In Depth

Building products that delight customers | Adam Nash (Daffy, Wealthfront, LinkedIn, eBay, Apple)


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Adam Nash is the co-founder and CEO at Daffy, a platform that makes it easier to donate to charities and non-profits. Before Daffy, Adam was the President and CEO at Wealthfront, where he scaled the company’s assets under management from $100M to over $4B. Adam has also held leadership and technical roles at Dropbox, LinkedIn, eBay, and Apple.

In today’s episode, we discuss:

  • Why founders should build platforms, not apps
  • The importance of “delighting” customers
  • How Daffy is disrupting donor-advised-funds
  • Lessons on strategy from LinkedIn
  • How to think about leadership transitions
  • Referenced:

    • Andy Rachleff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachleff/
    • Bill Gates: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamhgates/
    • Daffy: https://www.daffy.org/
    • Daffy’s 2023 Year in Review: https://www.daffy.org/resources/year-in-review-2023
    • eBay: https://www.ebay.com/
    • Jeff Weiner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffweiner08/
    • Reid Hoffman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman/
    • Robinhood: https://robinhood.com/
    • Ryan Roslansky: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanroslansky/
    • The Innovator’s Dilemma: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Clayton-M-Christensen/dp/0062060244
    • Tim Cook: https://www.apple.com/leadership/tim-cook/
    • Wealthfront: https://www.wealthfront.com/
    • Where to find Adam Nash:

      • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamnash/
      • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/adamnash
      • Where to find Brett Berson:

        • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
        • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson
        • Where to find First Round Capital:

          • Website: https://firstround.com/
          • First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
          • Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround
          • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
          • This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast
          • Timestamps:

            (00:00) Introduction

            (02:08) Why the last 10 years have been less disruptive

            (06:15) Why we think about luck wrong

            (08:39) How eBay survived the dot com bubble

            (14:37) The value of building platforms, not apps

            (22:18) What made LinkedIn successful

            (27:31) Good company strategy = good product strategy

            (30:58) Setting LinkedIn’s strategy in 2009

            (36:41) Why KaChing didn’t work

            (40:56) Pivoting to Wealthfront

            (43:23) Universal lesson on customer acquisition

            (45:11) Treating growth like a product problem

            (49:01) Advice on successful leadership transitions

            (54:20) How to delegate moral authority

            (60:24) The problem with metrics and customer requests

            (66:41) Apple’s approach to “delighting” customers

            (69:16) The 70/20/10 rule you’ve never heard about

            (70:29) How Daffy ships “delight features”

            ...more
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