @ Kleiner, Angela @ a16z, Nikhil @ Shasta and Aileen @ Cowboy just to name a few. As for Jason, prior to Tally, he spent 5 years as the Founder and CEO Kleiner Perkins backed, Gen110. Before that Jason founded Bask, a company providing both technical support and pro-active maintenance. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Jason came to change the world of consumer finance with Tally having spent 5 years in the solar financing sector and even a year in venture? Given his prior entrepreneurial activities, does Jason agree with Joe Fernande @ JoyMode that "serial entrepreneurship is overrated"? 2.) Does Jason believe that founders should always be raising? What is the right way to truly determine whether an investor is aligned to your mission? What should you look for in how they behave and speak? How does Jason like to build relationships with investors pre-term sheet? Is Jason concerned by the compressed fundraising timelines today? 3.) Why does Jason believe that VC funded companies are largely not over-priced? What elements of the macro-economy does Jason attribute as the reason for the high valuations today? Why does Jason believe that we should not celebrate new fundraising? Is the celebration not good for the morale of the team? What should we celebrate instead? 4.) Why does Jason believe that the target for investors is they provide no value? What are you looking to avoid? What are the core ways an investor can damage the success of a company? What can founders do to truly extract the most from their investor base? Does Jason believe one should focus on the VC partner or the firm? Why? 5.) What does Jason believe makes the best board members? What advice would Jason give to new board members on how they can truly be the best board member? Why does Jason do onboarding sessions for all new board members? What does he look to instil in this process? What behaviour at the board should not be tolerated? How should the founder communicate this to their investor? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Jason’s Fave Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Jason on Twitter here!

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

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  We are back for Founder's Friday here on the 20 Minute VC and releasing this one from Helsinki. And so if you want to see some of our adventures and travels there, Mojitos will feature. Then do check us out on Instagram at HDebbings1996 with two Bs. I would love to see you there. But to our episode today, and I've had this guest on before, but so much has happened since our last episode, including a $50 million Series C led by Andreessen that I felt we needed a round two. And so with that, I'm thrilled to welcome back Jason Brown, founder and CEO at Tally, the startup that allows you to pay off your credit card debt faster and save money. To date, Jason has raised over $92 million for Tally from the likes of Mamuna Kleiner, Angela at Andreessen, Nikhil at Shasta and Eileen at Cowboy, just to name a few. As for Jason, prior to Tally, he spent five years as the founder and CEO at a Kleiner Perkins backed Gen 110.

• 0:45Harry Stebbings?

  Before that, Jason founded Basque, a company providing both technical support and proactive maintenance. I'd also want to say that a huge thank you to Nikhil at Shasta, Mamuna Kleiner and Angela at Andreessen. They provided some amazing personal and fantastic question suggestions today. I really do so appreciate that team. So every time you listen to a podcast or go online, you get another ad for a mattress, thousands of them. But only one uses technology and temperature to give you the deepest, sweetest sleep. The Pod by Eight Sleep, the first bed to combine dynamic temperature regulation and sleep tracking to ensure you're getting the best sleep possible. Research shows the deep link between sleep performance and temperature. So the Pod reacts in real time to your body's unique needs, adjusting the temperature to keep you comfortable and sleeping deeply all night long.

• 1:29Harry Stebbings?

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• 2:13Harry Stebbings?

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• 2:58Harry Stebbings?

  using Intercom, visitors kept abandoning their site. The Intercom Messenger helped Unity get proactive with their visitors. In just 12 months with Intercom, Unity got 45% more customers. So give your customers the one thing they're looking for and get your best revenue channel yet. Go to intercom.com/podcast, then see everything else Intercom can do for you. But it's now time to dive into the episode. And so I couldn't be more excited to welcome Jason Brown, founder and CEO at Tally.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 3:33Harry Stebbings?

  Jason, my word, it has been over two years since our last episode. What a two years it has been. But thank you so much for joining me once again, Jason.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Thanks. I really appreciate you having me back.

• 3:42Harry Stebbings?

  Not at all. I'm excited. But I do want to kick off. And for those that made the terrible sin of missing round one, when probably only my mother was listening, to be fair. But with a little bit on you. So I spoke to Angela Stranger, and her threesome before the show. And she said I had to ask about how you grew up, how it impacts how you view financial services, and kind of that founding moment with Tally as a result.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  So this is my fourth company that I founded, but it's definitely closest to my heart. And growing up, I had the most amazing parents. And you know, I have kids now, and I aspire to be half of the parent that they were. But the one thing that was big detractor was there was a pretty persistent level of financial anxiety and Stress in our household and I saw the toll that that took on my parents and it's kind of a ever-present tax on the happiness potential. And so when I was thinking about the next 20 years, when they write the history books, what are going to be the the big themes? And I believe one of the biggest is going to be the role that automation plays in really shaping the human experience.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  And in our modern lives, there is nothing more stress-laden and really anxiety-inducing than our financial lives, especially for the majority of people. And what's really powerful is I believe it's possible to build into software the capability of doing the majority of our financial thinking and our financial work. So we founded Tally to be a financial automation company with a mission to make everybody less stressed and better off financially by creating a service that is complete financial automation and effectively take what the ultra wealthy already have in the form of family offices that maybe live in Greenwich, Connecticut, you know, this team of four or five people that figure out all the strategies and then actually execute those strategies on behalf of wealthy people.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  We are building that into software and allowing us normal people to be able to just articulate what we want out of life. Like I want to be debt-free or I want to own a home and then have this intelligence service that can figure out how to get us there and then do the work necessary to make it happen.

• 5:38Harry Stebbings?

  I totally love the mission. I always think if we can automate cars, why can't we automate our finances in many respects? But yeah, totally aligned.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Amen, brother.

• 5:46Harry Stebbings?

  I do want to kick off though, and it's really a question that I think about quite a lot because I had Joe Fernandez on the show from Joy Made and he said that serial entrepreneurship is overrated. Now, I'm interested, as you said, you started numerous companies before Tally. Would you agree with him on this as a starting point? Let's start with that.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  So I respectfully disagree and disagree strongly. If that were true, then that also means that the 10,000-hour rule is a farce. This idea that when you focus on doing something really well for a long time, you get better at it. And I believe that when it comes to being a successful founder, success comes down to these brief moments of high leverage. And what I mean by that is that there's about a half a million minutes a year and most of those minutes. Are either the monotony of going to work or you're sleeping. But in a given year, there's a couple of brief moments that really, really matter. And these are the moments where you're sitting in front of a potential candidate for some executive role. And they're way outside your league, but you're able to connect with them on a certain level

• 6:46Speaker 02

  and inspire them to quit their ridiculously overpaid job to take all this risk and a lower salary to work for you. Or, you know, you bump into that investor in an elevator and you have the instincts to capitalize on that and turn that into a meeting. So what I believe first time founders really struggle with is sifting between, let's say that the half a million minutes that don't matter and the 10 that do in a year. And that 10,000 hours or 20,000 hours of practice of doing it over and over really gives you that intuition on identifying what moments matter and then making sure that you can put points on the board when they present themselves.

• 7:20Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, all I will say, as I was in an LP meeting the other day and I said, if we follow Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours rule, I've interviewed 10,000 hours worth of VCs. So I must be a master at VC now, so I will respectfully accept your check. And sadly, they didn't quite agree with my thesis on the 10,000 hour rule. But I do want to ask, in terms of kind of doing things differently, what do you think you've done differently then with Tally as a result of the prior experiences with the other companies?

• 7:45Speaker 02

  What about just like the mindset? Early on in my career, my mindset was all around quote unquote success and success defined by economic outcome and being famous and getting quote unquote being successful from a superficial standpoint. And I've learned, as I've gone through this more, that that kind of mental model leads you to make suboptimal decisions. And that when I shifted my mindset to really focus on thriving in the journey and finding deep meaning in every single day and focusing on delivering value for customers regardless of what happens, that it really liberated me to be much more effective and make better decisions.

• 8:21Harry Stebbings?

  But I do want to start today though on that, surprise, surprise, probably given the name of the show, but the game of fundraising and the process of meeting investors. Because when we chatted before, you said be judicious in working only with investors who are committed to seeing your mission and vision through. So of course, totally agree with you there. But speaking of sharing mission and vision with investors, should founders always be raising first in terms of having those conversations?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  You know, I, I think it's important to put yourself in a position to work with the best investors and best defined by the alignment with your mission and vision. So I really think it depends on the company. I personally try to spend as little time fundraising as possible and as little time with investors as possible. Because every moment that I'm doing that, I'm not spending it with my team or focusing on, on products and delivering value to our customers. So it's, it's more around the opportunity cost and trying to really focus on, on creating value.

• 9:13Harry Stebbings?

  My subsequent question is, I agree in terms of the alignment to the mission and vision. But let's face it, when you're a company like Tally and you're a hot company, every investor will say, Jason, I'm totally aligned to your mission and vision. How do you truly determine whether someone is genuinely aligned? What questions do you ask?

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Well, it's actually the inverse. I watch what questions they ask. So the majority of folks expressed a lot of excitement about our business. So, you know, our retention, we have 99% monthly retention of our users, our CAC to LTV ratios, all those things, our growth rate. And I noticed that the majority of investors really focused the substantiative portion of their questions on those kinds of things. And it was the investors that also spent time trying to understand the benefit to consumers. And, you know, our mission is to make people less stressed and better off financially and really digging into how we're doing that and wanting to get validation on the fact that we were really aligned with our own mission and just not saying it. So it was actually the, the investors who were doing their own diligence to validate that,

• 10:11Speaker 02

  that I think it, it showed the difference between, you know, kind of people that were excited about the numbers versus people that were excited about the numbers and the impact we're trying to have in the world.

• 10:20Harry Stebbings?

  We mentioned some of your investors before the show. As I said, a huge fan of all of them. I absolutely love the camp table that you have in place. In terms of the relationship build with them, given the fact that, you know, you do want to be headstand on the company, how do you think about the relationship build process with the investors and just really building that human, non-transactional, caring relationship?

• 10:38Speaker 02

  So I think it starts early. So half of my investors, I've raised four rounds of funding and the leads, two of them I knew beforehand and those relationships were years old. And then two of them were new. And so I think focusing on the new relationships in the early times when you're trying to figure out, hey, Do you want to take money from this person and work with them? I actually really enjoy walks. I think it's a great opportunity just to to get out, spend a couple hours walking around. And what I'm looking for is I'm trying to get to the bottom of their motivations. What really makes them happy? What's their, what's their view of self-actualization? Is it status? Is it wealth? Or is it more making an impact and leaving something meaningful behind them? And it's the folks that are more intrinsically motivated by those things outside of superficiality

• 11:22Speaker 02

  that I'm drawn to because I believe that when you're in, let's just say, a spot of bother in the company at some point, those that are worried about their reputation or how much money they're going to make are going to potentially be drawn to suboptimal decisions as it relates to the company and the mission. And those that are more grounded in their identity and what motivates them are going to be more likely to, you know, really align with what we're trying to do.

• 11:45Harry Stebbings?

  I love the element of the walk and it kind of goes back to that human centristy. But the biggest concern for me right now is with the proliferation of capital in the ecosystem, we're seeing such compression on fundraising timelines, meaning that you maybe just don't get to know this person in this period of shortened time. How do you think about the compression of fundraising timelines? And are you as concerned as I am?

• 12:04Speaker 02

  I mean, I think maybe one of the implications there is around valuation. So even with short timelines, you can still get walks. So our rounds went very, very fast, but walks were still had. So I think, I think there's still, still time for a couple hours stolen through the Presidio. But I think maybe your, your implied question is, am I worried about, about venture valuations? And I actually think this is more structural to the world economy at this point because more and more wealth is being concentrated in the top five, 1%. And those individuals tend to save and invest most of their money. So what that means is there's a growing glut of capital looking for returns. But with overall GDP of most nations being pretty low, that means that there's a relatively low supply of yielding investments.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  And what that translates to is that founders that have identified great markets and great opportunities and are executing are a very scarce resource. And so that the overall supply is much lower than the demand and therefore the price rises. So I would actually argue that, given those constraints, venture funded companies aren't as overpriced as you might think.

• 13:08Harry Stebbings?

  Wow, I think that's a headline and a half for the show and that's interesting. Seeing some of the valuations that I've seen recently is an interesting thought. I do want to take this one logical step further because we have to walk, we sign the term sheet and we're in business. Now, many people celebrate this big moment for the milestone of the company. In terms of celebrating fundraising, you said before raising money is not something to be celebrated, especially if your round is overinflated. So interesting, I think I probably have a different viewpoint. So let's break the sentence in two. Why is it wrong to celebrate raising money, Jason?

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Well, so every round that we've raised, I've done a talk with the team. I use a metaphor and it's it's the road trip metaphor. So imagine you're on a road trip, maybe with some friends or family going from San Francisco to New York and you know, there's going to be some fun, there's going to be some monotony. But like in general, it's about this journey. But in order to get from one coast to the next, you definitely need gas to put in your car. And so that to me is what fundraising is, is you're on this journey and you need to refuel and clearly you need capital to do that. But in and of itself, putting gas in the car is not this big thing to celebrate. It's something to be appreciative of. But what we should celebrate as founders and as teams is shipping product, delivering customer value.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  And especially if, let's say you've raised a big round, that's maybe ahead of where your business results are, all the more you should not celebrate because you should understand the gravity of what you've signed up for, which is as you signed up to deliver even more value than maybe you are thinking you needed to provide in order to give good returns to shareholders. So I just prefer to have all my team grounded and understanding that with that fundraising comes a big mountain to climb and and quite honestly, a duty to deliver on the promises that were made when fundraising happened. So it's more a matter of having the right mindset. And I think celebration explicitly for fundraising really maybe leads some members on the team to not have the right paradigm.

• 14:58Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, is it not important for the culture, for the morale, for the enthusiasm, excitement of the team to just feel like they're really on a moving ship and having a celebration of that raise is part of it?

• 15:09Speaker 02

  So they're going to know that anyway, right? It's not like the team members aren't sharing the fundraising announcements with their friends. So it's more you need to put it all in perspective. And it's not to say that, you know, nobody's allowed to celebrate, but we at Talley Have and never will explicitly have a celebration around the fundraise. It's always going to be around product and delivering value to consumers. And I just think it's important to train your team on what matters and what matters is delivering value. And that's where they should have that sense of this ship is moving, it's going somewhere. And I want them to have the connection to that, not to this kind of arbitrary stop at the gas station.

• 15:44Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned the word value there and it's interesting because you know, now we have the investors on board. A lot of investors claim to add a ton of value to the company as part of their check. I'm interested, having you done four rounds of funding with Tally and prior companies. What value have you found that VCs bring first?

• 15:58Speaker 02

  You know, I'm a little pessimistic on this one. My starting point is you have to have the mindset that VCs are going to provide no value. They will all go on and on about the value they'll provide. But what you're shooting for as a base starting point is zero value. And what you're trying to avoid is negative value. And negative value comes in distractions and potentially bad advice and steering you the wrong way. So really the battle is to make sure that they're not going to actually hurt the company. But once you're at a point of, okay, I'm confident that we're at least at a place of neutral. Then it's really up to the CEO to say, okay, investor A, I'm going to give you a specific job and a specific mission. And this is what I need you to focus on.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  And here are the expectations and the timelines, almost like you would an employee where there's a clearly defined task that they can own and own entirely. So maybe you've heard the term D R I or just directly responsible individuals. Make sure that there is nothing that is held by the group. There has to be one individual who owns every item. And that way investors who are busy can say, okay, cool. I've got this one task and I know the other investors are handling other tasks. And you can really hold them accountable for working on those projects. And then you're in a position to move from neutral to to value add.

• 17:06Harry Stebbings?

  On the converse then, if that's kind of where investors potentially add neutral or slight positive value. On the converse, where do you think there's common conceptions that VCs add value by probably first time founders who haven't raised and haven't worked with VCs before? Where they think there's a ton of value coming, where maybe there isn't actually.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  So I think the challenge of being in venture capital is that outside of the actual partner who's doing the investing. Money is a complete commodity. And so the drive is. To try to differentiate an undifferentiable commodity through the quote unquote value add. So I think it's more of marketing and what venture investors have to do to try to get entrepreneurs to see them as somehow a more valuable source of capital. And clearly, there's, there's a big difference between one investor and the next. But oftentimes, that is represented in the partner and their expertise and who they are as a human. And it ends up really being differentiated on the person and less so on the overall firm.

• 17:58Harry Stebbings?

  No, I do get you and I always say that VCs are today's brilliant marketers. So absolutely, I do want to ask you because we spoke about some of your investors before and you have an amazing board in place with Mamoun, with Eileen, with Angela, obviously my favorite Nikhil. Sorry to everyone else. And I spoke to all of them before the show and Mamoun asked, how do you run your board meetings first? Let's start there.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Well, it actually begins way before the board meeting. So I do an orientation for new board members and this is a structured onboarding where I make sure that they understand the tally strategy and our values and the norms that are expected in a board meeting. And I really try to bring a lot of intensity and intention to the board meeting. And the way that I encourage that is I'm pretty hardcore about making sure that nobody's on any devices or distracted during the meeting. And inevitably that will come up and I have a conversation with a board member afterwards and just really make sure that they know that when we're together focusing on tally for that two or three hours, that we're attentive and we're focused. And one thing to do is maybe provide a couple more breaks throughout the meeting so that people can step out and do their emails.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Another thing that I find is that every single board meeting, I'm learning something and it's new and it's hard and actually formally ending the board meeting. And that's actually important because you don't want to leave the board room as the CEO without formally ending the board meeting. Because in a really adverse scenario, if the board meeting is still running, things could happen that you wouldn't want. So you formally end the board meeting, but then give the investors an opportunity to talk amongst themselves and then come back. And I've received some very constructive, sometimes hard to hear feedback that has really helped me grow. So it's definitely, it makes it harder in some sense, but giving them the opportunity to reflect with each other and then to, you know, give you some input is. At least for me, I've found it's been helpful in my personal growth.

• 19:45Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, a lot of founders have said to me, you know, X board member does this and it really irritates me, or they do that and it really irritates me and it frustrates me. But they're my board member and I can't tell them off for doing that. How do I do it, Harry? You're an investor. What would you recommend, Jason, in terms of suggesting to an investor of how they could optimize their work on the board? In terms of, hey, Jason, you're on the phone a lot. Can we please focus on the business? And what's the right way to do it with it being rude?

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it does help a lot if you do an orientation. So you can set norms and expectations upfront and you get a mutual, a mutual contract on, hey, what we're going to do and how we'll conduct ourselves in the board meeting. So if you haven't done that, I actually think it's not a bad idea to establish those norms and actually meet individually with the board members and say, hey, look, I'm trying to make the board meeting overall more productive and I'd love to institute some norms and I'd like to get your feedback on them. So that way you're kind of doing a reorientation with everybody and it's not necessarily calling out one person. And once you have that contract, if you will, where everybody's agreed upon it, then you have that platform to say, hey, board member X, you know how we agreed upon, you know, no phones in the meeting?

• 20:51Speaker 02

  You know, I just observed that you were on the phone and that made me think that maybe that what we're covering was not important. So I'd love to have you not do that.

• 20:58Harry Stebbings?

  I do want to ask that, you know, I joined my first board about a year ago. For you as a founder, I'd love to hear your advice. What could I do to be the best board member that I can be? And what advice would you give a newly minted board member on the other side of the table?

• 21:10Speaker 02

  I would give two pieces of advice. So the first one is when the company is facing issue X, do not say, oh, I saw another company that had a similar issue and they did Y. And the reason is, is that that is not contextualized to your company, your industry, the resources you have, the capabilities, your knowledge. And it's just flat out generally not helpful. What I think really good board members do is they have this big mental bank of all this learning and pattern recognition, but they contextualize it for your company and understanding what is really relevant to you. So that's the first thing. The second is as a board member, when another board member says something, do not agree nor necessarily disagree, but try to.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Point out either the other side of the probability distribution on what they're suggesting. Because no matter what, there's no way that what they're saying is either without risk or without some opportunity cost. So I think if board members between each other can say, hey, I think that's a really interesting point. But what is the opportunity cost of focusing on that? Or if that ends up not being true, why might it not be true? And then you get diversity of thought around issues and you leave the problem with the management team. But you open up their minds to different possibilities. And I think that makes some of the most productive input from board members.

• 22:25Harry Stebbings?

  I'm really pleased. You said about diversity of thought there. And it takes me to something that you said to me before. And you said that if you lead with inclusion, you produce the kind of resultant product of diversity. And I know that was more applied to the team, but what did you mean by that?

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Well, in today's world, there's a lot of talk about diversity and the metrics associated. And if you get down to it, is the enterprise value that diversity create is around diversity of thought and approach. And where I think that a lot of folks are kind of misled is that they're so focused on these metrics and these, I've got to hit this number and this number, that they missed a point that in order to get diversity of thought, you need a workplace where people feel intellectually and emotionally safe. And they feel safe to represent the ideas that come from maybe their unique background. And so what I think potentially makes a lot of companies struggle is that they are not creating an inclusive workplace where people from underrepresented backgrounds

• 23:21Speaker 02

  feel emotionally and intellectually safe to share their ideas and to challenge. And so it's really hard. And one of the first hires that we made, I think it was our seventh hire, was a head of people who's really passionate about inclusion and diversity. And we knew that we had to put real dollars behind thinking intensely about how do you create this inclusive place? And how do you make sure that when you're interviewing people for a role, that you see a broad spectrum of candidates so that you actually have a chance to create a team that can approach problems from many different perspectives? So I believe that if the workplace is one where people feel included and they can thrive and their ideas are heard and respected, then naturally those Numbers that a lot of companies are focusing on from a diversity standpoint will come.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  And Tally still has a lot of work to do, so we're by no means there. But I am proud to say that the company is majority and minority. And that hasn't been an accident. That has definitely been driven by this belief that we'll be a more successful company if we do have that diversity of thought.

• 24:21Harry Stebbings?

  Final question for the quick fire there, and it's I totally agree with you in terms of the need to create that safe space and the benefits of doing so. But what can one actually tangibly do to create the safe space itself?

• 24:31Speaker 02

  So how about I'll tell you concretely with Tally. So we have three core values and I'll talk about the one that's closest to my heart. So the wording is change shoes often. And the underlying idea behind that is empathy. And we were really inspired by the walk a mile in somebody else's shoes. So it's valuing that just to act of taking the time to imagine what it's like to be another person, both emotionally and intellectually, and really approaching them with curiosity, such that you're actually interested in understanding their perspective, not making judgments about what they have to share. And I think that's one very concrete way that you can create inclusion is through the behaviors that create closeness and kind of status, if you will, within your company.

• 25:13Harry Stebbings?

  I absolutely love that in terms of walking the mile in someone else's shoes. And it totally gives that different perspective. I do though wanna move into, Jason, as you've done before, the quick fire round. So I say the short statement and you hit me with your favorite and immediate thoughts. How does that sound?

• 25:26Speaker 02

  All right, let's do it.

• 25:27Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, I need to read more books. What is your favorite and why?

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Sapiens, it's the most important business book to read because it helps you understand why we are the way we are and why society is what it is. And it supersedes kind of the operating system, if you will, that we're all beholden to in our day to day lives.

• 25:46Harry Stebbings?

  Consumer finance generally has shit retention. How do you buck the trend and maintain yours at ninety nine percent?

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Complete automation.

• 25:54Harry Stebbings?

  What does that mean?

• 25:55Speaker 02

  It means moving from a world where you're giving people tools and recommendations to one where you're really taking the burden and the task off of their plate, off of their shoulders, and you're doing the hard work and the thinking for them.

• 26:07Harry Stebbings?

  Does that not mean interaction then dies or reduces?

• 26:10Speaker 02

  It means that the interaction model Moves to one of, hey, what do you want as a human? Like, what are your goals? Whereas tools are a means to get to a goal, this lets you level up and say, hey, tell me what your goals are, and then I'll figure out how to get you there and do the work for you.

• 26:26Harry Stebbings?

  What advice do you know now that you wish you'd known at the beginning of your time with Tally?

• 26:30Speaker 02

  I wish I knew how freaking hard it is to build completely automated financial services. This is way harder than I had ever imagined.

• 26:36Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, tell me, the most important metric to look for when assessing consumer fintechs is simply CAC, the most common statement I hear from ambassadors, agree or not?

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Very much disagree. It is the ratio of CAC to LTV.

• 26:48Harry Stebbings?

  And what is good CAC to LTV for fintechs? Is that the same as SaaS and enterprise, five to one?

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Five to one is a good number. Most fintech is below that because CAC is higher, but the best fintech firms are definitely in that five or higher ratio.

• 27:02Harry Stebbings?

  If there is doubt, there is no doubt when it comes to hiring. True or not true?

• 27:06Speaker 02

  True.

• 27:07Harry Stebbings?

  Next five years for you and for Tally, paint that exciting vision ahead for the automation of finance that is possible.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Building a service that can globally think for you and optimize based on what you want out of life, and do all the thinking and the the financial work to get you to your goals. So complete financial automation.

• 27:23Harry Stebbings?

  Jason, as I said at the beginning, it's been amazing to see the two years that you've had with Tally since our last episode. I can't wait to do another one in two years. Seriously, I so appreciate you coming back on the show, and this was awesome.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Thanks, Harry. A complete pleasure and excited to see how your track record evolves as a venture investor.

• 27:40Harry Stebbings?

  Jason is too kind and he's building such a special company with Tally. And if you'd like to see more from him and behind the scenes at Tally, you can find him on Twitter at SF underscore J C B. That's at SF underscore J C B. And it would also be fantastic to see you on Instagram. You can do that on at H Stebbings nineteen ninety six with two Bs. Always love to see you there. But before we leave you today, so every time you listen to a podcast or go online, you get another ad for a mattress, thousands of them, but only one uses technology and temperature to give you the deepest, sweetest sleep, the Pod by Eight Sleep, the first bed to combine dynamic temperature regulation and sleep tracking to ensure you're getting the best sleep possible. Research shows the deep link between sleep performance and temperature, so the Pod reacts in

• 28:22Harry Stebbings?

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• 29:04Harry Stebbings?

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• 29:43Harry Stebbings?

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