My learnings from working at a high-growth technology company like Wealthsimple

I was incredibly lucky to join Wealthsimple back in 2017. At the time, the company had less than 75 employees, had less than $1 billion in assets, and was still trying to build its brand and reputation. By the time I left in 2020, the company had over 350 employees, managed more than $8 billion and was valued at greater than $1 billion. Working at a high-growth technology company, like Wealthsimple, was an incredible education. Edit: Wealthsimple was recently valued at $4 billion and has over 1,000 employees.

Before Wealthsimple, I worked for Tilt, another high-growth Fintech company. Tilt was eventually sold to Airbnb, in a deal that has been considered subpar by most.

I’ll outline a few key learnings and observations from my time at Wealthsimple and Tilt:

1. Building a technology brand is hard…. and expensive!

Wealthsimple has been lauded by the media, competitors, and the industry for its brand, content, and approach in engaging with their target customers. Behind the flashy commercials, paid digital advertisements, and famous endorsements comes a very large marketing and brand budget. I was incredibly fortunate to start my career with Wealthsimple in their marketing and growth department

While it might seem outlandish to some, building a trusted brand in financial services is non-negotiable. Financial services firms ultimately rely on one currency: customer trust. Despite being expensive, the true north star is in a company’s unit economics. If you acquire a customer for less than what their lifetime value to the firm is, then you’re doing it right. Luckily for Wealthsimple, they found a great formula and were able to scale effectively. Now, in a multi-product ecosystem, there are opportunities for cross-sell and the sky really seems to be the limit.

….. Or you can be like Tilt, hand out a bunch of branded swag to your “ambassadors”, and have to fire-sale without having much of a monetization strategy.

2. Things might seem fine, but in reality, there’s a fire burning in the office.

Okay, don’t take me literally here but things are rarely as they seem. What may seem like a perfectly efficient operation, and completely automated processes, oftentimes isn’t. With great growth comes great responsibility, or lack thereof. Oftentimes, service, operations, and technology teams can’t properly forecast nor handle the downstream effects of a big uptick in volume. What you don’t see is the hacky spreadsheets, overtime hours, and issue management. It’s the people that often enables a technology company to deliver on their promise.

3. Customer experience is above all else.

I explicitly recall a story from one of my mentors at Wealthsimple, in the early days, they would provide an interface for customers to input information it and appeared that the account would be opened automatically. In reality, they would take the data, manually fill out a form and bike to the custodian to open the account. Wealthsimple never compromised on the client experience and I believe it is one of the prominent reasons why the company has been so successful.

4. Data is the most valuable currency.

Sometimes to a fault. At least at Wealthsimple, all decisions were heavily weighted by data. You need to be comfortable, and adept with analyzing data, and deriving real insights from it. Having a technical skill like SQL will make you an even more valuable asset. Even if you don’t feel comfortable handling large datasets, you should at least be comfortable reading and analyzing the data.

I personally think that decision-making should be a combination of analyzing both quantitative and qualitative information. At times, things were too data-driven. Like anything in life, there are always many ways of looking at the problem at hand.

5. Your job description changes, sometimes multiple times a day.

The business is changing and adapting at a rapid pace, and so does your job. Priorities change consistently, and often, if you need something, you need to do it yourself. Despite working in a service and operations role with Wealthsimple, I found myself as a product manager, email marketer, data analyst, and salesperson all at once.

If you are someone who needs predictability and structure in your day-to-day, working at a startup is not for you. You need to be someone who thrives in ambiguity, embraces the unknown, and isn’t too proud to get your hands dirty.

6. You’ll learn how to sell.

Every interaction you have, whether it’s internally with your team, or with customers, is a sale opportunity. With so many things happening at once, you need to be succinct and clear in what you’re asking and the value you’re providing. There are always a thousand competing priorities, and you need to be persuasive if you want to get something done. An important client of yours reports a minor bug? You need to persuade your engineering team that it’s something worth their time to fix.

Understanding motivations is incredibly important. To be effective, you need to think as your colleagues would. I found the best business-people tried to solution like engineers, and the best engineers tried to solution like business-people.

7. It’s the best experience for a young person early in their career.

Working at a fast-growing startup will teach you more about yourself than any corporate job will. You will learn to take initiative, communicate, build a personal brand, sell, thrive in ambiguity, and generally get sh*t done.

Working for technology startups early in my career have provided me with a lifetime of learnings, experiences, intangible skills, and an incredibly powerful network. If you’re debating whether the start-up is right for you, determine if the above points resonate with you in a positive or negative way.

If you have any other questions or are looking for more information about working for a technology company, let me know. I’d always be happy to chat and discuss further. Email me at aaronbfried@gmail.com