20VC: Wealthfront's Adam Nash on What Makes Great CEO's & Why Humans Suck At Investing

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The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2016

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Adam Nash is the President and CEO of Wealthfront, where he is on a mission to put the client first and change the bad practices of the financial services industry. Adam joined Wealthfront from Greylock Partners, where he was an Executive-in-Residence. Prior to Greylock, he was VP of Product Management at LinkedIn, where he built the teams responsible for core product, user experience, platform and mobile. Adam also held a number of roles at Ebay, Atlas Venture Preview Systems and Apple.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Adam came to be President and CEO @ Wealthfront?

2.) What makes a great product person and how does that compare to Adam's role now as CEO and the skills required to be a great CEO?

3.) Is it fair to suggest that PMs are the CEO of a mini product? How transferrable are the skills of product managers to the skills required of CEOs?

4.) How was the transition for Andy in making the move from PM to COO to CEO? What were the biggest challenges and surprises?

5.) Why does Andy believe that building software through hierarchy does not work? How can leaders empower their team with a sense of ownership?

6.) Why do humans suck at investing? Will we see the domination of full scale financial robo advisors in the next 10 years?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Adam’s Fave Book: Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Adam’s Fave Blog and Newsletter: Nuzzel

As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Adam on Twitter here!

If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Snapchat here!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to a very special episode of Founders Friday here on the 20 minute VC with your host
0:04.5	Harry Stebbings at H. Stebbings on Snapchat. Now, you might remember a couple of weeks ago, we had Andy Ratcliffe
0:10.3	found a benchmark capital and Wealthfront on the show. And I'm delighted to say joining us today,
0:15.4	thanks to Andy's intro. We have Adam Nash, president and CEO at Wealthfront. Now, Adam joined Wellfront
0:20.7	from Greylock Partners, where he was an executive in residence.
0:23.6	And prior to Greylock, he was a VP of product management at LinkedIn,
0:27.6	where he built the teams responsible for core product, user experience, platform and mobile.
0:32.6	And Adam has also held a number of roles at the likes of eBay, Atlas Venture Preview Systems and Apple.
0:38.6	But before we meet Adam today, and with the weekend coming, remember, every great day starts
0:43.1	the night before. Every smart move that you make on Wednesday has its roots in Tuesday.
0:47.3	So leap out of bed with that can-do attitude, and you've got a head start on the world.
0:51.3	That's why Eve make only one type of mattress, the very best,
0:54.9	with three-layer next-generation memory foam and open-cell technology, and they even give you
0:59.6	100 nights to try it out and make sure it's perfect for you with a free return pickup. So head over
1:04.6	to eavematress.com.uk and enter the promo code 20 VC for 50 pounds off, and they'll be with you the next day with next day delivery.
1:13.4	Everybody deserves the perfect start with Eve.
1:15.7	And talking of the perfect start, I'm now delighted to welcome Adam Nash, president and CEO at Wealthfront.
1:22.1	Three, two, one, zero.
1:27.2	You have now arrived at your destination.
1:30.8	Adam, so fantastic to have you on the 20-minute VC, having heard so much from Andy Ratcliffe,
1:35.8	so thank you so much for joining me today.
1:37.6	Yeah, I appreciate it, happy to be here.
	...

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