Spark of Ages

Flipping the Information Game Banks Play/Brad Stroh - Achieve, Recession, Lacrosse ~ Spark of Ages Ep 44

• Rajiv Parikh • Season 1 • Episode 44

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Brad Stroh, co-CEO and co-founder of Achieve, shares how he's built one of the most impactful fintech companies by taking a completely different path from the typical Silicon Valley playbook. Through bootstrapping rather than chasing venture capital, Brad and his co-founder have created a mission-driven business that has served over 1.5 million people and resolved $18 billion in debt since 2002.

• Understanding the information asymmetry in financial services that disadvantages consumers making major financial decisions
• How Achieve flips traditional asset management by focusing on liability management for the underserved
• The evolution of consumer debt over two decades through multiple economic cycles
• Applying AI to create "zero-click financial services" that automatically optimize consumer finances
• The importance of saying no to opportunities that don't align with core mission
• Brad's leadership philosophy centered on being intentional and deliberate
• Making the shift from viewing monthly payments to understanding total cost of debt
• How economic uncertainty and inflation are affecting consumer financial stability
• The importance of balancing regulation with innovation in financial services

When everyone else was chasing venture capital and quick exits back in 2002, Brad and his Stanford Business School classmate Andrew Hauser made the radical decision to bootstrap their company. Their reasoning was profound yet simple: they wanted to build something meaningful that would last decades, not just until the next funding round. This patient approach has paid extraordinary dividends.

Brad shares how banks leverage vast data resources and experience to maximize profits from consumers who may only go through major financial transactions a handful of times in their lives. By flipping this dynamic and democratizing financial knowledge, Achieve helps struggling and striving families navigate their way to stability.

The conversation explores how consumer debt has evolved through multiple economic cycles – from the dot-com bust through the Great Recession and pandemic. Brad offers fascinating insights on current economic conditions and the transformative potential of AI in financial services.

If you've enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and comment on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Brad Stroh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradfordstroh/

Brad Stroh, the Co-CEO and co-founder of Achieve, starting the company back in 2002 out of Stanford Business School.  Over the past 20-plus years, Achieve has served over 1.5 million people, resolved over $18 billion in debt, and funded over $10 billion in loans. Achieve is approaching a billion dollars in annual revenue with over $7 billion in cumulative revenue and 2,800 employees.

Before embarking on this entrepreneurial journey, Brad graduated from Amherst College in 1996 with majors in Literature and Economics, and then graduated from Stanford Business School in 2002.

Website: https://www.position2.com/podcast/

Rajiv Parikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivparikh/

Sandeep Parikh: https://www.instagram.com/sandeepparikh/

Email us with any feedback for the show: sparkofages.podcast@position2.com

Rajiv Parikh:

Welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast. Today, we're joined by Brad Stroh, the co-CEO and co-founder of Achieve, who's been quietly building one of the most impactful fintech companies you've never heard of, and that's exactly how he likes it. Here's a guy who took a completely different path from the typical Silicon Valley playbook. While everyone else was chasing venture capital and quick exits, brad and his Stanford Business School classmate, andrew Hauser, decided to bootstrap their way to success, starting back in 2002. Their reasoning they wanted to build something that would last decades, not just until the next funding round. And boy did it really pay off. Over the past 20 plus years, achieve served over 1.5 million people, resolved over $18 billion in debt and funded over $10 billion in loans. We're talking about a company that's approaching $8 billion in annual revenue, with over $7 billion in cumulative revenue and over 2,800 employees, all while staying true to their mission of helping struggling American families.

Rajiv Parikh:

Brad's core philosophy centers on deeply understanding the customer and building financial stability. His passion lies in helping struggling and striving American families deal with debt problems. Across various products like debt resolution, home loans, personal loans and budgeting apps. He champions a customer-centric approach, leveraging data and machine learning to drive seamless, personalized customer experiences complemented by great customer service. Before embarking on this entrepreneurial journey, brad graduated from Amherst College in 1996, with majors in literature and economics, and then graduated from Stanford Business School in 2002. Some of the key takeaways you can expect from this episode how Brad Stroh and Achieve have pioneered consumer finance with a first-party data advantage. The critical importance of deeply understanding the customer and adopting a customer-centric approach to build financial stability. The impact of AI and machine learning in fintech innovation in transforming the customer experience. And, finally, how Brad's entrepreneurial journey has evolved from bootstrapping an idea out of business school to running that company for two decades. So, brad, welcome to the Spark of Ages.

Brad Stroh:

Thanks for having me A great intro. I appreciate it. That was a lot for a guy who's only had one job in his life for real. So yeah, I appreciate it.

Rajiv Parikh:

Well, you've only gone through a few things in getting here. So I've known you since I met you via Ariel Poehler, your board member, way back in late 2005, early 2006. And I've known you since worked with you for a period and love what you've done with building the company. I think there's just so much you can share in terms of insights and understanding and so just thrilled to have you with me today.

Brad Stroh:

Yeah, happy to be with you. And yeah, for anyone that doesn't know, we've been friends for a long time and you guys were integral in the early days of go-to-market strategy and help us kind of refine what we're doing. And it's funny to bring back Ariel that makes me smile, like one of our first investors and we're a bootstrap business that we raised a tiny angel round.

Rajiv Parikh:

I think it was like a quarter million dollars.

Brad Stroh:

Yeah, we did $250,000 at three and a half pre for a business that now has know, now has a 10 digit, you know, valuation. But Ariel was one of those guys just inspired me, you know, made us want to be great on the journey, helped us think ambitiously but also execute. And those early days which were so fun, you know, fun yeah.

Rajiv Parikh:

We're going to get into some of that because you've been through so many incredible periods of our sort of US economic growth and history and regulation and all that, so this will be fun. So, brad, your entrepreneurial journey began with a profound light bulb moment. You and Andrew realized that the $17 trillion consumer finance industry had tremendous inefficiencies, particularly where credit impaired consumers were often exploited. You uncovered that banks internally model debt settlements, yet the knowledge wasn't necessarily democratized, and that's what led you to create Freedom Financial and then Achieve, as a liability management platform, fundamentally the inverse of a traditional asset management. So, for consumers who may not face overt distress but still seek to optimize their financial health, what are the most common information asymmetries or hidden rules of the game they unconsciously play within the financial system that prevent them from maximizing their wealth or cash flow?

Brad Stroh:

Well, I think you hit all of it right there, but there's a data and experience asymmetry, right. So banks have, especially now with ML and AI, just billions and billions of data points around consumers' transactions evaluated and extracting margin from a consumer, the individual consumer. You think about a major, high cost of failure transaction buying a home, refinancing a loan, dealing with $30,000, $40,000 of credit card debt, student loans these very, very, very big, impactful parts of all in individual households life. They go through those transactions maybe once, maybe a handful of times in their life and therefore there's just fundamentally an information asymmetry. You layer on top of that that these are pretty high margin transactions. Banks have brilliant data scientists devoted to acquiring, attracting, targeting and then enrolling, converting consumers and there just fundamentally isn't it wasn't back then and still really isn't great Clarity, transparency to the consumer of, first of all, what are your goals and needs and assess what you're trying to accomplish, what are your constraints Credit score, cashflow, loan to value and then line that up against what are your available suite of options. Even today, most financial services companies are single point products. So if you happen to pick up the phone and get called by Quicken Loans, you're going to get sold a refinance mortgage. If you're talking to Upstart, you're going to get sold a personal loan. If you're talking to a credit counselor, you're going to get sold credit counseling.

Brad Stroh:

To us, a bunch of light bulbs went off, which, first of all, just the TAM, the magnitude and size of the problem. We looked, by the way Rajiv, back in the day, I think you know this but at a bunch of different industries. We loved a lot of aspects of liability management. One was just the staggering size of the problem. Fast forward to today there's 18 trillion of consumer debt, the inefficiency in the process, combined with the margins, the economic rents that we saw, that were being extracted from mortgage companies, banks, credit card companies, collection agencies, we realized massive, inefficient, huge margins. And then you go and you do first person research and you talk to the consumers and a bunch of universal themes came out, which is I'm scared, I'm confused, I feel like I'm going to be taken advantage of. I don't even know what direction to go. How do I even think about what solution, let alone what company, and then let alone what product.

Brad Stroh:

And this was pre-mint, pre-pfms, which was sort of a wave for a little while, and we realized that.

Brad Stroh:

What a great opportunity to bring a multi-product approach, become the liability management solution leader and try to level the playing field and we then can be the really significant increase in recurrence to the scale of data business which all the transactions we're going to aggregate for all of the consumers, the millions of consumers we service. We can then flip the data asymmetry to. Our consumers now know all the underwriting models, all the pricing models, all of the settlement and concession rate models that they would never have the ability to know on their own, that we can bring that to them and then do that with a human touch, a personal touch and all the kind of core values that we can get into that we're near and dear to the mission and what kind of sparked the initial. We talk about heart and dollar sign, but about doing good in the world and being a mission driven business combined with really believing in. Oh, it's a big space. It's right for innovation that can do great for consumers and the need is just massive.

Rajiv Parikh:

And I think what's interesting about the way you both did it. You were also in an industry at the time, right Looking at debt consolidation, in which there were some unsavory characters and you guys went in with no, we're going to do this in a way where we care for people and we're going to help them through it, and this is a way to truly get them out of debt.

Brad Stroh:

Totally true. So that was sort of the heart and the dollar sign side of it. We teach this case at Stanford Business School, kind of the founding story of the business we're also not dumb business people, as we realize, by being mission-driven, doing the right thing.

Brad Stroh:

Well, yes, you may give up margin on an individual transaction, but doing the right thing for each individual consumer, ultimately, with the counterparties, you interact with the banks and the creditors, with regulators, with your employees, with your investors. That long-term, if you take a long-term view, and this will go all the way back to being a bootstrap business and we weren't pushed in three to five years to an exit by you know a series A, series B, series D, investor with you know liquidity pref and ratchets and you know a clock ticking value that doesn't force us to cut corners around values, ethics, customer treatment and being that kind of our core premise, which was to bring a layer of trust and transparency. It just was the right thing to do for our business level.

Rajiv Parikh:

Yeah, that's awesome, and so next question so for some higher earning individuals, debt may not be as manifest as an overall struggle right? Rather, they're invisible liabilities like persistent high interest credit card balances along with savings or investments or inefficient cash flow management. So what are the most common invisible financial liabilities or maybe cognitive biases that prevent people from optimizing their financial health? What are maybe two or three counterintuitive data-driven checks that a person can perform themselves to uncover these inefficiencies before they become significant burdens?

Brad Stroh:

I mean, I just say like tactically carrying really high interest, especially non-tax deductible high interest. That's after tax dollars, paying down. If you did the calculus, you said how many hours do I have to work just to pay the interest on my mortgage, on my auto loan, on my student loans, on my credit card debt? Sometimes that's a staggering number. The other is, if you look at what is your cumulative cost of paying off this debt, if you have $30,000 of credit card debt, it could take you 27 years, and that $30,000 today, which is how you kind of process what you owe that could be $157,000 over the life of the pay down strategy. So the burden of inefficient interest that you're paying and then if you flip that on the opportunity cost, that's negative cashflow because you're paying that towards paying down debt. That's also you're not accumulating wealth, you're not accumulating savings. So the sprint to get out of debt into inefficient kind of asset optimization situation and then build wealth. But look, I spend a ton of time, rajiv, thinking about first principles, thinking what are the root causes of some of this? You just look at the economy today. You're right. In 23 years we've been through so many economic cycles. But you look at persistent inflation. That has come down, but you still have elevated prices. You've got a K-shaped recovery coming out of the pandemic income inequality, wealth inequality. You do have a population of people where affordability whether it's child care or rent or home ownership or their car is just staggering. They finance that with inefficient means, which is short term debt.

Brad Stroh:

Then you also layer on top of that is a lot of financial instruments. If you think deeply about it, the financial instrument is secondary to the court transaction. So student loan debt you're not applying for student loan debt. You're trying to get a college degree because you think you're going to increase your opportunity in life and income potential. You end up with $150,000 in student loan debt.

Brad Stroh:

Buying a home your goal is not to get a mortgage, your goal is to buy your dream house. A lot of times when you attach a financial transaction with an incentive scheme to jam you with rates or fees and you have a primary motivation that isn't really the core financial transaction a savings account you're not getting the maximum rate returned. You're not getting the lowest rate on your mortgage. You're not getting the best financial services product for yourself. So you evaluate that and you just end up with a system that's set up for the consumer to fail or struggle unless they have an advisor, a parent, an uncle, a mentor, a friend that can help them evaluate, that be really disciplined and then, if you do get into trouble, to as quick as possible get out of the burden.

Rajiv Parikh:

So, like you're saying, a good way to look at it is say I have this much debt that I'm taking on and then I have interest, which may be. If it's a home, it could be a relatively low interest rate. Right now it's a bit higher, quite a bit higher. If it's credit card debt, it's still up in the 20 percentile and if you do payday loans, it could be ridiculous. So how long does it take me to pay that down is a good question to ask.

Brad Stroh:

Yeah, the lens of the total cost of that debt, not what's my monthly payment. Unfortunately, most Americans, most humans, if you go into behavioral irrationality, they'll think short term. It's hard for us. Look at global warming, look at a lot of the issues in humanity. It's hard for our species to think long term and make those long term tradeoffs. Especially when you're facing stress, distress or uncertainty, it's much easier to come back to and say what's my monthly payment.

Brad Stroh:

Financial services institutions are literally constructed to put consumers into an American households, into products, because they are making a decision around what's my monthly payment and the lender or the financial institution is optimizing their return on equity and their total value. That's a little bit of what we're trying to disrupt. So, yeah, I think a really simple, just quick act is never think monthly payment, always think what's the total cost of repaying this debt. And if I didn't have this debt and I was earning on that income, that cash flow, those assets, what would be my wealth creation? Instead is a much better way to do it. We do simulations and we'll do kind of forecasting and then choose your own adventure. Especially now with AI, you can do that If you chose this path. Here's what your credit score, here's what your cash flow, here's what your debt, here's what your wealth will be in two years and five years and 10 years.

Rajiv Parikh:

And here's what I can do years and 10 years. And here's what I can do in it.

Brad Stroh:

And you then decide given your constraints, how much can you realistically afford on a?

Rajiv Parikh:

monthly payment.

Brad Stroh:

How much risk do you want to take? What are you optimizing for today? But let's make today's decision also grounded in what are you going to look like and how do you want to feel in 5, 10, 15, 20 years in terms of retirement, wealth, future?

Rajiv Parikh:

So, brad, can you model that? I mean before, and maybe this is what you can do with AI there's an optimism gap when I take a loan for something. If I go buy something, I believe I can always get out of it, and then I get into this notion of lifestyle creep as I go, I keep buying new things and I keep thinking I'll make up for it later, and you keep pushing that out. Is there a way that you can model that with today's tools to say you know, this is where I am, this is where I want to be, not just in terms of income but a sense of wellbeing and lifestyle If I have kids. If I don't have kids, what do I do? Is there like are you finding that as something that we can help people with, because otherwise it looks just like a generic number to a person going to buy something or get something or deal with medical debt. It's just a number right. Or feeling that I solved for today.

Brad Stroh:

Let me unpack that into two variables. If you just get into kind of behavioral and rational, money does become emotional. So you're in debt, you're stressed. If you lose your job and you're the primary wage earner and you're the husband in a household, that comes with a lot of stigma and emotional attachment. So to us, we're trying to take the emotion out and try to bring your rational brain into it and you can simulate that as let's look out in a few years, not just on debt, on cash flow, on credit, on wealth how are you going to feel?

Brad Stroh:

Also, look at the things you'll be able to do Pay your kids, you know. Fund your kids 529, save for that, you know. Dream trip to Hawaii, buy your dream home in seven years instead of in 27 years. In three years, your cash flow flips from negative to positive $1,500 every month. And look what you can do in terms of emergency savings plans, your peace of mind, stability, but also fund those trips and live the life that you want and try to have consumers and the people that we service is get out of.

Brad Stroh:

What am I trying to transact today and what am I trying to pay next month to? Let's come up with a plan for you, which basically is what asset managers do you know? And there's a lot of asset managers, a lot of companies that get people into debt or lending companies. There's not a lot that sort of flipped that on its head and say let's come up with a vision, a strategy of how to get there and then just start one step at a time. As an aside you it's a good analogy for starting a business it's not that different. It's know where you're going to go, come up with strategy and the execution and kind of the processes in order to get there. In financial services and consumer finance, without an advisor, without the tools, without the resources, you really are kind of alone in the dark, out in the middle of this.

Rajiv Parikh:

That's one of the issues, right, because for folks that are wealthy, it's profitable for a company to offer you a financial advisor or an asset manager or someone that can help you think through it. If you're in that category and I think you guys look at folks between 75 and 200K is that like a fair?

Brad Stroh:

That's about right. That's about right Across our products.

Rajiv Parikh:

That's your market, and so they don't have that ability necessarily, and maybe they don't even have the education to know to look for these things. There's no high school course for financial management that you have to take, so how do you make them aware of these things and help them think through some of the like we talked about optimism, gap, some of these issues that they have to go through?

Brad Stroh:

Yeah, Well, I just first validate that you're exactly right. The problem statement, which is if you have $10 million of liquid net worth, you are profitable to a bank, you're profitable to an asset manager and you're going to be well serviced across your whole stack of needs because the fees and the margins that come out of that, and then there's a lot of competition for those consumers. And then we're efficient economy. Rents kind of get traded down and that is a pretty efficient part of the market. You get down subprime, near prime or the populations that we serve, including people that are struggling or striving. They're just preyed upon because a they are in that precarious position where they're trying to solve a problem. They don't have the third party financial advisor or the resources to do that.

Brad Stroh:

So back to bring education, which root cause too. You don't graduate from high school in America in most states to this day with a certification or education around FICO scores, yield spread, premium, aprs, cost of debt, cost of financing student loan. What, realistically, will be your lifetime earning potential if you graduate from Amherst College with $250,000 of student loan debt and you're a liberal arts major and at least make a rational decision versus kind of blindly going through a lot of these early life financial decisions which have huge downstream implications around financial health. And then all of your options of career potential, move potential, household formation, all these things. And so the gap I'd say in education, combined with the gap of an efficient market, is yeah, that's who we serve, but that's what we do.

Brad Stroh:

You try to educate those consumers, upper funnel, help them understand options. You try to get them into an ecosystem with multi-products, to help them understand their pressing need today but how bright their future could be in the future. And if it's not, if there are constraints, just being transparent and honest about all of their options and how they can manage that today. And then us, being a multi-product company, is put them on the path to. Here's what we think your journey should be and how we can support you. Or, if there's better products, that's part of our mission too. Is we're going to refer you out to other companies to say we're not the right fit or our products aren't the right fit?

Rajiv Parikh:

It's like helping them think through things like the game of life. Right, if you play the game of life enough, you'll see that going down a certain path is a little better than other ones, and you can help people visualize where they're going to.

Brad Stroh:

I think that's right. But if I touch on that, analogy is A, it's not a game. These have big, high cost of failure. And back to the information asymmetry. These consumers have short term periods of time to make a really complicated decision without full information, without understanding the long term consequences, and you make a mistake early. You spend the rest of your life or a decade trying to recuperate from and that can be medical-driven divorce, loss of job, too much debt A lot of those complexities are what we see every day.

Rajiv Parikh:

It's a real-life situation and I think you're probably-.

Brad Stroh:

And growing. I mean obviously yeah.

Rajiv Parikh:

And you're catching them. Like most people, you catch people when things are tough, right. It's harder to catch people before they're thinking about it.

Brad Stroh:

Some of our products a HELOC is a pretty low APR product. I mean you're talking about mid single digit, high single digit APR on a home loan. That's truly an optimization product. Where don't refinance your first and consolidate your 2899 APR credit card debt? That's a high FICO, sophisticated consumer and a great product. Our personal loan product runs that gamut too. Sometimes it's a very rational, well-serviced consumer and the digital experience, the advice layer, combined with apps and tools, helps them understand. This is the right part, Definitely when you get into the debt resolution, debt settlement side. That's a consumer where their options are limited and it's almost triage at that point and we're trying to help them understand what are your available options and how do we get you back on your feet as quick as possible within your constraints.

Rajiv Parikh:

So do you find that you are getting people at the time where they're looking for a HELOC product or a personal loan product, versus I know, when you originally started, it was all about controlling your debt and then, as you went along and you went more towards your vision, which is going towards full financial education, lots of content to help people and lots of tools to help people with multiple products like that. So are you finding when you're doing the marketing for it or when you're capturing the consumer, you're capturing them for those different areas and helping them understand? Here's the value difference and how it can help you take a lower interest loan now versus getting yourself in trouble and having to deal with a much higher interest restructuring situation later.

Brad Stroh:

Yeah, look, you can tell me more about this than I can tell you at this point. But now you're going to get into the complexity of the evolving nature of marketing brand marketing, upper funnel, app-based acquisition, bottom of funnel, mid funnel, multi-product partners and wholesale partners and affiliates who they will refer us their turndowns because we have better products or better fit for some of their TAM that they service. So the quick answer is yes, all those touch points. I mean we still do bottom of funnel marketing and it works really well. We still have partners who big partners, who refer us and because their turndowns they want to find a better home for that consumer. And we do a lot of broad awareness campaigns of just upper funnel.

Brad Stroh:

Hey, do you know how to manage your debt? Have you ever spoken to an expert advisor? Do you know the cost of what your total cost of debt will be? And then helping you tools and content and it's part of our business too is we have 2000 people that are licensed, certified experts in doing consultations, that are there to just pick up the phone for free and answer questions to consumers and help them evaluate. I would say all of our businesses, though up and down, that they're still very debt consolidation focused. The HELOC is typically debt consolidation, small home improvement component of the business. But even the super prime consumer that's trying to optimize that is kind of the core use 80% of the use of post.

Rajiv Parikh:

You're staying true to that segment of the market, the underserved.

Brad Stroh:

We think it's a big segment that's underserved and still needs service. Now there are contiguous kind of segments that will serve of the person wants to do a home improvement project or a kitchen or something, and a home loan is just more efficient than a personal loan on their product and debt consolidation is a small component of that. But I would say we are still very core Liability optimization, multi-product to try to get the right fit, right consumer, which I mean going back to 02, aeropolar, 06, rajiv and Brad talking about the growth strategy of the business. I just think it's a massive TAM that still is very inefficient and I think we're well suited to continue to just stay very focused there.

Rajiv Parikh:

This actually hits on a question I've been dying to ask you. Right, You've gone through, you've seen so many phases of the economy. I think in the time that from when you went to business school to now, we've gone through maybe three or four, maybe four recessions for major we found it in the dot-com bust.

Brad Stroh:

We went through the great financial crisis, we've been through the pandemic, we have been through cycles. Man, yeah, it's wild, yeah the.

Rajiv Parikh:

FTC cracking down on the industry, which I remember you calling a nuclear winter that you will not only survive and thrive through. But I want to go into a little bit more about how that has changed. Well, there's two ways. One way we can go down, which is the regulatory path. The other one is more of like how has the nature of people's debt changed? So, for example, achieve's latest survey said that 58% of respondents using credit cards are using credit cards for essential costs. 40% are carrying that debt for over six months. Has the composition and severity of debt problems that your members face changed, beyond just the overall increase in overall debt, because we've been in this period of sustained inflation, right? So you guys have a lot of deep data. Are you seeing the nature of debt change?

Brad Stroh:

Yeah, I think we've also been through. You know, buy now, pay later. It wasn't a hot product in the early days, you know. That's why we've seen explosion there. Since founding the business, we've seen credit card debt go over a trillion, student loan debt go from $1 trillion to $3 trillion. Auto loan debt, you know, almost double since we've been running the business. Home loan debt go from 10 trillion to 16, 17 trillion. Just the numbers are staggering of the growth in the amount of debt.

Brad Stroh:

I'd say that there are some persistent themes Lack of affordability and financial hardship really does drive people into challenging situations.

Brad Stroh:

That's been true for 23 years and I'd say that a lot of stuff, you know social changes, instagram purchases, cost of living is we're just a more consumptive society. We always have been, but continue to be, and so we are seeing that severity of the issue when it comes to us being higher than ever before. And I'd say the thing we also see that isn't a bold statement, but just you know I mentioned earlier wealth inequality and income inequality. It really is a big, big, big problem that we continue to see growing when kind of the bottom third, bottom half of the US workforce real wages have not kept up with the cost of living and cost of higher education has just exploded. Cost of health care has exploded and a lot of that's financed with debt. So we see the problem, some consistency that the problem is always there and people will always hit periods of struggle at some point in their life. And the severity just because of consumerism, marketing new financial products, the brilliance of lenders to, you know, acquire consumers a lot of that has been, has been, significant.

Rajiv Parikh:

Do you feel like, with all these things getting worse and worse, like with these numbers, inequality increasing, levels of debt increasing, do you see that you get a lens on the economy based on what you see every day? Are you seeing this hitting a potential breaking point, because the GDP is estimated to slow down from a 3% growth rate to maybe a 1.5% growth rate? Who knows what's going to happen with tariffs? A lot of that impact is delayed in the future. There's deregulatory changes. There's a lot going on. So one of the things people love to know is, like folks like you, what are your thoughts on where things are going based on what you see?

Brad Stroh:

Yeah, I guess we've headed to a recession. I mean, when government spending, which really kept us out of a recession the past two or three years, starts cutting, I guess we're going to get close to we see slowdown. I would say that we on our lending portfolio pretty good credit performance. The consumer does stay pretty resilient, but it's human nature too. And then you compound that on times of macroeconomic uncertainty and then you get AI and job uncertainty.

Brad Stroh:

Consumers do not like uncertainty and insecurity and their responses to pull back and that will hit economic growth and tariffs, cost of living, all the stress on the system, which is pretty high and the government can't continue to come in and bail us out. You've got $36 trillion in consumer debt and all the conversations we're having there. I would guess you'd be in a situation where Japan in the 80s, you ended up with a decade plus two decades of stagflation. But we've got to be very careful that we don't lose lift in the economy when you don't have international trade and the efficiencies from that. Tariffs and uncertainty. And then investment pulls back, consumer pulls back spending and if unemployment ticks up, you're kind of on a precarious edge.

Brad Stroh:

So I'd say consumer resilient. We feel reasonably confident in the next couple of quarters, that consumer will stay resilient while the bottom half of the US population struggles more and more. But the amount of uncertainty that's weighing on the economy, I would guess that we're headed for certainly GDP slowdown, gdp below inflation levels, and what's that going to turn into. And you've got to be careful that we don't end up with a decade of debt where the government can't invest and has to cut services. The consumer can't invest because they're over levered, especially at the 70% of consumers who are buying groceries and make a lot of spend, and then corporate investment starts coming down. You just got to watch out.

Rajiv Parikh:

I think this is a great, yeah, it's a great time to talk about two things. One thing is on the other side of this is that there's regulatory relief potentially right. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, cfpb, has essentially gone. It's not there, which may be good or bad, depending on your point of view on it. Regulations during an administration like this will drop. Sometimes regulatory constraints can be helpful to the consumer. Sometimes it can be hurtful because it denies you information that you need to help you build better financial products.

Brad Stroh:

And it's important to regulate financial markets. There's no question. I mean, if you get into the CFPB, look good and bad. Definitely removing regulation is going to stimulate innovation. We can get into stable coins and crypto and USDC. I think that's real and that's interesting. You can get an AI adoption, which was heavily, heavily discouraged by regulators in the past cycle, especially in financial services. That is very real and transformational for all these companies to serve consumers. On the other side, the CFPB and regulators serve a very meaningful function, which is regulating markets, regulating bad actors, regulating companies and protecting consumers who are vulnerable. So the answer is the same as most it's not all good or all bad. It's both. In terms of driving innovation, you're seeing it already. I mean, just look at the proliferation.

Rajiv Parikh:

You're talking about AI, right. I think you've mentioned at one point the notion of zero-click personal financial insights, right, and the ability to transform with that zero-click notion of a very AI machine learning and how Achieve would leverage it. Brad, you can not only just optimize product delivery, but you can educate consumers more effectively and maybe help change some of those behaviors. Add a Duolingo element to how you manage your finances. Help me think about how you're doing this, because I know you've always been one of those folks that when you see one of these things going, you'll play with it, you'll innovate with it, you'll invest in some of these firms.

Brad Stroh:

I'm upset by the way all of the above is true. I'm on a few boards. I'm an investor an angel investor in OpenAI's investment platform and stay pretty close to what they're doing and really obsessed with of a world ignoring Achieve and my company and how successful or not successful we continue to be. I would hope that there's a world where you go on Amazon and it knows what you want today based on your buying behavior. And when you run out and it just shows up at your door and you have to just return the stuff that you don't need, and it continues to. With AI, understand you better and better and it can predict better for you. Whether your goal is stated to be healthier or be on a diet or go for a workout, it just starts delivering to you what is best suited for your needs.

Brad Stroh:

I would pray that financial services goes in a similar direction. Where products aren't sold, you start to have agents that we can all write or they automatically be delivered to us, meaning AI agents, and they go out and they shop for us, but then that eventually evolves into zero click financial services, which is I don't have to return on my savings, a better portfolio allocation, a better loan or cost of financing the instruments that I'm financing, or the tools and resources to tell me you got to pump the brakes, you're spending too much this month. Zero click, these things just get delivered to me. Or maximally one click because I say, yes, I accept this 5% lower APR on my auto loan, yes, I accept this 20% reduction in consolidating my credit card debt into this new personal loan, and that sweep automatically happens. And all the way back to where the conversation started, that data asymmetry flips from banks and lenders owning up into cloud to consumer owning that.

Brad Stroh:

Ai agents just drive efficiency and improve the consumer's lives and people don't get taken advantage of. You just can't, because there's a layer of automation and data power that just does the right thing for you and when you start going off the rails, flags raise immediately so you can then grab the steering wheel again if you're in. You know self-driving finance, which would be my dream? It's definitely, you know. I would love the world to go. Now there's a lot between here and there Data efficiency, consumer adoption and regulators still don't. They get confused with AI. Rightfully so, because you don't want to have redlining, you don't want to have asymmetric outcomes based on where you live or race or gender, and so how that gets managed and rolled out is going to be. You know you got to be very careful with that Everyone.

Rajiv Parikh:

We've had to do this with some of our FinTech clients is as much as we want to target a particular age group or a particular income group, you get into discrimination right and you have to be very careful about how you do that. So you're totally right. Thinking about this overall view that financial services they can be fundamentally inefficient. Big banks exit profitable lines of business, consolidating into lower risk areas. So firms like Achieve that you run fill these gaps. Do you see a fundamental reshaping of the entire consumer finance landscape?

Brad Stroh:

Yeah, well, just start with the finance landscape because, yeah, look at private credit. What is there? $6 trillion of private credit now raised. Yeah, that's traditional lending just seeping outside of the banks because they can lower regulation and you can then get more leverage and get higher ROEs or take more risk. Do I see that continuing to happen with Achieve? There's no question.

Brad Stroh:

I think you're going to have banks continuing to exit the subprime, the near prime consumer, continually to focus just on the high net worth, high income consumer and household, which is a shame because you do want to bring the best products, the lowest cost of capital to the masses. But look on the other side. You've got Chime went public recently, circles IPO and Stablecoin development's interesting. You've got, you know, chime went public recently, circles IPO and Stablecoin development's interesting. You are pulling through some lower cost platforms and innovation driven kind of commoditization of financial services industries which helps improve the consumer experience, transaction costs, all of that. But yeah, I think you continue to see the debanking of the financial services landscape and then you'd end up with this parallel financial services universe, which opens up opportunity for us, though, no question. The other is there's just no way that Wells Fargo and US Bank and Bank of America are going to be nimble and rapid to adopt consumer impacting AI in a personalized way that commoditizes their services and cannibalizes the margins that they can.

Rajiv Parikh:

It makes no sense to them to burn down their current businesses that quickly. You'll get to lead there because you can jump into a bigger market.

Brad Stroh:

Exactly Bigger TAMs and serve those consumers and then keep the consumers that we've rehabilitated in our ecosystem for a longer period of time and reward their successful behavior. That's awesome. Yeah, Lots of opportunity. I'd say that I mean you started with my economic view. There's a lot of debt. On the other side, there's a lot of opportunity. I think the economy will change. The labor markets will change. I've been doing this for 23 years, though that's the one consistent story is every single year is not what you predicted, and every single period of time around the company it's just different. You just got to adapt.

Rajiv Parikh:

Keeps going. Yeah, all right, brad, we are now going to take you to one of the most fun parts of this. It's the game. It's called the Spark Tank.

Rajiv Parikh:

So, brad, welcome to the Spark Tank where entrepreneurial excellence meets athletic excellence, and today we're discovering what happens when you combine CEO leadership with lacrosse legacy, oh boy. So today we're thrilled to have Brad Stroh joining us, a financial services powerhouse who's turned debt resolution into an art form and lacrosse into a family dynasty. You captained the lacrosse team at Amherst College and now both your college age children are continuing that lacrosse legacy at a collegiate level. So you're not just building billion dollar companies, you're building champions on and off the field. So I know you have Brooke at Northwestern Brayden at Amherst. So now we're putting both sides of your expertise to the test. It's called the CEO Lacrosse Legacy Challenge. We're going to test your knowledge about the explosive growth of lacrosse, from its Native American origins to becoming one of the fastest growing sports in America. Your job is to tackle our trivia questions about lacrosse's incredible growth story. Let's see if your lacrosse IQ is as sharp as your business instincts. You ready, brad.

Brad Stroh:

Let's do it. I'm a little worried, but I can't wait.

Rajiv Parikh:

This will be great. Which country was the first to form an organized lacrosse club, and in what year was it founded?

Brad Stroh:

Oh boy, so I think I'm going to cheat here, because I'm going to go all the way back to. It's the only sport native North America played by indigenous populations, which carries all the way through the Haudenosaunee. So if I didn't lead off and say it was Iroquois National and Haudenosaunee, I'd have to say that, okay, a country though that first had a team, I'm going to have to say Canada. Lacrosse is the national sport of Canada. So I'll say that. Guess what year? Oh my gosh. Okay, lacrosse was named by the French missionaries because they thought the sticks looked like crosses. Okay, I will say so. Canada had a national team. Boy, I'm going to say boy, I could be off by a century. Here I'll go 1810.

Rajiv Parikh:

You know, brad, this originally was set up to have three choices United States, canada and England and you nailed the answer, so you got Canada right. And maybe you were a little ahead of your time of when it started, but it was actually not 1810, but 1856.

Brad Stroh:

All right, I'll take that.

Rajiv Parikh:

But this is our information. The first organized lacrosse club was called the Montreal Lacrosse Club, which was founded in 1856 in Montreal, Canada. This club helped formalize the sport by introducing standardized rules and organizing matches, transforming lacrosse from an indigenous tradition into a modern competitive sport. Canada is widely recognized as the birthplace of organized lacrosse, the sport eventually being declared the country's national summer sport.

Brad Stroh:

So you nailed it, brad. All right, I learned something there. Thanks for sharing.

Rajiv Parikh:

There you go Now. I was going to the second question. I had you pretty much nailed two, which is which native confederacy is most widely credited with developing the game of lacrosse as it's known today, and you answered.

Brad Stroh:

I'd say Haudenosaunee. You know who I hope can play in the Olympics and the LA Olympics, but you know that's an organization of a lot of tribes, but I'd say Haudenosaunee.

Rajiv Parikh:

All right, it is Haudenosaunee, which took me about 20 minutes to learn how to say correctly.

Brad Stroh:

Can I tell you, I've said it wrong for many years. I finally know now it. I finally know.

Rajiv Parikh:

now it's also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, which includes the Mohawk, oneida, onondaga, cayuga, seneca and later the Tuscarora Nations.

Brad Stroh:

You nailed it all by the way, by the way, and all that's sort of right on that cusp of like upstate New York, you know, and kind of you know southern Canada region. If you don't know, by the way, la Olympics are going to have lacrosse.

Rajiv Parikh:

And it's something that the lacrosse community is really hoping.

Brad Stroh:

That Is it demonstration or the actual. It'll be the actual sport. They'll play sixes.

Rajiv Parikh:

I think, is it a demonstration sport, or are they actually going to award gold medals? Compete for gold medal? Oh, I love it, I love it.

Brad Stroh:

Yeah, Every host nation is allowed to introduce a handful of sports that they advocate for. Lacrosse is one of those this coming year. There's a complexity that I don't want to get too much into and politicize this, but they don't issue passports and they're not internationally recognized by some of the sports federations. But the lacrosse community is significantly behind. Letting the Haudenosaunee participate and play in USA National Lacrosse and the Canadian Olympic committees have all advocated to the IOC to let the Haudenosaunee play. I love it. We'll see how that shakes out.

Rajiv Parikh:

But okay, we got to All right, I got another complicated word.

Brad Stroh:

I'm trying to spell long enough not to fail.

Rajiv Parikh:

Another answer All right, go no no, no, as part of this, there's this word called dihutnishigas, which is called the creator's game, their original game. So you may be able to say that word better than me. So I'll learn that.

Brad Stroh:

I've never heard that word. We would say Bagataway. I think that was sort of the origin term which is a little easier to pronounce. But I won't make you say that term one more time.

Rajiv Parikh:

You're doing great In 2023, here's the next question how many lacrosse players were there in the United States? I'll give you three choices A 300,000. B 1.2 million. C 2.5 million.

Brad Stroh:

I'm tempted to go B just because of B. But how about this? Just because the game has grown so much, I'll go 1.2 million. I'll go 1.2 million.

Rajiv Parikh:

Oh, 1.2 million. You're absolutely right. 300,000 is closer to the high school player count, not the total, and 2.5 million is higher than the current verified participation numbers. But you never know in terms of the unverified number. You got that right, nailed it.

Brad Stroh:

I was not prepared for this. All right, let's go.

Rajiv Parikh:

That's what I love All right so since its founding in 2019, how much has the Premier Lacrosse League, or PLL, grown in terms of ticket revenue and attendance according to the latest data? So A ticket revenue up 25%. Attendance up 50%. B. Ticket revenue up 60%. Attendance up 5%. C.

Brad Stroh:

Ticket revenue up 149% attendance up 13% Ticket revenue. Wouldn't that correlate with attendance? Help me understand the gap there.

Rajiv Parikh:

I think you could charge more for premium seats, so that's why there's such a disparity except for A, where attendance is up but ticket revenue is actually not up as much.

Brad Stroh:

Okay, here's what I'm going to do here. Okay, because I've been to some of these PLL games. They're fabulous to go to. It's an amazing product. They've done a great job, but I will take the under here. I'm going to go A because I think it exploded out of the gates with excitement and they're still trying to find their footing on how to maximize the growth of the game.

Rajiv Parikh:

But I don't know this one. My team finally got your own one. It's actually C Ticket revenue is up 149%. Attendance is up 13% Revenue in 2025, $82 million as of mid 2025. We don't have exactly the public data on attendance.

Brad Stroh:

You guys are good on the research team here. I'd like to audit the numbers, but okay, I like it.

Rajiv Parikh:

Let's go for it. We'll do that, but the growth is attributed to significant successful media deals, strategic expansion into home markets, strong increase in fan engagement and sponsorships.

Brad Stroh:

That's attributed to these two great founders I know this is spark of. Ages butul and mike rabel, interesting guys that you know founded the, this new league, and they've done a great job. Yeah, they just signed a multi-year deal with espn for coverage for the men's game, the pll, and the women's game, the wll. That's awesome well.

Rajiv Parikh:

I see it so much more in the top 10 right. They show a lot of what's such an exciting sport to watch when they're playing?

Brad Stroh:

yeah, it's behind the, behind the back moves for highlights? Yeah, you would have been a ringer back in the day.

Rajiv Parikh:

Yeah Well, I didn't have it in lonely Goffstown high school. Okay, so which professional or college lacrosse team is currently the host? The most popular based on merchandise sales. This is most popular college or lacrosse team based on merchandise sales.

Brad Stroh:

I feel like you'd have to give me a year. But okay, Are you going to give me choices here?

Rajiv Parikh:

This is going to be the most current year. Okay, here it is. A Maryland Terrapins, which are the NCAA. B Boston Cannon, pll. C John Hopkins, blue Jays, the NCAA.

Brad Stroh:

I don't know how great jersey sales are for the PLL, so I'm tempted to go Maryland or Hopkins Hopkins because it's kind of the marquee preeminent team that sells a lot of stuff and Baltimore is loyal. Or Maryland because I made it to the national championship game this year. I'm going to go Maryland.

Rajiv Parikh:

Okay, your logic is great, but it's unfortunately incorrect. While the Maryland Terrapins are the most successful and recognized college lacrosse programs, college lacrosse merchandise sales are generally lower and less widely reported than those of top professional teams. So it's B the Boston Cannon.

Brad Stroh:

All right, good for them. I've got a friend playing from them right now, Ben Ramsey, who's a great player from Notre Dame, so I need to buy his jersey and support the cause.

Rajiv Parikh:

I love it yeah and you're out there a lot. Apparently, they've won back-to-back PLL championships. Their 2025 PLL Championship Series reported the highest merchandise revenue in league history, with 103% year-over-year increase in on-site sales and 163% increase in e-commerce sales.

Brad Stroh:

I love it. Way to go PLL, way to go Cannons.

Rajiv Parikh:

You are learning a lot about the sport of lacrosse here cannons, you are learning a lot about the sport of lacrosse here. I'm having a blast. I get to learn in concert with an expert at this. So this is great. All right. Now we're going to take you back to some questions about yourself. Did you always know that you wanted to work in technology? Was there a specific moment or project that sparked your passion? How'd you discover that passion, and was there something that just drove you? What got you sparked?

Brad Stroh:

Yeah. So I know your spark of ages is the title here. There are a couple of sparks. I'd say there's sort of two or three. There's not one defining moment. I just start there. But I just always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So you let off the question, you framed it as in technology. I didn't grow up behind a terminal, I didn't grow up with punch cards. I grew up with a lawnmower business and then a bunch of random startups. I just had that DNA of always being scrappy and wanted to be an entrepreneur. So I'd say, somewhere in there I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. My first two jobs out of Amherst before I went to business school were in venture and private equity and to see the passion and the excitement of the founders and the CEOs and the people running these innovative companies. Layering on this was 95 to 2000.

Rajiv Parikh:

This is internet like the browser. Right, we were Netscape browser, Netscape went public in 95.

Brad Stroh:

So it was like you're talking about the just one of the biggest. I mean we're in one of them right now with AI but one of the biggest, just seminal, transformational moments driven by technology of the web, the internet and then mobile is. I knew that I wanted to be and I was doing technology, investing and venture. I just knew that I wanted to apply technology and all these great innovations to kind of help fuel that spark that I had of wanting to be an entrepreneur. And I started seeing pattern recognitions of markets that are great, businesses that are great. So I'd say I'd sort of combined an analytical framework of understanding businesses, business models, markets, with seeing a bunch of CEOs and founders and saying I like their job better than being a venture investor. That's what I'm built to do and there's something in my DNA, coming back from my family, my parents, sports, that I just love to be with a team competing in pursuit of a goal.

Rajiv Parikh:

Was there like one of your parents kind of made you go that way of I want to start a business, or was it just that feeling that you could just do things yourself? I feel like business is like a form of free expression.

Rajiv Parikh:

Yeah Of self-actualization and I feel like sometimes people look down at business saying, oh, they're just out there to get money from us. But I see it as a form of expression. I'm getting to do something, I'm getting to express myself freely. The success and failure is based on what I do and what my team does.

Brad Stroh:

I could go through my family's story, which is truly the American dream of my parents grew up in a dirt, poor farm town in Western Ohio. My dad, first person in both families to go to college to play football at Ohio State, worked in a Kraft Foods factory and we moved around the country while he rose up the chain to become effectively the COO of Kraft and the COO of two other publicly traded companies and just to watch his success and to me see anything's possible and to watch his hard work and pursuit of that. At the same time, my mom was equally phenomenal, inspiring. She got her undergrad from the University of Illinois, her master's from McGill, her PhD and postdoc at Northwestern, published professor on a bunch of boards. For me to see the opportunity, but also, I think, for them to hold me to the standard of express yourself, find your passion, find that spark and you don't just go with the flow. That's not in your DNA or our DNA. So I'd say that they were very, very impactful to me around to this day. How I lead to reframe what you just said.

Brad Stroh:

I just read Rick Rubin's book the Creative Way about the creative process. He's got 12 rules for being creative. But this is about Dr Dre and the Beastie Boys and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Can I tell you that book was as close to being an entrepreneur in terms of idea identification, in terms of being in the flow of ideas, being receptive to markets and innovation as anything I've ever read. So when you say like a founder is a capitalist, or just in pursuit of profit, I couldn't disagree more, especially as someone that's been running this business for 23 years. That's not my primary motivation, never was it it's. Can you express that spark Like your podcast has a great title and can you have the canvas to express what impact you want to make on the world, how you want to grow a culture, team, what products you want to be, how do you want to deliver the services? And to me, there is a beauty in creativity, in self-expression, in team and leadership. That's way deeper than a cynical view of entrepreneurism, which I don't share. I think the greatest.

Rajiv Parikh:

What's the book's name? Again, when did you read it? Rick Rubin, it's out right now. I think it's called the Creative Way. Rick Rubin, creative Way. We'll make sure we highlight it, rick.

Brad Stroh:

Rubin is this brilliant mad scientist, big beard producer who's done Beastie Boys, ll Cool J, dr Dre, johnny Cash, ll Cool J, dr Dre, johnny Cash I mean he's just an iconic guy, but kind of his message, If I sum the whole book up, it's be in tune to the universe and these ideas are going to come to you, and don't judge them, don't be self-critical, make avail yourself to them and then find kind of in your flow, the ones that resonate with you and then just go crush it.

Rajiv Parikh:

This kind of matches your thinking about Tibetan Buddhism, right? I mean, I think there's a flow. I remember when I met with you, there was a point you're like I took six weeks off to go to Tibet, right.

Brad Stroh:

Tibetan Bhutan.

Rajiv Parikh:

I wrote, didn't you do something like that and you wrote a book on it.

Brad Stroh:

I did. I wrote a novel about the pursuit of the Panchan Lama, but yeah, this is for another podcast sometime. But yeah, I think founding a business is the combination of analytical chops and really deep thinking, with understanding, problem statements and being open to markets, problems, opportunities and the creative journey along that. Yeah.

Rajiv Parikh:

That's great, okay. Next question I have is as Achieve scaled at first it was freedom financial scaled from two broken tables to nearly 3,000 employees. You've highlighted the importance of strategically knowing what to say no to in fostering innovation, alongside aligning your best and brightest around key leverage points. So how do you communicate and reinforce these specific no decisions across your large and diverse teams? What mechanisms are in place to ensure that prioritizing focused innovation doesn't inadvertently stifle the entrepreneurial tinkering at heart that likely fueled achieves early growth?

Brad Stroh:

Yeah, well, I'd say there's different phases, right? So idea identification zero to one, validating a business, scaling a business running a scale, running at mega scale kind of where we are now. Where I am now, it's resource planning, it's ICE frameworks, it's probability weighted outcome with complexity, knowing the constraints of resources and capital, and kind of talent development. That's kind of how we say no. Now is an analytical framework to risk and return, and you still do want to have a tinkering budget and innovation budget, so you're taking the right risks. A lot of that for us right now is in AI. Look, if I go back to the early days, though, what you say no to is incredibly important because you have such limited resources. I think the way you get to know in the early days, when you really don't have product market fit or you're just trying to validate viability of an economic model and consumer situation, you got to fail fast. I would say shortening or iteration cycles in the early days was a key determinant of success.

Rajiv Parikh:

What's a win that you had. What's like something where you I mean you've had many victories, but what's one where you tried, it didn't work. You thought it was going to be a winner, it just didn't work out.

Brad Stroh:

We've launched a couple of products that didn't work. They're too labor intensive or inefficient or we didn't think the value prop was high enough for consumer. The wins that we've had, you know we don't. We don't win the Superbowl. There's not an end state when you're running a business like mine, it's a journey. So I'd say it's more of accumulation of millions of microscopic wins, which is a client testimonial that says you've changed my life and your team's great.

Rajiv Parikh:

But I remember you still had the handwritten version with their picture just up on the wall. It was beautiful.

Brad Stroh:

We still do. I think storytelling is so valuable in running a business and CEO in life is telling. Our customer stories are way more important than CEO story and our employees stories. But look, I got a good one. I just saw the text from you in prep for this pod and the one right before that was you had texted me not too long ago saying one of your friend's sons was an engineer in my company I don't know who it was and that they love the culture and they love the team and they love working here. To me, those are the wins that I think stack and, you know, keep me motivated and keep me going and consistent with running a business how I want to, and values with a team and, you know, personally growing and being challenged. Those are all wins for me Another one.

Rajiv Parikh:

you're a product guy at Heartbrite. Is there a favorite that you have that specific product innovation most proud of embodies? You have this passion for user experience. Is there one I know you've done a whole bunch of products or many iterations of a similar product innovation. Is there one that just gets you?

Brad Stroh:

I know you did billscom I got a couple I'd say like recency bias. I am loving the personalization work that we're doing with AI of mapping journeys and helping connect a consumer to the best path to move forward with the best product. I just like loving and the velocity of testing in a purely digital environment where you can just launch lots of variants and watch consumers be happy or not as satisfied. I'm loving that. I really like our digital budgeting tool called Money Leftover free for consumers. I think it's super powerful A lot of the stuff we talked about in the early conversation of helping a consumer set up goals, understand their financial constraints, set a goal each individual month for how much they want to save and then helping them set up the constraints and helping them see in the future.

Brad Stroh:

It literally has a roadmap, like a roadmap street visualized of your bills that are upcoming and what your financial future is going to look like. I'm a big fan of that. I think things that really improve the lives of the customers we serve those are probably the ones that I love.

Rajiv Parikh:

I think the most fun now. I'm with you. I've tried so many different products in my own business and I'm having the most fun with AI, because a lot of things that I've dreamed up for years that would take forever to build, we can build really quickly and test really quickly and put it out to market quickly. Yeah, the velocity is so exciting.

Brad Stroh:

It's addicting to just constantly now be innovating and changing and trying to drive out. This is real, you know. I mean, I've been in financial services for a long time. I was cynical on Bitcoin not as a speculative tool I mean, obviously that's paid off but as a transaction value AI, I could not be a bigger believer in and totally transforming the way that we interact, transact and companies like mine deliver services to consumers. So yeah, recency bias would be all the AI stuff that's great, all right.

Rajiv Parikh:

We always ask our guests to name a significant historical event or person or movement that inspired you. You answered anyone who led with heart and drove change Gandhi, mandela, mlk, lincoln so what in particular about them lights you up?

Brad Stroh:

I think all those would be. You know, the Dalai Lama today would probably resonate, which is standing up for what you believe in in the face of adversity, of sparking a movement and kind of lighting the fire and the passion for those who are following you, speaking truth to power, changing society through your personal beliefs and doing what's right. Certainly everyone on that list, I think, would check that box.

Rajiv Parikh:

So having courage.

Brad Stroh:

I think there has to be selflessness. I think there'd probably be some humility that would probably flow through all of those incredible leaders as well, combined with a deep passion and persistence. I think you know all those people.

Rajiv Parikh:

I think would inspire me in many ways and many more, but those would be examples of why that's great. I really appreciate that and respect it and definitely see it. I love learning about game changers.

Brad Stroh:

What was your answer to this question?

Rajiv Parikh:

It depends on the day, but I would agree with you on these game changers. I'm a big fan of Gandhi, mandela. Of course I know MLK. He embraced the nonviolent movement that Gandhi brought about and thought he could make that change and had to deal with all the violent consequences of that Lincoln. I mean, what an incredibly difficult decision to have your country be torn up and then sticking with it and have everyone go against you, but then sticking with your beliefs.

Brad Stroh:

How about a sad? Common theme is a lot of them ultimately sacrificed their lives for pursuing us.

Rajiv Parikh:

You have to be willing to, I think, one of these things. You have to be willing to go to the end, otherwise your followers won't be willing to go to the end, or the people that join in your movement. So you have to be willing to take it all the way, and these folks just have that, and so I respect anyone that is willing to go against the grain, and that's why I do this show, because I want to bring that to the world in a business context. So, brad, I got a bunch of quick Q&A, so I'm going to throw a bunch of questions at you. You're really good at this anyways, but think about it as a quick, one-line answer.

Brad Stroh:

All right, fire away.

Rajiv Parikh:

What's something you thought you'd have figured out by now, but are still completely confused by Parenting Nice. It's complicated, it is complicated. You can do everything right, and they'll still go a different way. I love that answer. If you were to give your current anxiety or biggest worry a name and personality, what would you call it and what would you say to it? God?

Brad Stroh:

probably excess ambition combined with impatience that just want to do everything all at once. And 23 years in, to just understand, it's okay to take a breath.

Rajiv Parikh:

Nice and you are taking some of those breaths, right, I think you're traveling. No, I think you're spending time on the East Coast. You're spending time with your kids. I think it's a really Family is always first.

Brad Stroh:

Family always will be first. But I do have just a burning desire personally, professionally, with Achieve, to just do more, make a bigger impact, that's right. To just make a bigger dent on the world yeah, that's awesome.

Rajiv Parikh:

What's a piece of conventional wisdom that everyone around you accepts but you secretly think might be wrong.

Brad Stroh:

I'm going to stay out of politics for a brief moment because I think there's a lot there that is scary to me and, I think, misplaced. If you do first principles, thinking how about this? I'll say AI is going to be an incredible impact on companies and society. I'll bet it'll be slower to change than we think, not because of the technology or the capability, because you're gonna have to change human behavior, business process, reorganization of some just long-held beliefs that I don't think society's ready for. So I'll bet you the tools are there and available and it'll go slower than we think.

Rajiv Parikh:

I run into this every single day with my own team. My team loves to innovate, but every time I see something I'm like you know, why couldn't you do this? Can you do this as an agent? Right, and they embrace it, but they have to be nudged a bit because you're so used to doing things a particular way. So I'm with you there. If you could have a 30 minute conversation with any version of yourself from the past, what age would you pick and what would you want to discuss?

Brad Stroh:

That's a great, these are great questions. Totally unprepared for this, but okay, I'd say old enough and wise enough that I could process the wisdom or the feedback in a non-defensive or non-threatening way and not be freaked out that somehow there's a time machine built in the world. So I'd say somewhere where prefrontal cortex is formed or you know along the way, but young enough where the wisdom could drive change in behavior and impact. So I will say on my college graduation day, Nice.

Rajiv Parikh:

What would you discuss? Just a topic that you discuss.

Brad Stroh:

Probably just self-awareness, some things to develop and work on and think about and reflect on Be more aware of others' needs. Don't try to be too ambitious too early, it'll all happen. The power and importance of relationships and friends and maintain those friendships that you've got there and probably a little bit about what's coming in the world. I'd probably say buy Bitcoin at like 10 cents.

Rajiv Parikh:

Buy a bunch of things when they're cheap and throw a little bit into those Awesome, that's a great one. Do you have a favorite life motto that you come back to and share with friends, either in work or life?

Brad Stroh:

I got a bunch of things at work that I say a lot but is be intentional, be deliberate. Don't let circumstances kind of drive your behavior in your life, Like you don't own outcome.

Brad Stroh:

You are in charge of your decisions where your energy is what you choose to focus on. Just because it's something we did yesterday does not mean we have to do the same thing today. But that goes for life, family, for everything. It's just first principles thinking, and it's never too late to change. Always just kind of first principles thinking.

Brad Stroh:

And I think, as a CEO, the advice of wisdom I give to young founders is don't let the urgent outweigh the important. Wisdom that was given to me by Ariel but Chuck Holloway, one of our early board members and kind of a legendary entrepreneurial advisor in Stanford community in our first board meeting, kind of really beat that into me, which is you're going to have constant struggles, but you got to make sure you're focused on the important things, not the urgent things. You don't want to be a firefighter, you want to be an empire builder, and to be an empire builder you got to be an architect of your own life. You got to have a vision, you got to stay true to it. And back to one of your earlier great questions was you got to know what to say no to, which is yeah, don't let the urgent outweigh the important.

Rajiv Parikh:

I love that. All right, If you were to teach a masterclass on something that's not your job, something you're genuinely passionate about, what would that course be called?

Brad Stroh:

I'm so passionate about so many different things right now but I'd say my latest really just deep curiosity is the evolution of ancient civilizations and different leadership models, how civilizations kind of formed Roman empire, most relevant, but Hellenistic British empire you go back to Assyrians.

Rajiv Parikh:

What's one that you're on right now?

Brad Stroh:

I think like kind of the Genghis Khan, I think is really really interesting. Famous, but really for 20 years he was inside of another leader's ecosystem and was just a great conqueror, but then to conquer for his next 20 years and have one of the largest empires, spanning Mongolia, China, all the way to Japan, obviously, all the way through Middle East, Turkey. And he did not have a capital city, he did not have a central government entity how different is that than the Roman Empire? How different is that? Everything flew through Roman Empire and to me, but there's also some aspects of commonality and then different leadership models. So I think it'd be leadership and evolution of ancient civilizations Something that I'm just really intrigued by right now. There's something in there that I think is really interesting.

Rajiv Parikh:

I would go to your course. All right, brad. Final question what's your personal moonshot?

Brad Stroh:

Zero click financial services, yeah, but to make the biggest dent that I possibly can in my lifetime on improving consumers' lives who don't have better alternatives and put as many people as possible on a better financial path, that's my moonshot.

Rajiv Parikh:

I love it, brad. As usual, you're always great to talk with, always great to learn from and have great conversations with. I know it's been some time since we've last talked, but it felt like another day with you from years ago. It's such a thrill to see what you and Andrew have achieved, what you've built with your family and your life and your employees, and how many millions of people that you've affected in a super positive way. So I really appreciate having you on.

Brad Stroh:

I appreciate that. I appreciate the time, the beauty of old friendships. It's great.

Rajiv Parikh:

All right, brad, thank you so much. Thanks. So that was a gem of a conversation, Brad. Such an interesting person, from his roots his entrepreneurial roots to his family and his care about family, to how he's built his company along with his co-founder and how they've stayed together all these years. If you look at his management team, his leadership team many have been with him just through decades he's the type of person that has been able to combine low capital to start seeing a great business opportunity, having a vision for helping consumers in a very underserved segment of FinTech and serving them successfully over decades and continuing to build and being excited about what he's doing because it has such an impact and this willingness to change as he goes.

Rajiv Parikh:

Things we didn't cover would be some of the amazing go-to-market innovations that he's had. He's a master of that. It's one of the things I learned about him the discipline of how he runs his business, but I think there's a heart and soul to Brad that I think is important for all of us to learn about and embrace, and so I love how he's always thinking about first principles, be intentional, be deliberate and emphasizing the important over the urgent.

Rajiv Parikh:

So these are just things that you should live by if you're not just being a business person but building a great life. So excited to have him on the show. All right, thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the pod, please take a moment to rate it and comment. You can find us on Apple, spotify, youtube and everywhere podcasts can be found. This show is produced by Arun Shah and edited by Laura Ballant. I'm your host, rajiv Parikh from Position Squared. We are a leading growth marketing company. Lots of AI capabilities that we'll be releasing to the market soon. Based in Silicon Valley, come visit us at position2.com. This has been an FNFunny production and we'll catch you next time. Remember, folks, be ever curious.