“No one sees the reps.”

Been listening to the young people who are trying to make things happen. That phrase comes up again and again.

The idea is that the practice and work you put in create the outcome. No reps. No outcome. It’s exactly the same in WealthTech.

No technology is easy to build. But regulated technology is even harder. And regulated tech that handles your money for the future is extra hard. Cannot afford anything to go wrong. Because it freaks people out when it does. So how to ensure you get it right all the time?

Well, that’s the reps of building it. You start with the outline plan.

Build. Repeat. Rigorously.

When we first started we didn’t really know how it would all work. But we kept pushing and building. Things that worked, we doubled down on. Things that didn’t, we
stopped. But we kept that experience as knowledge of what not to do.

In the early days, there was a whiteboard. Then Jira and Confluence. The API library and documents, products, etc. We now have millions of lines of code. All of it came from putting in the hard work to figure out what worked and what didn’t.

Today, we really understand it. Still more to learn but if there was a Weathtech Olympics, where a team had a set time to build a WealthTech product. I would be putting my money on my team.

“We have been through the hard yards. We have done the reps. What you see today is the outcome.”

So what are the takeaways?

Here are some of the reps you should be putting in to learn how to build beautiful WealthTech:

1. Design one single investment screen. See if people like it
2. Think what happens when someone presses “buy now”
3. Create the flow for an investment goal
4. Draw an onboarding flow diagram
5. Try each of the B2C Robo-advisors in your country
6. Integrate to a custodian by going to their API library
7. Build the simplest rebalance you can think of
8. Think about how you would automate monthly deposits

Do those things. Do them wrong at first. Then learn. Then do them right. When they are right, show people the outcome. People only see the outcome.

Best,
Ned Phillips
Founder & CEO