Why I joined Digit
The most important criteria for me when working at a company is the mission, the team, the culture, and my ability to impact those areas. That is what attracted me to Uber 4 years ago, and today those are the reasons why I’m joining Digit to lead its engineering team.
While looking for my next role, I spent a lot of time connecting with many folks at a lot of great companies, and there were a number of factors that helped me decide that Digit was the right fit. The rest of this post will cover the main reasons why I joined Digit, and why I believe it’s a great time for you to join me.
The Mission
Our mission at Digit is to make financial health effortless for everyone. This is a broad and bold mission, but it’s very focused as well. Digit is solving real financial problems for people across the financial spectrum.
Like my colleague Vishwas, I also grew up in an immigrant family with parents who migrated to the USA from India nearly 40 years ago. My father often said that he came to this country with absolutely nothing but his education and his debt. His first financial goal was to pay back his debts and get to a net worth of zero.
Extreme financial discipline was the name of the game for my family when we landed in Philadelphia in 1981. From living in the cheapest apartments we could find, to driving reliable used cars (which weren’t the prettiest), my parents used every financial hack they could find to save money. Once while looking back at old pictures from that time, I saw that my father wore his hair long. I asked him if he was rockin’ the 80s hairstyle, and he quipped “whether it was the style or not, I probably couldn’t afford a haircut!”
Despite this early austerity, after a few years my parents made enough sound financial decisions that my brother and I had a relatively privileged childhood. Today, my parents are enjoying a very comfortable retirement after putting both of us through college. But their struggle to become financially healthy was very real and it’s clear that it is becoming increasingly difficult for many people to make a similar journey. Just in the US, up to 25% of Americans expect their debt to outlive them.
I believe that everyone should have the opportunity to achieve financial health. Digit’s products are designed to help ordinary people automatically save money and reduce their debt. Financial health shouldn’t just be something that a person inherits, needs a specialized education to understand, or requires a disproportionate amount of their time to achieve.
The Team
After being a key leader across three different teams at Uber (Ride sharing, Uber eats, and Jump), I knew the value of working with a strong team with solid leadership behind it. From my first coffee with one of Digit’s early engineers, Todd Larsen, to my interactions with the CTO, Michael Murray, and my many chats with the founding CEO, Ethan Bloch, I was impressed with every person that I met at Digit. Everyone was thoughtful and curious, but also meticulous and dedicated to furthering the company’s mission of improving financial health for everyone.
Startups are tough to get right as it’s always a balancing act between chasing and sustaining growth, hiring the right talent, and setting the right product direction while staying true to your mission. And to top it off, you have to convince outside investors to continue funding your growth. After speaking to one of Digit’s key investors and board members, Hemant Taneja, I could see that not only has Digit built a strong team, they’ve also built trusted relationships with the right kind of investors that can support their mission and sustain their growth.
The Culture
Relative to all the companies that I was fortunate enough to get to know in depth, I felt a deep alignment with the culture at Digit. Years ago, the team took the effort to write down their engineering values and share them with the world. Given that I also value transparency, open communication, and creating a culture of open, candid feedback, Digit was a great fit.
Many of our strongest folks at Digit have been there for more than 4 years, including much of the original early stage team. This shows both their commitment to the company, as well as the company’s continued commitment to their growth.
As a company grows, its values and culture are what keeps things grounded. I truly feel that we have put the right cultural foundations in place at Digit to weather any storms that may come our way.
The Opportunity
Digit operates in a very large market. Just in the United States, over 180M people are financially unhealthy, representing over 70% of the total population. This impacts people regardless of their backgrounds, income levels, gender, or age. Digit is a long term company, and our goal is to have an integrated set of products and services to address this opportunity.
Through our automatic savings product, Digit has already helped save our users over $1 billion dollars and user growth continues to accelerate. Our users appreciate our transparent pricing and business model based on paid subscriptions, and it has real revenue to support our growth.
By continuing to build new products and services, Digit presents a huge opportunity and I am very fortunate and excited to lead our engineering team at this critical stage of the company’s growth. I’ll also be partnering with our new Head of People, Carolyn Satenberg, who is also excited to join our mission!
We’re hiring engineers, data scientists, and product managers in San Francisco to help support Digit’s mission. If any of this sounds interesting to you, feel free to connect with me.
Thanks to my friend David Nunez for reviewing an early draft of this post.
Karthik Hariharan
VP of Engineering, Digit
