Work(ing) at Wealthfront: David Myszewski
David Myszewski is the Director of Mobile at Wealthfront. He was born and raised in a small town in Wyoming and came to the Bay Area to study at Stanford. After graduation he made the Bay Area his permanent home and took a job at Apple. He enjoys travel, hiking, cooking and spending time with his wife and two year old.
How did you first hear about Wealthfront?
A few years ago, I began thinking seriously about my finances and started diversifying my investments away from being solely in Apple stock. Through this process I quickly learned that the services available to help me invest and manage my money weren’t great. Working with a financial advisor was too costly, and at the time software-based solutions were still very new. So I learned how to invest myself and managed my own investments. This was also not ideal, since it took up quite a bit of time. Finally, I discovered Wealthfront and really liked the company’s investment strategy. So I became a client before I joined as an employee.
I joined because the team was investing in design and focusing on financial planning. That seemed like a great experience — financial advice you can learn from, investment products at a low cost that you can use to act on the advice, and everything automated so you don’t have to worry about the details.
You were at Apple for 12 years before Wealthfront, what was the transition like from leading a large team to a smaller one?
I managed teams ranging from four to a few dozen, so the immediate change is working in a smaller organization. It’s a familiar environment though — I worked on iOS when most engineers were working on the UI fit on one floor, just as Wealthfront does today.
Most people who work for a large company have a narrow impact on a huge number of people. Working for a small company, you have a huge impact on a much smaller customer base. Because we ship features regularly, you’re able to see the impact of your engineering, design and product decisions more quickly, and can iterate.
One thing that appealed to me was development practices that will scale as the engineering team grows, in particular test driven development, and continuous integration and deployment.
You recently helped lead a “design sprint,” can you tell us a little more about the process and outcomes?
Frequently when building products, it takes a long time to figure out what to build. A design sprint compresses the conversations that happen over weeks into a short time period, and everyone leaves the sprint with a shared understanding of what the product direction is and why.
Our sprint had a few key members from design, product and engineering. Early on in the sprint, we decided on the long-term goal and the many challenges of getting there. Then we focused on where it would be best to spend our time sketching and iterating on solutions. From that, we chose what to prototype and tested it with a few users. This provided a few key insights that will help us build a product people want faster.
Considering there is so much potential with mobile development in finance, what are you most excited about?
We can replace in-person conversations with a great mobile experience. Many people can intuitively understand how computers can replace the algorithmic operations in finances (difficult as it is technically). What they underestimate is the degree to which great UI can replace the in-person conversations that most of us are familiar with.
Our user interface can answer common questions far more quickly than a person. For instance, in Path if you want to know how much you need to save to retire ten years earlier, you move an age slider to the left and savings slider to the right, and have your answer. You can ask common questions wherever you are and receive answers instantaneously, instead of asking an advisor who may give you an answer in a day or a week.
No one walks out of a bank with a smile on their face, yet people frequently tell us how fun it is to use Path. Great experiences should be the expectation customers have for financial services; right now they’re the exception.
What do you want the world to know about you?
I have two Yorkies.
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