Dave CEO, Jason Wilk: The Best Performing Fund Would Only Back YC Founders on Their Second Time

1. 0:00 – 1:30

   Intro

   1. HSHarry Stebbings0:00

      $4 billion to $50 million market cap. Today, I have the founder of Dave, one of the U.S.'s leading neobanks, on the show. In 2022, they SPACed and went public at $4 billion. Excitement soon waned though, and their market cap dropped to just $50 million.

   2. JWJason Wilk0:19

      All of our PIPE investors from our IPO bailed before our mockup expired. Fintech became a bad word. SPAC became a bad word.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings0:27

      They lost an incredible 98% of their value.

   4. JWJason Wilk0:31

      I had no support in my stock. We were, we were fucked.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings0:34

      But the turnaround has been one of the best on Wall Street. They've increased market cap by over 900%.

   6. JWJason Wilk0:41

      The investments, again, in AI is really what led to a lot of the profitability.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings0:45

      Is there anything you would have done differently about the process?

   8. JWJason Wilk0:48

      Honestly, I don't regret going out via SPAC. I think we just went public too late.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings0:52

      You went public too late?

   10. JWJason Wilk0:53

       I think the company, realistically, was ready to go public probably six to 12 months earlier, and...

   11. HSHarry Stebbings1:00

       Ready to go? (instrumental music) Jason, dude, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show. I've heard so many great things from Imran and from Ash, so thank you for joining me, man.

   12. JWJason Wilk1:19

       Yeah. Thanks, Harry. Great to be here.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings1:21

       Now, I would love to start, you sold your first business for $85 million reportedly. I'm just always oscillating on the fact that... Bluntly,

2. 1:30 – 4:52

   Do Rich Founders Make Better Founders

   1. HSHarry Stebbings1:30

      do richer founders make better founders? I think this a lot with investors. When you think about it, do richer founders make better founders?

   2. JWJason Wilk1:39

      I'd say yes. You know, I, I, I don't think it's the case every single time, but I think about this quite often. If you were to have a blank check VC fund and you just wrote a check, blank, not looking at the idea, uncapped convertible note into every successful exited YC founder for their second company, you'd have probably one of the best VC funds on the planet. I look at some of the guys on my own YC class, 'cause that company I sold wasn't, wasn't Y Combinator. My second company was Dave, the founder of Opendoor, he had a small real estate company he sold to, I think, Trulia at the time. Stripe was in my class. They had sold a previous company for, like, $6 million, some eBay tools business. Like, it just amazing the, the swing for the fences that some of the second-time founders go for once they have a little bit of money in their pocket who otherwise were, went a little more conservative the first time around.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings2:34

      I remember meeting Erik Glyman from Paribus at the time just after he'd sold it to Capital One.

   4. JWJason Wilk2:40

      Right.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings2:40

      And he was like, "I'm about to start something in the fintech space. Uh, anyway, I'll tell you more soon." And he then founded Ramp a month later.

   6. JWJason Wilk2:49

      Yep. Another great example.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings2:51

      Great example. Can I ask, what is that though? Is that like the financial safety that comes from having a first exit? Is that having seen mistakes that you've made before? What is it you think that gives you that unfair advantage on the second or third time?

   8. JWJason Wilk3:04

      At least for me, I, I mean, probably the same thing for, for guys like the, for Paribus and a lot of people in my YC class, we weren't willing to swing for the fences given how, well, one, how little capital we were raising back then. So this company I started was in 2009 was the YC batch I was in, 2009 or 2010, and we had to fight tooth and nail to raise a $300,000 seed round. I mean, now you raise $300,000 in, in, well, every minute you're presenting at the YC, um, you know, batch announcement. But it was so difficult. I mean, Mark Cuban was our first check into that company, and that wasn't even a result of Y Combinator. I had to try and convince him and convince him for a year to get this small amount of money. And back then, Mark actually capped my salary at $30,000 a year until we could get the company profitable. Like, that's how different it was back then to raise capital.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings4:01

      Was that a good move, do you think? Like, now that would be considered, like, Vulture VC. I love Mark, you love Mark, so I don't mean that badly on him, but that would be considered really bad form. Was that actually helpful?

   10. JWJason Wilk4:12

       There's no way that would happen again today, but honestly, it was an amazing forcing function to try and build a profitable business and not raise too much capital. We never actually raised any capital beyond the seed round as a result of that. So it taught us just a lot about persistence and perseverance to try and come up with a scalable business model without burning a lot of capital, without hiring a lot of people. And interesting enough, the $30,000 salary cap led to me overdrafting my checking account a lot, which pissed me off enough to start Dave as my next company after this one. So in a funny way, it sort of led us to that, and then Mark ended up leading the, the seed round for Dave as well. So, um, it was really an interesting story.

3. 4:52 – 13:16

   The Best Performing Fund Would Only Invest in YC Founders on Their Second Time

   1. JWJason Wilk4:52

   2. HSHarry Stebbings4:52

      Why did you not do YC for Dave? You did it the first time. Why not the second time?

   3. JWJason Wilk4:57

      We actually were willing to do it the second time. Not willing. I mean, we, we would have liked to do it, uh, the second go-around 'cause it was so different. You know, back when I did YC in, in 2010, it was still Paul Graham and, and Jessica. Paul was still cooking us dinner in a Crockpot, serving us, like, this vegetarian chili on Tuesdays. Like, it was a much smaller group. Mark Zuckerberg would come in and talk to, you know, 20 of us. You'd get the Google founders coming in. It was this really intimate experience. But it was also a different time when this angel investing was starting to gain momentum. Again, going back to how hard it was to raise the seed round, our demo day was very unsuccessful from a YC standard perspective. And so to go back in and get a bigger check... Mind you, the check size was only $17,000 back then for 6%, not whatever it is today. I think it's a couple hundred thousand dollars, so 17 grand.... bought them 6% of Stripe, which is, uh, pretty, pretty impressive.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings5:55

      It is the most incredible deal when you reflect on it. I mean, that is the most masterful play from Y Combinator.

   5. JWJason Wilk6:00

      Yeah.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings6:01

      Um, can I ask you, when you reflect on, like, the thing that you did very deliberately and strategically differently the second time with Dave that you really think is a case of, "I learned my mistake or the lesson from last time, and I applied it with Dave," what would you say that one or two things is?

   7. JWJason Wilk6:17

      The difference this time around was really swinging for the fences on a bigger problem. I think the first time around, I was going for a, a niche business, something that I knew we could get profitable quickly. So, from that sense, it was a little short-sighted. We never could build a really massive business, and we didn't want to raise a lot of additional capital either. One, 'cause it was hard, and, and two, I didn't like the idea of sitting behind a bunch of preferred equity given this was sort of like my nest egg. I knew that every dollar of cash that the company generated was, you know, 40% mine, and I really wanted to protect that. The second time around, I had some money in my pocket. I had a real bone to pick with a major industry. I looked at every major industry to try and go, tried to disrupt. Banking, had the most personal pain point with. And so, think the second time around was really just having a lot more confidence in myself, confidence in the ability to fail and go for a, a much bigger idea. Going against the banks was sort of a, a perfect time with all this new technology coming out like Plaid that we were partnering with.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings7:17

      Given we had so many companies raise so much in '21 and '22, do you think we have a founders... a group of founders that are generally pretty fucked given the size of the pref stacks that they have to claw back to?

   9. JWJason Wilk7:28

      Yes. I do. I mean, it... The amount of capital that some of these companies have raised, a lot of them copycat companies too, like, that never should have been getting capital. I mean, people... You should never go out and try and build a company as a copycat where you have no real skin in the game or no real bone to pick with the industry 'cause these companies take a long time to build. Like, they take everything. And so it's weird to try and raise a bunch of money to go emulate something else we have no passion for just because it's a, you know, the, the spur of the moment, it's the hot thing of, of the time. And so there's that issue where you have a lot of unpassionate founders. The second is, because of the pref stack, it really kills their optionality. I mean, there's a lot of companies that we would've probably bought by now that are very small but have raised a couple hundred million dollars of pref. And so it just makes their inevitable outcome impossible.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings8:25

       There must be a time though where that realization comes home to roost, so to speak, and when you say, "I know you've raised 200, but I'll give you 20, and you'll be grateful." Does that time come?

   11. JWJason Wilk8:36

       It will come. It just has not come yet. I still think (laughs) people... There needs to be more time for the capital to burn. People need to r- actually run out of money for that to happen. And because the amount of money that people raise, like, they've been able to make it last much longer than otherwise in, uh, in, in previous years past.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings8:53

       Who's the one saying no there out of interest? Because I, as a venture investor, I know how we operate. If you're not in my home run basket largely, you're kind of not interesting. And those companies that are kind of struggling to get to their pref stack, honestly, for venture investors, especially US-minded upside maximization ones, they're just like, "Who gives a shit? Mistake. Move on."

   13. JWJason Wilk9:12

       Yeah, I guess we don't find a lot of VCs going around trying to sort of just get their money back because your industry is such a home, home run, hits-driven business that it's not that interesting for them to try and break even on something. They're putting much more of their focus on the, the 10 to 20X investments that are actually gonna return the fund.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings9:29

       So, it's the founders then who are saying, "No, we need to bluntly get back to the pref stack," and they're the ones turning down the offers?

   15. JWJason Wilk9:35

       Yeah, yeah.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings9:36

       Yeah.

   17. JWJason Wilk9:36

       That's right.

   18. HSHarry Stebbings9:37

       You've had so many interesting elements to the journey. One, one I really wanted to dig in on and one that I'm thinking a lot about is why does anyone go public today? In a world of extended private markets where we have such large capital supplies willing to come in and extend that window, why does any private company want to go public today? How do you think about that?

   19. JWJason Wilk10:00

       Well, one, there's the dy- dynamic of, uh, there's too much pref capital going out there, which I would argue is not great for founders. And so the benefit of being public is you erase all the pref. I mean, at Dave, we have no preferred equity on our cap table. We have no debt in our business. We, we trade $100 million a day of volume, which means we have great liquidity to have employees get, uh, liquid on their, their equity. Uh, it's, it's a real rich person's sort of, uh, not problem, but it's a rare air for companies like a Stripe to be in, where they have a true public comp and an 00:04:26 Adient. There's really no point in them going public because they have such vast access to capital for secondary markets. But that's only a select few companies. If you can be one of those businesses and not have to be public because you have such a clear comp, you don't need to have the distraction to live with it being public, then sure. But I think that also works well if you're an enterprise business. If you're a direct-to-consumer company like Dave, I think you leave a lot on the table and for the potential retail swing that the investors can drive or people that are really passionate about your brand. Like, Tesla, I'd argue, would not be a trillion-dollar private company, but because of sort of the, the cult generation they've developed, the Tesla owners that buy the stock, I mean, they're the ones that have pushed it above and beyond any reasonable sort of EBITDA multiple that they would be trading at as a private company. So, I think it depends if you're enterprise or consumer and depends if you have great public comps or not. And it also depends if you, you know, have that access to the capital markets that you do, which I'd argue very few companies have that luxury.

   20. HSHarry Stebbings11:41

       I completely understand that, hey, it's a game of the 1% who have the luxury to do that. I think there's actually an argument to be said that even a Stripe of the world would benefit from having the pref stack removed. Uh, something that's always questioned is the ability to make long-term bets if public, given the short-term nature of a lot of Wall Street. Do you feel as a public company CEO you're able to make long-term investments that are best for the business in the long term but might have material costs that aren't obvious in the short term?

   21. JWJason Wilk12:08

       I would say because of the turndown that we had to, to weather, our focus on longer term bets (laughs) you know, certainly pivoted towards doubling down our c- our focus on our core product offering, making that best in class, improving the margins. And so a lot of our long term focus on new products definitely, um, you know, was overshadowed. We are now finally getting out of that now that the company is, you know, unicorn valuation again. We have real volume in our stock. We've, you know, gone through one of the most difficult times of my life to get us back here, and so we have some exciting bets that will ship later this year and into 2026 that we're excited about. But had that not happened, those product, product bets would probably already be here in market today.

   22. HSHarry Stebbings12:53

       Going a little bit back from the turnaround, which we're gonna cover-

   23. JWJason Wilk12:56

       Yeah.

   24. HSHarry Stebbings12:56

       I mean, it's just such a wild story. You must look at it now and just go like, "Oh my god. Thank god I'm through that." (laughs) Um-

   25. JWJason Wilk13:03

       Yeah. Not enough time has passed, so I'd say, uh, you know, I'm, I'm not feeling like we're through the woods yet.

   26. HSHarry Stebbings13:09

       D- d- you look fresh. (laughs) Like your fa- your face and skin looks fantastic. Condition is fine.

   27. JWJason Wilk13:14

       (laughs)

   28. HSHarry Stebbings13:15

       Um, you chose to SPAC.

4. 13:16 – 15:36

   Why Did Jason Choose to SPAC?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings13:17

      Why did you choose to SPAC versus traditional IPO? Help me understand that.

   2. JWJason Wilk13:22

      So, I still think that the concept, the structure of a SPAC still makes a lot of sense. You know, you, you get to raise a guaranteed amount of capital, at least through a p- through the PIPE, at a valuation that is set. Versus an IPO process, you don't really know how much capital you're gonna raise, you don't even know what valuation until you reach the market making process at the very end, and that's an arduous process, right? It's nine to 12 months of work to build the S1, not to mention all the stuff you have to do to build out the finance, compliance, accounting functions to, to get there. If you're a younger company going public on the earlier side, the SPAC is an amazing vehicle to give you a lot of confidence. "I know I'm gonna raise this much capital. I know it's this much dilution." And in our situation, we had a, a top tier investor that was leading the, the PIPE. We felt very comfortable. And if not for the qua- like, the lower quality of companies that went public via that, that vehicle, I think you would have seen, uh, this be a much more pervasive way for good companies to go out.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings14:23

      So if SPACs are actually a more functional and efficient mechanism than people give them credit for, why have they been so ridiculed? And I mean, today obviously we're both operating in this ecosystem. The word SPAC is almost a poisonous word. Why is it so badly tarnished?

   4. JWJason Wilk14:39

      Just the sheer amount of low quality companies that went public via that. I mean, access to capital was... When you went to this zero interest rate environment when access to capital anyone could, could raise, it just, you were having companies with barely any revenue, barely any business model that were going public via this structure, and it, it really overshadowed the great companies that went public that could have also done a traditional IPO. And I think, you know, we were one of those companies that we could have easily done a traditional IPO. SoFi could have done a traditional IPO. There are great businesses out there that went public via SPAC that didn't have to, and I think we need to sort of separate that out.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings15:13

      Do you think we'll see a return to SPACs as a mechanism to go public given their efficiency and, as you said, predictability of price?

   6. JWJason Wilk15:20

      If we can get a high quality company to, to go out to sort of reset the stigma, I think you could possibly, you know, save that being a real- a realistic way to go public. And it's honestly, it's too bad that it's gone away 'cause again I, I think it is a, it is a real way to go

5. 15:36 – 28:29

   “We Went Public Too Late, It Was a Big Mistake”

   1. JWJason Wilk15:36

      out.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings15:36

      Is there anything you would have done differently about the process when you review it now?

   3. JWJason Wilk15:40

      Honestly, I don't regret going out via SPAC. I think we just went public too late, to be honest. You know, we saw-

   4. HSHarry Stebbings15:45

      You went public too late?

   5. JWJason Wilk15:47

      Too late. Too late. I think the company realistically was ready to go public probably six to 12 months earlier, and we were waiting. We wanted to find the right sponsor. We were trying to ensure a few things were, were right within our sort of how we were f- uh, forecasting our business. And so we decided to wait a little bit longer. We went public January 2022. The market completely fell apart in April 20- 2022 before our lockup even expired. All of our PIPE investors from our IPO bailed before our lockup expired. Fintech became a bad word. SPAC became a bad word. Unprofitable growth company became a bad word. Like we were sitting in the worst possible place of all time. Had I gone public nine months earlier, we would have had the chance to raise potentially more capital. We would have been able to turn over our earlier shareholders and bring more longer term capital in. Like we never would have gone to a five billion dollar valuation of 50 million market cap overnight. It's n- it wouldn't have happened. We would, would have had actual insulated support with analyst coverage. We had nothing. We were just a sort of a sitting duck. You know, some call it like a fallen angel where you have no pathway back even if you build a good business. It was, it was tough times.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings16:59

      I mean, you are in the center of shit there, respectfully (laughs) as you said.

   7. JWJason Wilk17:02

      Yeah.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings17:02

      All the challenging elements coming together. I, I have to ask, and you said about the PIPE investors not being there, does that not piss you off? And I mean that nicely, but like investors not being there to support you in the hard times is a frustrating thing when you have relationships and you kind of feel like you've earned it.

   9. JWJason Wilk17:18

      Uh, yeah. It does piss you off. You know, I actually called some of these investors before going out and I said, "Hey, the market looks choppy. Why don't we do this as a private round?" And their response was, "Don't worry. Stock goes down, we're gonna buy more. We're here to support you." And within a matter of weeks, they were out. I had no support in my stock. We were, we were fucked. And they had a decent amount to do with that.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings17:41

       I like you so much. You, you're almost a Brit with the fucked. (laughs)

   11. JWJason Wilk17:44

       (laughs)

   12. HSHarry Stebbings17:45

       Um, okay. So we have this moment where we're like, okay, we're at the center of a load of challenging tailwinds-

   13. JWJason Wilk17:51

       Yep.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings17:51

       ... and the stock goes from four billion on IPO to 50 million.

   15. JWJason Wilk17:56

       Yep.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings17:58

       Jason, that is unlike almost any other experience that a CEO will go through. What did your mindset tell itself and how did you actually get through that? Just personally. Forget the rah-rah, the troops bullshit. Like how did you cope every day?

   17. JWJason Wilk18:14

       You know, you can't look. You couldn't look. I mean, it was so depressing to see...... all this value that you had accrued erase overnight. I had, uh, a buddy of mine text me over the situation, um, and he's like, "Look, it was never real because you guys never even got to the mockup. You know, you never actually were, uh, p- possible to sell." By the time our mockup had, had expired only six months after going public, the stock was already down 90% with no fault of our own, right? We had a ton of capital in the, in the bank. We had great business. And his response was, "It was never real, so there's nothing you can really worry about. All you can think about is the path forward." And as a founder, that's all I could do was talk to the team about we have this, this statement that we deliver to the company around patience and performance. Like, let's just keep our heads down. The best companies ultimately go public. If we perform and we're persistent, we're gonna eventually see people turn around and start to buy the stock. And thankfully, it, it did. And for me, I never started the company to make a lot of money. I started the company because I had a, I, I believe in this mission to sort of level the financial playing field for everyday Americans paying all these overdraft fees in their account. And so I, I would advise any founder to really double down on having a very set mission for the company, because it's a really important way to recruit people to bring them into the company. And so, even when our market cap went down 98%, the amount of people that left the company during that time was so small, because people weren't here to make millions of dollars. That's a, that's a byproduct of the mission being successful. And what we did, though, to incentivize people was we issued a bunch of performance stock units that were way out of the money. You know, we said, "Look, market cap's, market cap's 50 million bucks. If we get, uh, stock price from $1 to $5 to $20 to $80 to a hundred, you're gonna hit all these new targets." And I think we probably minted more millionaires at the company as a result of the performance stock units than we did in the actual IPO process. And so, the people that did leave actually left a lot of money on the table 'cause those performance units were quite valuable at the end of the day.

   18. HSHarry Stebbings20:26

       Does it make it mentally easier for you knowing that you couldn't sell? I had an IPO of one of our companies, and similar to you, it was a SPAC, and it went from eight billion to zero. It actually went to nothing, dude.

   19. JWJason Wilk20:37

       Yeah.

   20. HSHarry Stebbings20:38

       But it was in the lockup, and th- there's nothing I could do. So, uh, it does actually make it a little bit easier for me, 'cause it wasn't an option.

   21. JWJason Wilk20:47

       Right.

   22. HSHarry Stebbings20:47

       Does it make it easier in your head?

   23. JWJason Wilk20:49

       That's, I think, the only thing that got me through it, because it, I never... it wasn't like there was a moment in time where I had the ability to just, you know, go get a hundred million dollars. Like, it wasn't a realistic opportunity. I, I, I never had that because the stock dropped so quickly that there was never a chance.

   24. HSHarry Stebbings21:04

       I'm so sorry to be personal, but I, I think these things. And so, does the marriage suffer in those times? Like, we hear work/life balance and, you know, you have all of the bullshit that we hear today. That is the most intensely stressful time. Do you see that wear and tear on a marriage?

   25. JWJason Wilk21:19

       I've got a fantastic wife. She was incredibly supportive through the entire process. She always believed. She was actually a seed investor in, in the company, uh, $50,000 check into the seed round. It was only, only ever seed investment, so I think she's up like 100X on that, uh, on that particular deal. Obviously, it got to be a lot lower than that. But she was a, a believer. She stuck by my side. And I think the one benefit of being in LA, it's not a very tech-heavy hub, you know, like Golf Club, like Playa has no tech founders, and so I was able to sort of escape and not sort of be surrounded by it at, at all times. And I think also being a, a virtual company helped, helped as well.

   26. HSHarry Stebbings21:58

       You said about solving the problem for everyday Americans. One thing I, I often think when I see a lot of funding rounds is, "Wow, this is developers solving problems for developers in Silicon Valley." And I'm not belittling that. That can be a very big company. But do you think that Silicon Valley adequately innovates for a population that is much broader than purely them, or do you think not?

   27. JWJason Wilk22:22

       Certainly when we started the company, no. It was so hard to raise capital for Date, even though we had these amazing results. Going back to the concept I said earlier where investors had never heard of, uh, of an overdraft fee, like, that was a real thing. For us to raise our Series A, even though we had... our, our CAC was $5, we had this amazing growth going on at the company, I had... I think I took 120 meetings for our, our Series A. That was back in 20... 2017, 2018. So before, like, things really got crazy in, in venture. It was hard. People did not understand-

   28. HSHarry Stebbings22:55

       You took 120 meetings for your Series A?

   29. JWJason Wilk22:57

       Yeah. That's right. And we ended up raising the Series A en- entirely from one investor who, it was actually more of a healthcare-focused fund. It was really just a result of one of our board members saying, "Trust me. This is a good idea. It's going to work." And he wrote us the, the check. It was, uh, pretty, pretty interesting times.

   30. HSHarry Stebbings23:15

       What was the check and what was the price?
6. 28:29 – 30:20

   How Does AI Change the Margin Structure of the Next Generation of Companies

   1. JWJason Wilk28:29

      the business.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings28:29

      But when we think about AI on underwriting and customer support, how has it changed the margin structure of customer support for you? You know, we always hear like, "Oh, AI changes customer support," and I'm always like, "Great. Cool." Like, what's the actual impact?

   3. JWJason Wilk28:44

      Well, one, it's actually a, a better NPS score around the, the experience. So if you want to talk to, you know ... Typically, this, this would be the same for most banks and espe- especially neobanks in the country, most sort of call center support is gonna be offshore, and that's gonna take some time to get to. We, you can interact via chat, but mostly that support, they're looking at a FAQ list to derive the response. AI is able to quickly ingest all that, get you the answer you're looking for within a matter of seconds, and so we actually get better scores for a fraction of the cost, 'cause I think it, it probably costs us two to three dollars per contact if someone wants to talk to an actual agent, at least. And so when you think about the cost reduction of someone interacting with an AI agent that costs literally nothing, I mean, that alone is gonna be pretty impactful, and we don't have an, a insignificant amount of people that are contacting support each month just to understand what their approval limit is. You know, "How do I access this part of the, the app?" It's pretty, it's ... Well, not pretty. It's very impactful.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings29:47

      S- Can I ask, have you then, like, removed people from customer support or just not hired new, supplemented existing? What does that kind of-

   5. JWJason Wilk29:56

      Nope.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings29:56

      ... re- resource allocation look like?

   7. JWJason Wilk29:57

      We've always had an escalation team that sits domestically. That team's b- been the same size, but we've also, keep in mind, scaled our customer base 2X since then. So we've kept the same size team. We've had less reliance on the outsourcing 'cause more has gone into the AI support. So there's been no sort of staff reduction at the core team in the US, but it is less reliance on these sort of offshore, uh, companies.

7. 30:20 – 41:25

   Are We Heading into a Recession? Predictions for Next 12 Months?

   1. JWJason Wilk30:20

   2. HSHarry Stebbings30:20

      Got you. Fantastic. So we have better service provided by same number of people, essentially.

   3. JWJason Wilk30:24

      (laughs) That's right.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings30:25

      On the underwriting side, I actually met an underwriting AI company the other day, and they were selling to one of the biggest providers in Germany, and they were like, "Hey, we've got 180,000 underwriters at one of the biggest." Um, "Basically, we can get rid of them all in six months." And they looked and they were like, "Fuck." (laughs) ... no way are we rolling this out. That's like, recession in Germany because of this whole program.

   5. JWJason Wilk30:47

      Sure.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings30:47

      No way. When you think about how AI changes underwriting and what that actually means, how do you think about that?

   7. JWJason Wilk30:54

      I've only been thinking about it in one way, is what's the consumer benefit to this? And the benefit is more credit approvals and higher credit limits are approved because of AI. When you think of how we do it, Dave, if you wanna access credit within minutes of joining our app, that's sort of our, our, uh, you know, our, our key go-to market for the company. Our ad, if you see an ad for Dave, it's, "Get up to 500 bucks in five minutes or less." We can do that because a customer comes in, we have them link their existing bank account via Plaid, and Plaid gives us access to six months of a customer's past transaction history. We have m- 12 million connected accounts roughly on the platform at this point. And so 12 million accounts times six months of account history, and then we get a connection on an ongoing basis, we have access to nearly a billion transactions. And when we launched the business, it was just a rules-based model. You know, when do you get paid? Our confidence in your ability to keep a positive balance over a certain amount of time. Our loss rates when we started the company were north of 10%. And at that time, we were only offering people $75 of credit, the average being around 50. You fade to 2024, at the end of the year, reported the average amount we're giving out is 180, and our loss rates are 1.2%. And you think about the power of AI analyzing that cashflow data, it can look for commonalities in what makes up a good credit quality customer or a bad credit quality customer based on where you work, where you shop, even types of ATMs. Are there clusters of fraud around certain types of areas? Uh, you can start to suss out areas of risk that a rules-based engine would never be able to get to that AI can quickly analyze. And because Dave were an overdraft product or an overdraft killer, the duration you're actually borrowing money from us for is very short. So you're gonna utilize our product for five to 10 days, on average. So, we're getting to maturity on the entire loan portfolio so fast that the AI is constantly able to teach itself what it did good and what it did bad, versus, you know, a long-term installment loan company that may use AI, but they're not gonna know the efficacy of that model until six to 12 months in. Our model actually learns every couple of weeks. And so the power of that's resulted in more credit per user at lower loss rates. You generally see the opposite. To drive better loss rates, you usually have to pull down your credit limits. We've actually seen the, you know, a, a, a divergence of that, and it's really, uh, really powerful.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings33:30

      I'm fascinated. You said there, like, it started at 10% loss rates, moved down to 1.8, I think you said there.

   9. JWJason Wilk33:35

      Two, 1.2.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings33:35

       Um, 1.2. Uh, what's the industry average, out of interest?

   11. JWJason Wilk33:40

       I think north of 5%.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings33:41

       Okay.

   13. JWJason Wilk33:42

       And-

   14. HSHarry Stebbings33:42

       North of 5%, great.

   15. JWJason Wilk33:43

       And it, and it's huge. I mean, you go, going back to the levers for profitability, when you are originating... I think we did 1.6 billion of originations in, in the fourth quarter, like, every 10 basis points of loss rate is gonna, is gonna result in significant amount more margin into the business. And so we've been able to improve our gross margins on Dave from, I think at the low point in '22, we were in sort of in the mid-40s, and our, our gross margins in Q4 were 72%.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings34:11

       Do you think like JP, Goldman, Pictet, um, your biggest providers, do you think they're able to incorporate AI efficiently and fast in a way that they will need to?

   17. JWJason Wilk34:24

       It's just very different, I mean, how they would integrate AI. The way that it works for us, you know, our whole business revolves around having a very lean and digital first cost structure. When I think about how the incumbents are operating their business, they have a, they have a legacy problem, and you've heard the JP Morgan consumer CEO talk about this, Mary Anne, and that it costs them $300 per year just to break even on a basic checking account. And so if you're not a consumer that is using a Chase Sapphire card or has a mortgage or uses Chase private, Private Client, the only way they can make money off the younger consumers or the lower income consumers is by charging heavy minimum balance fees and heavy $35 overdraft fees. It's the only way to recoup your costs. When I think about a company like Dave, we have no bank branches. It's a full digital first tech stack that we built. My annual cost to serve is nearly 40. And so I can offer a vastly superior product at a fraction of the cost and still generate 72% gross margins. Our checking account is free. We have no overdraft fees on the checking account. And our cost to access credit is only five bucks if you wanna borrow $100 at Dave. And so that experience compared to paying $35 for access to buying a cup of coffee on overdraft at a ma- major bank is so vastly superior, and then that ultimately drives... The low cost drives a low CAC 'cause people tell their friends about it, and our acquisition is 30% word of mouth. So it drives this flywheel that I don't think the big banks will ever be able to catch up to, and I think they will ultimately cede on the lower income and younger consumer. And instead you're seeing the bigger banks doubling down on more of the private wealth, higher-end clientele. Where I, I would say the banking system is actually quite good in this country. It's really for the, the 50% of Americans that are earning less than $100,000 a year, paycheck to paycheck, overdrafting their account a lot, they're the ones that should not be banking with the incumbents 'cause it's just too expensive.

   18. HSHarry Stebbings36:31

       Listen, I'm a VC. I'm paid to surmise very grandiose statements from little data and project it with a lot of confidence. When I think about that, the kind of common statement is this, and it's simple. Banking for poor people is a bad business. Is that wrong?

   19. JWJason Wilk36:46

       What I think, I think people had that stigma early on when the company was burning capital, but we developed a really, this is part of sort of the turnaround, so I don't want to sort of jump the gun on the story here. But we developed a very crisp message to the street, which was that, and I- I would, I would, uh, advise any founder to figure this out for themselves, is you're building a highly scalable technology platform. At what point, whether it's a user metric, a revenue metric, does your platform actually become profitable? Because what is so great about technology companies, you should have a lot of operating leverage built into your business. It doesn't need infinitely more people to support infinitely more customers, right? And so we had this, uh, message to investors and to the company as well that once Dave reached 2.1 million monthly paying members, that the platform would reach profitability, and every member that we added thereafter, because we didn't need to add more headcount to service the next 2.1 million monthly paying members, we would reach significant profitability. And so when we hit that number in Q4 of '23, we had our first $10 million of EBITDA or, you know, profitable quarter. We've since compounded user growth through 2024. We had 2.5 million monthly paying members in Q4 of '24, and we generated 33 million of profitability. In FADA 2025, we've guided for the year to achieve 110 to 120 million of profitability. And so you really start to see the, the, the teeth of the operating levers built into these businesses. And so banking for, I wouldn't call it poor people, I'd say banking for people poorly served by incumbent banks is an amazing opportunity because you can bank them with a highly scalable, highly efficient platform that is inexpensive to, to operate. And because of that, drives very efficient CAC. And so it's actually an amazing business, and most people missed it, except, uh, people like Enron that put money in at the, at the moat.

   20. HSHarry Stebbings38:48

       Yeah. People often say to me, "Harry, are you sure you're not Israeli? Because you have the directness of an Israeli in an English voice." (laughs) Um, so I'm sorry for the directness there on that one.

   21. JWJason Wilk38:59

       Yeah, no problem.

   22. HSHarry Stebbings39:00

       Um, are there economies of scale that make the business bet- I think about 7 Powers, it's the best book that anyone could ever read on business, and it basically states seven powers that create sustaining defensibility in a business. And one of them is economies of scale. Essentially, the more that it's used, the better it gets, so to speak. Are there economies of scales as well at 10 million you're able to offer better X, more Y because of scale?

   23. JWJason Wilk39:24

       That I would point again back to the underwriting. So because of the high velocity of this extra cash product where people are borrowing money for a, a very short period of time with Dave, we've actually issued that product 130 million times at this point. People use it 130 million times. So the more that the system actually sees those positive repayment behavior, you're gonna ultimately start to be, see better loss rates, and that results again in higher credit limits per user. And so it drives this flywheel of success. And so there's absolutely an economy of scale. And with all of our service providers and our, our networks, the more customers that we get on the platform, the cheaper our cost to serve actually gets. And so it, uh, you know, en- enables longer term profitability there too.

   24. HSHarry Stebbings40:07

       I, I have to think as an investor about distribution of gains and outcomes in any given market. And I had Nick from Revolut on the show, and he said that kind of the next generation would see really the consolidation of banking providers. Five global banking providers absolutely dominate and be trillion dollar companies. Um, you'd see the removal of kind of localized banking, um, and these kind of global players would dominate. Do you agree with that statement on the consolidation of banking providers and five or six taking the majority of market share?

   25. JWJason Wilk40:39

       I don't know about five or six players. I do think though that there is an interesting time for someone to build a global neobank. You know, I think Revolut's doing a really nice job. I think New Bank's trying to do something similar where because you have these digital first tech stacks and you have banking as a service built into more and more countries, Plaid is now in 14 countries, you can start to build these sort of global banks. And then with things like Bridge and Stripe with sort of this in- this, uh, innovation around stablecoin, you can start to get rid of sort of this cross-border currency friction that doesn't exist, and you could finally build a global bank. I just don't see, uh, a major incumbent like a Chase or a BofA doing that, but I could see a, a digital bank taking that on and being

8. 41:25 – 48:08

   Why Have No Neobanks Reached the Heights of Revolut in the US?

   1. JWJason Wilk41:25

      quite successful.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings41:26

      The thing I don't understand is US shits on Europe really in everything, let's be honest, in terms of size. Um, size of company, size of market cap, size of people. Uh, (laughs) and, uh, my question to you is, not in banking, again, Revolut is $60 billion now. I don't know what Chime is quite, but it's what? 15 to 20? What... Help me understand. Genuinely, I never get this. Why is the US smaller when it comes to neobanks than Europe?

   3. JWJason Wilk41:55

      It really is the different markets that we're serving. And so I think I said earlier in the call the, the banking market for people making over $100,000 a year, if you keep enough money in your checking account, if you have a pretty good credit score, banking's not so bad. Uh, you have access to pretty good products, pretty inexpensive products. The... You have access to a mobile application to manage your money. You can get access to a financial manager. Like, it's not bad. It's, it's the poorly served customer that's not making $100,000 a year that is not able to maintain that minimum balance. That's the market to disrupt in the US. It is a massive one. I can't say what Chime is worth at this point. But Revolut is going after a different market. You look at some of the countries they're super successful in, they're going for markets where, like, the main banks don't even have a mobile app yet. Like, they're actually becoming the first kind of digital first mobile application for a broad swath of consumers there.If you go talk to Nubank, they're not actually banking the lower income consumer in the country. Like, banking's actually screwed up for everybody. If you were to talk to David, the Nubank CEO, he's gonna tell you that his customer base in Brazil and Mexico is actually a middle to higher income consumer. And so it's just a very different opportunity that us and Chime are disrupting in the market, where there is just this systemic legacy issue of how the banks are not built to serve the, the lower income population well here in the US. And that's still a massive opportunity. And could one of us be a $60 billion company? Like, certainly.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings43:27

      But that's interesting, 'cause that's kind of contrarian in the way that most people think legacy banking providers globally, but in the US as well, actually don't provide that good a service. It takes a long time for them to respond. The customer service is not great. Quality of, like, ancillary products isn't great when you look at a lot of what Revolut does from stock trading, to crypto trading, to insurance, to eSIMs, to travel insurance. These are like financial super apps versus a Chase or a Bank of America. You're saying that actually, no, they're pretty good.

   5. JWJason Wilk43:56

      They're actually pretty good. When I think about the go-to markets that Revolut is solving for, sort of the cross-border currency friction, like that isn't, that's not really a thing in the, in the US. Like the need to open up an account very quickly on a, you know, on a mobile app, like we have that here in the US. That doesn't exist in a lot of the countries that a place like Revolut is disrupting. I just think, and you've s- you've seen a lot of the European companies try and be successful here. In the US, they haven't. I mean, they've consistently tried to come here and retreated because their product offering is just not a fit for the US, at least in the, the way they go to market in these other countries. Just to show you how different the, the two companies, uh, are.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings44:33

      I mean, Revolut is going for the banking license in the US as we speak, and going full on to get the US. Do you think they'll be able to?

   7. JWJason Wilk44:41

      It depends how they're going to try and attack the market. But we have not seen this sort of super app mentality be successful here the way it's been successful in other countries where the, there's just less competition, I would say.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings44:55

      If you were advising Nick. Say, I'm Nick, and I said, you know, "Jason..." I'm not gonna put on his accent because he'll kill me and I sound like a Bond villain. But, uh, you're advising me on entering the US market in three to six months. What should I know and do, having your advice, having seen all you've seen?

   9. JWJason Wilk45:15

      I would just look at (laughs) all the different types of customer segments and pick the one that is the most poorly served by the existing, the existing, uh, com- competition. And I think companies like Dave have done a great job, and Chime, to build a significant penetration in the market. We're at 12 million customers. Chime I think is, you know, at a similar type of penetration. Cash App's done a good job. They've got 50 million people using their product. Like, I think that he would have to think about this population as something that he needs to build an attractive product for, 'cause I think it's gonna be an uphill battle. Unless he wants to spend 500 bucks on customer acquisition. Then maybe you could go after the, the incumbents.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings45:53

       I specialize in asking basic questions. You mentioned they're having the same customer bases as, uh, in terms of volume or number as like a Chime. Why are Chime more valuable then?

   11. JWJason Wilk46:04

       I, I can't say for certain, right? They're not public yet. I don't know what their most recent valuation is. Um, we've just taken a very different approach to building our, our businesses. Our focus for Dave has been building a sort of a credit first neobank. You can download our app. We specialize in AI underwriting to get you approved for credit within five minutes of joining. Chime's taken a very different approach, being very methodical about wanting to be your primary bank. They wanna make sure that if you have any value in their product, that you need to be a direct deposit member of their app. And we just find that to be a, a very expensive value proposition to sell to consumers, 'cause in my view, people don't wake up in the morning excited to open up a new checking account. It's very cumbersome to go switch all your bills over, figure out who you need to pay. It's a new strange bank relationship. Whereas with Dave, we get to know you and try to get you to switch over time. I'm gonna give... Get you approved for a couple hundred bucks when you join. We give you the Dave debit card to, to try us out. We're gonna give you some benefits to help you earn some extra money if you take a few surveys here and there. And then we're gonna ask you to direct deposit over time. But my CAC is $16 because I take this speed of value approach where I wanna make you a happy customer immediately. Chime's taken a very different approach where it's a no-fee account. They're very conscious that this is a bank account you're opening and that they want you to be a, a long-term user or, you know, this may not be for you.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings47:26

       It's so funny that you're more common or similar to Revolut than you think, because that's exactly the Revolut approach. We had, you know, obviously Nick on, and he says, "No, I want it to be like a snack." I want you to use it for your holiday and go, "Mm, I like this." And then your second holiday, "Mm, I like this even more," and it's good. And to your point, it's a lower CAC when the entry point is that. And over time, you have more and more snacks, and it becomes the meal. And you actually then move as a result of that, and it's kind of an entry wedge into the real win.

   13. JWJason Wilk47:57

       That's our approach.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings47:58

       Yeah.

   15. JWJason Wilk47:58

       I, I think if you wanna raise a couple billion dollars and spend a couple billion dollars on marketing, you can do this direct deposit only thing. Chime's done a good job. They've, they've raised the most capital. They put the

9. 48:08 – 51:50

   Why is the Opportunity in Low Income Banking Not High Income in the US?

   1. JWJason Wilk48:08

      most capital to work. We've just, again, we got to IPO with 60 million of primary capital because we've taken that snackable approach to build this relationship. But I also think from a long-term competitive advantage between us and the neobanks, the data set we're building around this AI underwriting is gonna be such a leg up when we start to get into additional forms of credit. I think we're so early on in our monetization as a business, given we just offer basic checking and an overdraft product called Extra Cash. But if we wanted to get into any other forms of lending, we have such an advantage by using this, uh, AI cash flow data.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings48:42

      What form of lending do you not do today that you would like to do that would be most transformative?

   3. JWJason Wilk48:48

      We see a lot of overlap with things like buy now, pay later. We know our customers aspire for that. Our Extra Cash product, because it's so short duration, people tend to use that for gas, groceries, rent.But if you wanted to buy a airplane ticket or books for school or a T-shirt, like these discretionary items, people are not using Dave for that, at least from a credit perspective. And we like to think that we can be there for you in every potential point in your credit journey as a, as a customer. And as we do that, we think more people will ultimately end up banking with us because if we start to serve you for more needs than just gas and grocery money, you'll start to make us more of the meal to, to take the words out of your mouth.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings49:28

      So, I don't like BNPL, and I worry when you said, uh, a- again, I'm sorry, um, my mother says that I have problems, I'm too direct.

   5. JWJason Wilk49:35

      Yeah.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings49:35

      I don't love BNPL, and I, I worry when you said earlier, "Hey, actually, the hard time for us is when governments give away free money." Um, because it makes me just think, "Shit, is this just a race to the bottom?" If I'm willing to give away a dollar cheaper than you're willing to give away a dollar, that doesn't feel like a very good business. Why is it wrong of me to think, "Oof, it's a race to the bottom on who can give dollars away for free"?

   7. JWJason Wilk49:56

      So, I, I don't think about our interest in BNPL as going to give away free credit and build merchant relationships. Like, we would charge for it. I mean, our customers are very willing to pay for access to credit. When I say BNPL, I think my customer wants more duration to pay us back versus having to pay me back in eight or 10 days. And so if I were to issue, I don't know, 500 bucks of credit, you might use that credit differently if you have six paychecks to pay us back versus one. And so I'd like to think that we can build these various use cases to help you borrow money for longer amounts of time using my cashflow data, which we call Cash AI, to underwrite you.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings50:33

      What's your boldest bet on the future of the neobanking ecosystem in the US? When you look forward to the next three to five years, what do you think is very clear that many other people don't see?

   9. JWJason Wilk50:44

      I think the, the big thing people miss was the, again, to go back to the early conversation, the, the inherent operating levers built into these fintech platforms. Like, they're so scalable, especially with AI. And so, as these neobanks start to compound user growth beyond what it costs to pay back the cost to build their platform, there's just, these are great businesses, and I think people really miss that. That's one. And then two, the ability for the neobanks to, to get deeper into credit and use their expertise there to disrupt the legacy costs there, 'cause there's just still s- such expensive credit for consumers out there. Compounding interest credit cards are terrible for consumers. They're incredibly expensive. They're not great products. If you use them to buy things for long duration and you're just paying off the minimum balance, the fees you're paying are massive, and it's like $3 trillion of credit card debt sitting out there that people are just revolving and paying too much money for. So, I'd love to think that neobanks can leverage their low CAC and their cheap operational structure to start to eat into the fee structures that the bigger banks are also getting

10. 51:50 – 58:21

    Is Trump Better for Business than a Biden Administration?

    1. JWJason Wilk51:50

       fat on.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings51:50

       Final one before we do a quick fire. You know, there's been some back and forth with DOJ, FTC. I think you said it was, like, government overreach. I'm intrigued. Are you more excited and is the business better in a Trump administration than in a Biden administration?

    3. JWJason Wilk52:08

       Well, without mentioning the s- the suit, I mean, again, we, we feel great about our facts. This definitely felt like government overreach to us. The case was filed on election day after a lot of good faith negotiations, so if that says anything. Um, what I would say about Trump being in office, ultimately, my view and all the stuff that's happened with the CFPB, there is enough competition in this space. If you're gonna try and screw a consumer, they have so much choice in this industry at this point that competition alone has improved in their product experience for customers without the government needing to intervene into how you charge, what you charge, and how you onboard consumers because of, because of the great vast choice. There's 14,000 banks in the country. There's 50 neobanks. You have choice. You can't take advantage of consumers without, uh, just churning away your entire customer base.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings53:02

       I think what I'm asking is, like, is Trump better for business owners than a Biden administration?

    5. JWJason Wilk53:07

       Yes.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings53:08

       W- why? Sorry, I'm in the UK, so I'm, I'm learning.

    7. JWJason Wilk53:12

       Well, just his approach to less regulation in general. Again, there's just less of an overhang for companies just to focus on building true innovative products without the need to constantly feel like they're gonna trip some government wire. And I don't know that the government really understands this customer base, and you see the things that they try and push forward, like 10% cap on credit card APR. Like, do you realize what that would do to credit card approval rates? Like, the reason why people charge what they do for risk is 'cause there's risk, and the second you take away someone's ability to monetize just means they shrink the funnel. So it's like, great job, you capped rates, you just kicked a bunch of people out of the credit card ecosystem, and now they've gone to, like, go take out payday loans or something. It's just not a, it's such a headline win for a regulator that doesn't actually take in mind the end consumer. The same thing goes for around trying to cap overdraft fees. You heard the, what I said about the JPMorgan CEO around the, the cost to serve statement. That was directly related to if you get rid of overdraft fees, we're just gonna jack up the cost to maintain a monthly account with us 'cause we need to recoup our cost to serve somehow. And so it's another one of those, like, regulator wins where, great, we got a headline, no more overdraft fees, but guess what? The banks have now increased cost for a monthly account fee, and now no one gets approved for overdraft, which is a lifeline for everyday people to go get gas and groceries. It would suck to get stuck at the gas station just because a government regulator wanted to get a headline win while I needed this money. Like, screw you.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings54:49

       (laughs) I saw the 10% APR and I was like, "I don't know if he ... they actually understand how this world works." (laughs) You're gonna get, like, loan sharks who are really dodgy having thriving businesses because of your regulation.

    9. JWJason Wilk55:02

       Exactly. So that, I think Trump's gonna help get rid of that. We just need to get rid of the grandstanding and really try to think about what is gonna be the best thing for the end consumer. And that's where I go back to there's enough competition in this space where you can't screw the consumer 'cause they have, they have enough options.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings55:19

        I want to move into a quick fight, Jason.

    11. JWJason Wilk55:21

        Sure.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings55:21

        So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay?

    13. JWJason Wilk55:24

        Yeah.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings55:25

        What do you believe that most around you disbelieve?

    15. JWJason Wilk55:28

        I think, for a quick answer, the one thing that we, that I probably regret as a founder in sort of this, this business was, with venture capital dollars, the big push to hire seasoned, pedigreed C-suite executives. Not as easy as it sounds. Very difficult. I would, I would really question every founder who's trying to over-hire too fast in the C-suite. Be very careful who you bring into your close circle.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings55:54

        That's so interesting. So would you not hire them at all and you'd grow internally, or just wait for later?

    17. JWJason Wilk55:58

        There's scaling issues by having some of your junior team try and get into more senior posis- positions over time. I would just be careful how you meet these people. Get to know them over time, don't make rushed decisions, and just be sure that they truly align with your culture and your vision, 'cause they can be very disruptive to your culture, but they also can be very disruptive when they leave, 'cause people don't like seeing C-suites leave. So this, it's a very important decision, and I don't think pedigree should be your necessary filter, because one company's success does not mean it's gonna be successful for you.

    18. HSHarry Stebbings56:33

        Which competitor do you most respect, um, what do you take from them?

    19. JWJason Wilk56:37

        I would say a lot of respect for what Revolut's doing. I think they're ... I'd almost call it, like, uh, regulatory as a service. Their ability to just go into these different countries and set up operations is, is pretty remarkable. I mean, if I could snap my fingers and repeat that capability, I think our products are needed in more than just the US, but the superpower they have to be able to go in all these countries and do that quickly, I think is pretty impressive.

    20. HSHarry Stebbings57:03

        You can buy and hold one stock for 10 years. What stock would you buy, other than Dave?

    21. JWJason Wilk57:10

        Other than Dave, I haven't looked at the most recent stats on just overall retail penetration, but I think Amazon is still pretty small when it comes to owning the overall retail market. I still think that's a pretty good stock to own for, for 10 years.

    22. HSHarry Stebbings57:24

        What have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months?

    23. JWJason Wilk57:27

        I'd say more 24 months, but, you know, the shift to profitability (laughs) was probably the only thing I thought about for, for a solid two years.

    24. HSHarry Stebbings57:35

        And how have you changed your mind? Sorry. Go ahead.

    25. JWJason Wilk57:37

        How have I changed my mind on it?

    26. HSHarry Stebbings57:39

        Yeah.

    27. JWJason Wilk57:39

        Um, well, I think it's just a, it's just a philosophy shift in doing that. When you're going from a growth at all costs mentality, which everyone's pushing you for, to go to a profitability at all costs, like, it's just such a, it's such a major mindshift. It's such a shift for the entire company. That was probably the hardest thing and the most, um, most thoughtful thing we've had to do over the last couple years.

    28. HSHarry Stebbings58:00

        Which consumer brand do you respect the most?

    29. JWJason Wilk58:03

        Apple.

    30. HSHarry Stebbings58:04

        Why?
11. 58:21 – 1:01:20

    Why Short Sellers Should Be Stopped and How Immoral They Are

    1. JWJason Wilk58:21

    2. HSHarry Stebbings58:21

       What's the biggest short in the public markets?

    3. JWJason Wilk58:24

       I don't feel comfortable asking, answering that one as a public company CEO. I do not like short-sellers, and so I don't want to give them any, any ammo.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings58:32

       That's interesting. Do you not think any functioning efficient market has to have a short-seller?

    5. JWJason Wilk58:37

       I think the ways in which they derive their profits are not always above board. And so maybe it, it helps drive a s- uh, an efficient market if there's the capability of shorting, but I think if you had a long-only stock market, it wouldn't look terribly different.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings58:53

       How do they derive profits badly? I'm naive.

    7. JWJason Wilk58:56

       Uh, well, you'll see, um, some companies, they'll get these short reports that people put out, where an analyst is out there, you know, similar to, uh, a sell-side analyst, and they're actually writing research on a company to get people to, to short it, and oftentimes those facts are incorrect. They're, they're assumptions, they're, you know, they can be blown out of proportion for things that, again, are just for, for purely for profit. That's it.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings59:22

       Is that legal? Isn't that, like, misinformation, to, to change economic activity?

    9. JWJason Wilk59:28

       It, I believe, is legal. I mean, it, I d- I think if ... as long as you're not saying a blatant lie about the business that could be deemed sort of defamation, which is hard to prove. You see big companies ... I think most interesting was the one of Hindenburg being shut down. They've written short reports on places like, uh, Square, Cash App, and they decided to exit the business, which I tho- I thought was kind of interesting.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings59:49

        Yeah. We, we just had Carvana's CEO on the show, um, (laughs) and, uh, I actually skirted that one. I was like, "I'll leave that for another day."

    11. JWJason Wilk59:57

        (laughs)

    12. HSHarry Stebbings59:59

        Um, (laughs) uh, I wanted to build the friendship. It's not the most friendly start, is it? Like, "What did you think of Hindenburg?"

    13. JWJason Wilk1:00:03

        Yeah. That's not, not the-

    14. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:04

        Um, anyway, uh, where is Dave in 10 years time? You said you've got 12 million today?

    15. JWJason Wilk1:00:10

        We've got 12 million today. I'm not committed to some sort of a user target, but I think Dave is gonna be much more prominent in your credit life than it is today. I think I alluded to this, but I really feel strongly that our, our company is, is very early on in its monetization journey today, given we have a three-year-old checking account business, we have a ten-year-old extra cash short-term credit business, and our ability to con- to continue to grow those two parts of the business, plus add in new capabilities on credit to, uh, add to those, those opportunities, I think are just massive, massive things for the company. So Dave in 10 years has multiple credit products. We are more of the primary bank for, for the vast majority of our consumers, and it's just gonna be a much bigger business because of the operation levers we talked a lot about today.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:59

        Jason, listen, I, I so appreciate you putting up with the direct questions. You've been fantastic. I, I'm such, uh, a fan of the incredible journey.

    17. JWJason Wilk1:01:07

        Thank you very much.

    18. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:07

        So thank you so much for joining me today.

    19. JWJason Wilk1:01:09

        Thank you very much. Great to meet you.

Episode duration: 1:01:20