Noah Kerner, CEO of Acorns — Leveling the Investment Playing Field
Miguel Armaza sits down with Noah Kerner, CEO of Acorns, a mobile savings and investment platform that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from PayPal, Bain Capital Ventures, DST Global, NBC, Comcast, Greycroft as well as a long list of Hollywood celebrities including The Rock and Jennifer Lopez.
Originally from New York City’s East Village, Noah is a 4-time entrepreneur who at one point DJ’ed for Jennifer Lopez, built a creative agency in his 20s, and is also a co-founder of the shareholder rights fintech startup Say.
We talked about
- Noah’s eclectic background
- Why he only pursues projects that make him come alive
- His journey at Acorns and some of the challenges they have faced
- Building company culture, defining corporate values, and recruiting talent
- The surprising effect of COVID on their business
- Valuable entrepreneurial advice
- And a whole lot more!
Full interview → Spotify | Soundcloud | Apple
Neah Kerner grew up in New York City’s East Village and learned to navigate two different worlds at an early age. As a kid, he attended public school with “kids who did not have a lot”, but would also play competitive tennis in wealthy circles amongst “kids who had a lot”. This dichotomy followed him into his teen years, when he attended private high school during the day but would DJ and work at New York Hip Hop nightclubs by night.
Understanding these two socioeconomic realities and later discovering the exclusive financial tools available to the wealthy, is one of the main drivers that eventually led Noah to Acorns, a mobile savings and investment company that aims to put the tools of wealth making in everybody’s hands. According to Mr. Kerner, he is not the only one that feels passionate about it and argues the company’s mission has been the driver for all of their investors that have backed Acorns, “I think for all of our backers, there’s a personal connection to a product that they wish they had when they were young. So that’s probably the foundational thing for all of them.”
Fighting Through Disbelief and Having a Clear Mission
Although Acorns is now a mature startup with over 8 million clients that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars, Noah tells us it was not necessarily an easy journey. Their biggest challenge has always been coming up against naysayers and people who did not believe the idea could work. Be it external or, sometimes, even internal people who are not aligned with your vision, encountering disbelief is a never-ending process for any founder or corporate leader. This is why it is important to have the courage to fight through disbelief and surround yourself with a team that is all-in with you. As Noah puts it, “if you’re trying to do anything new, whether it’s the whole thing or a new product or feature, whatever, you’re always coming up against disbelief. If you’re trying to do something new, people don’t believe it because they’ve never seen it or they’ve never used it. So it’s a constant process of having the courage to fight through disbelief. And that’s a never-ending challenge.”
Having a clear mission and vision is crucial to combatting your critics and for Noah and Acorns, it was about sitting down and doing the early work to establish the values they wanted to have inside the company. Not just establishing them, but writing them down and putting them into place in every possible way throughout the firm in a form that was easy to remember. In fact, at Acorns they have five values and each one is three words:
- Lead with heart
- Make bold decisions
- Always build trust
- Never stop growing
- Find a way
Entrepreneurial Advice
If there ever was a guest suited to give entrepreneurial advice, Noah Kerner is definitely it. Not only has he been leading Acorns for several years, but he’s been an entrepreneur since his college days and has started, scaled, and sold more than one company in the process. What has he learned? His two most important lessons revolve around working on something you truly care about and establishing clear company values with a mission that is able to do good for society.
- Do what makes you come alive. “Do what makes you come alive. Because if you don’t feel that, if you don’t, it’s too much. So I would say, stay really rooted in who you are and what makes you come alive as a person and do it for yourself. This is not a performative thing. This is not about showing the world what you’re made of. Do this for yourself and you will find a lot more joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment in that.
- Have a real mission and be clear about your values. “Make sure you’re really clear about your values. I connect a lot to having a real mission and I think that is an incredible glue for a company (…) if the mission of your company is providing an essential service to society and helping people and you can really do a good job of celebrating that internally, that becomes this really powerful glue for people where they feel connected to the organization above and beyond anything else.”
Noah Kerner
Born in New York City’s east village, Noah Kerner is the CEO of the micro-investing app Acorns and co-founder of the shareholder rights startup Say. His background is colorful: 4X entrepreneur, Co-author of “Chasing Cool” with the former CEO of Barneys, and former DJ for Jennifer Lopez. In his 20s, Noah built the leading creative agency for the young adult market, Noise. Before being acquired by Engine, Noise developed hundreds of products and marketing campaigns for this generation including Facebook’s first application, the first credit card to reward responsibility rather than spending for Chase, Vice’s music site Noisey, and the top branded game in the App Store. Noah has been recognized as one of Billboard Magazine’s “Top 30 Under 30,” AdWeek’s “Top 20 Under 40,” Fast Company’s “Innovation Agents” and “Impact Council” members, and as a judge for the Webby Awards. He has also advised and invested in a variety of fast-growing startups, including WeWork, where he served as the first Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer from 2013–2014. Passionate about educating today’s youth, Noah has lectured on entrepreneurialism, fintech, and media at NYU, UCLA, Stanford, and Columbia and currently serves on the Board of VH1’s Save The Music Foundation. Noah is a graduate of Cornell University where he studied Psychology and Economics.
About Acorns
Acorns is the country’s fastest-growing saving and investing app helping more than 8 million save and invest for the future. Its easy-to-use, mobile-first technology makes it simple for anyone to set aside and invest life’s spare money. Acorns allows customers to automatically invest in a low-cost, diversified portfolio of exchange-traded funds offered by some of the world’s top asset managers (including Vanguard and BlackRock). Customers grow their wealth in one of five portfolios constructed with help from world-renowned Nobel laureate economist Dr. Harry Markowitz. Acorns’ smart portfolio algorithms automatically work in the background of life, helping users build wealth naturally, pennies at a time. From Acorns mighty oaks do grow.
Acorns is accessed simply and easily via the app for iPhone, Android, or desktop. Visit Acorns.com for more.
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Miguel Armaza
