00:04:53 · Ben Pfisterer, Adam Miller
[00:04:53] S0: Yeah. I think the competitive side is that you're not scared of competition. I think that's probably a trait you have to have to be a... To be an entrepreneur and particularly a tech startup because incumbents are very ominous things, and they're... Particularly in the financial services space, if you were scared of competition or taking it on, you just wouldn't do it. Just way too hard. So, having that sort of... You know, and the ability to just look past that and the belief that you can build something to really change and, you know, sort of disrupt... I don't know they were, but disrupting comments is really critical. And design for me, it's critical. And we build software, hardware, like the onboarding flow, every part of the dashboard, all the apps we build. I'm very, very strong in that. We're a product led business. We love design. We have a strong design team. So we think particularly in our space, which can be really commoditized and boring, bringing an element of beauty and design element to it as well is something that isn't there. So, yeah, it's a sort of a passion of mine and the design team as well. So we enjoy injecting that into everything we do. [00:05:52] S2: And you're known kind of for your really direct approach to running a company. I think we read in the AFR that, you know, you're just known for this intensity in the way you act. Has that come from learnings from Square or anywhere else you've worked, or has that always been kind of part of your genetic makeup?
00:05:52 · Adam Miller, Ben Pfisterer
[00:05:52] S2: And you're known kind of for your really direct approach to running a company. I think we read in the AFR that, you know, you're just known for this intensity in the way you act. Has that come from learnings from Square or anywhere else you've worked, or has that always been kind of part of your genetic makeup? [00:06:11] S0: I've never thought of it. Maybe it's part of the Germanic side of my background. It's just that very direct combined with Australian background. Think those two are very direct cultures in general. I just... I probably dislike it because that's way I like being treated. I don't... I I struggled with the whole San Francisco vibe and what have you where people talk around something that I don't like and they actually compliment me before they insult you and I love it in Australia. It's very direct. And so for me, I just wanna be treated that way. And a direct, hopefully, doesn't translate to rude or arrogant or anything like that. But if you can just be honest the way you're feeling or honest the direction you wanna go, you can just cut to what we need to do as a business. So, yeah, I think that's a trade if everyone can be a little bit more direct, but thoughtful the way they do it. It's definitely lends a lot of the company.
00:06:53 · Sachin
[00:06:53] S1: The question that I really had on the tip of my tongue when I was researching for this episode is that you sort of call yourself direct, and I think a number of people have said you're fairly intense, and then you've built this company, a billion dollar company within two years. But then in your history, you've worked across all these organizations like NAB, Visa, these sort of big financial incumbents. Those two things don't really, for me, fit together. This person that's created a billion dollar company in two years, then you worked at some of the most bureaucratic organizations, I think, in Australia. How do those two things fit together?
00:07:22 · Ben Pfisterer
[00:07:22] S0: No. It's true. I'm a slow learner in that front. I just... The one thing that I had from being that... I guess, from the competitive side of it when you left university, it was kinda like, you know, go get big brands, chase money early on, and I realized pretty quickly that the money part of it was unfulfilling, but I was a bit of a slow learner on the brand thing. So when I sort of joined companies, I eventually had to join them both for the wrong reasons and then realized I need to do something hard at those companies. So for that first eye opening, I did management consulting for probably too long and then joined Jetstar, and I was kinda, like, bit younger then in terms of more watching these people grow grow the company. But I learned a lot, and I thought, hang on. This is kind of the environment I like where they're really pushing. They're up against incumbents, etcetera. So that was the first taste of it. And then, yeah, just slow learner going back to these big brands. But when I was within those companies, I always found a way to find something that was ridiculously hard to do. Otherwise, I would have gone insane. And I'd... And I and I I generally did not like working at these companies, which is, in hindsight, ridiculous. But I like it. Going to NAB, I realized that there was this thing potentially called, you know, chip card technology and then contactless and then mobile payments. The bank should be doing and wasn't doing, so I pushed them really hard. So that pushing internally to get something hard done, sort of, I guess, ticked the box enough to hang around for a little bit. But, yeah, I I learned a lot about pushing through people's resistance and, you know, how to influence people internally to get stuff done, finding advocates, you know, being determined, fighting resistance, all that sort of stuff. So I learned a lot from that, but, yeah, ultimately, it just wasn't for me and finally saw the light. But in Australia, there weren't these consumer facing tech companies you could jump into like today. Just wasn't that when I was, you know, back at that age. So I didn't have too many options on that front, but, obviously, eventually, when the Square opportunity came along, I jumped at that. But in the meantime, I decided two companies to try to scratch that itch and see how it went. And
00:09:16 · Adam Miller, Ben Pfisterer, Sachin
[00:09:16] S2: if we were to go inside your mind, Ben, what would surprise us most about your internal monologue? [00:09:20] S0: Wow. Okay. [00:09:23] S1: I think, [00:09:26] S0: I do surprise myself sometimes that I just don't worry about things, and I move on from things really quickly. I think that a good trait of a lot of entrepreneurs is the ability just to move on. Mhmm. I've seen this before. It's not as bad as you think it is. Things will be fine. Keep going. The ability to push through adversity and push through sort of those times in business where you can't see the other side. And so, yeah, I think... Don't get too deep in there, but I... If you were to look into that, I think that sort of... That ability to look through obstacles and just push probably the number one thing, and and then that sort of goes through all parts of my life as well. So... Mhmm. [00:10:02] S1: And without going too specifically into the details, as you're working in the financial system for so long, I bet you had a list where you were sort of noting down all the problems with the financial system and the problems with how these companies operated, what they weren't doing. And I'm sure a lot of those insights led to Zeller, but, like, what were some of the problems about the financial system that you noticed being across all these organizations in different subsets of the sector?
00:10:27 · Ben Pfisterer, Adam Miller
[00:10:27] S0: Yeah. I think everyone knows that there's so many issues with banking in general because of those. The products out there are just very basic. Like, we open an account, we just leave it there. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't have any sort of intelligence to tell me whether I'm doing the right thing or the wrong thing or whether I could optimize my financial position. So it's very, very basic. I think as we move forward, what Zeller is trying to do is make it extremely more enhanced and the ability to be more customizable for businesses and just give them a better overall service proposition and avoid them having to cobble together. Because at the moment, because the banks do very little from innovation, companies tend to have to go to third parties, fintechs or other SaaS businesses and cobble together the solution they need. But, yeah, we believe that we can offer them all that. And if we don't, they can they can use other products, but, ultimately, we wanna be able to build a product and ecosystem that they can use that, you know, helps solve some of the operational issues as well. [00:11:18] S2: And if you kind of had that insight back in your NAB days, why did you join Square instead of building it yourself from the get go? Did you need to have that experience at Square to really figure out how to how to build Zeller for what it is today?