Innovating Charity: Adam Nash's Mission with Daffy

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, From the Ground Up, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, their successes, challenges, and lessons learned. We hope you'd be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, and here with us today we have Adam Nash, the founder and CEO of Daffy.org, a not-for-profit company that's raised $22 million in funding and changing the way we give charitable donations. It's a fascinating story. Can't wait to share it with you. Adam, welcome to the show.

Adam Nash: Jake, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. So a little bit about Adam. He has a bachelor's and a master's degree in computer science from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard. He has served as an executive, angel investor, and adviser to some of the most successful technology companies that have come to and gone out of Silicon Valley. Some of those include Apple, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Wealthfront, eBay, just to name a few. Now he leads Daffy, a not-for-profit community built, community built around a new modern way to give. You've done a lot Adam, and we're going to dive into Daffy, uh, but before we do that, I want to just kind of talk a little bit about you. And you know, it's funny, um, you're not just somebody that's been in technology, but you've also been on the board of some companies too. And I, I have a, just a quick short story. Uh, you had mentioned that you were on the board of Acorns. And I'm from Lag-, I live in Laguna Beach now, and in the process of um working with a lot of companies in, in, in Orange County, I got a call to come in to, to see a, a man by the name of Walter. Walter Cruttenden.

Adam Nash: Yeah.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: And he uh came in and said "Look, I'm trying to build a company." At that time they had uh him and his son Jeff as the co-founders and about five employees. And they said, "We, we, we have this idea. We're going to try and build this fintech company that's got to go through all this regulation, but we think it's got an opportunity." And since then it's now raised over $500 million, lots of employees, two, 300, whatever the number is now in terms of employees. And we helped them early on kind of find initial engineers and designers. And it's a lot of fun to see that story.

But as your background of being a board member, you know, I've always been curious, and we're going to kind of jump around a little bit, but [I've] always been curious to know, like as a board member looking at founders of companies and more importantly maybe the CEOs that are leading them, what are some of the patterns that you typically see in the leaders that are running those companies that you look at and say, "Those are the things that I know leaders really need to have to build successful companies" and insights that you could share with the community that at some point, who knows, maybe they'll be on the board of their company? But more in general just what, what's expected from founders that have a board they have to report to?

Adam Nash: Yeah, so I think there's a few insights there that are probably worth sharing. Although I could share more stories about the uh early Acorns days and, and, and some of the, the fun there with Walter and Jeff. But um, but no, I think with founders that are dealing with board members, or if you're considering being a board member working with a founder/CEO, um a few things to keep in mind. I think the first thing to keep in mind... you know, in, in Silicon Valley, I'm an angel investor. I've invested in over 100 companies. I think 130 or so at this point. Um, but one of the things I tend to look for is, is very much a founder-product fit or founder-market fit, right? There's, everyone talks about product-market fit. But for me, if you're going to build a company, um you have to have something that goes beyond just an academic connection to what you're building and who you're building it for, right? And so, and different companies have different go-to markets, different strategies, um different people they're going after. So there's no one solution for it. So I don't think there's one pattern for a founder, and I would extend that to a CEO, right? That, that CEO fit. A company has a strategy, right? It has actually a set of strategies. It has a, it has a strategy, a technology strategy. It has a product strategy. It has a, a distribution strategy. It, it hopefully has a people strategy. You and I have talked about this. It's, um I think these are all critical. Um, the right leader has a fit with those strategies, right? So it's, it's not that they have to have one set of characteristics or there's one type of CEO. I mean, you and I both know there's a lot of different CEOs out there who have been successful. And by the way, there's a lot of leaders out there who have the same characteristics who have failed, sometimes because of the company, because of the market, their leadership style. So to me it's not about their characteristics, it's about the fit.

But the second thing I would say as a board member, um, and I think this is important for founders and CEOs to um, and it comes up a lot with financing, is that the board is, is a very important hiring decision. People should be on the board for a reason, and it's not all the same reason, right? So on the Acorns board, um, I was on the Acorns board for, for six years. I've you know, stepped off now. Um but fundamentally I knew what my role was there because I talked about it with Jeff and, and Walter and, and Noah from the beginning. Noah the CEO of Acorns, right? You know, like a lot of companies, Acorns had grown, right? They had some insiders on the board um who were with the company and worked for the company. They had a lot of investors, more of a financial background. Um but they were really looking to add some independence to the board. Independent members who had passions for different things, focused on different problems. And so given my product background, my focus on community building, these different sites, um they really wanted someone, as the company scaled, who had known what Acorns was when it was small, um had a connection to what the founders wanted to build and what Acorns wanted to be. And could be that voice in the room about how to, how those strategies come together to make sure Acorns fulfilled its purpose of, of what it was meant to be. And so I knew that that was my role.

And that's very helpful as a board member, um. Not that you can't lean into anything you want to or participate or, or be helpful where you can. But a lot of being a good board member is actually knowing where you're an expert and where you're not. Um, this is what investors get wrong all the time. They, they feel like it's their job to give advice on everything, but no one is an expert on everything. And so having enough humility as an investor and as a board member to actually not answer the question, but actually instead give the CEO, give the founder insight on who they could talk to or how they can think about the problem, rather than trying to solve the problem, is usually much more useful than just spitting out an answer and just being another smart person in the room.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I hear you. That sounds, that sounds really good. Um you know you went to school in the Bay Area, Stanford. Um where are you originally from, and, and how did you get into technology?

Adam Nash: Yeah, this is a, it's a funny story. It's a little personal, I'm not sure if it's interesting or not. Um you know, one of the things I love about Silicon Valley of course is that almost no one is from Silicon Valley, right? You know people tend to move there. They, they, they move there to build companies, to build technology. Um the idea of going out West is you know centuries old at this point. Um and so I'm always a little embarrassed to say that actually I was born in Silicon, I, I literally was born in Stanford Hospital. Um, parents aren't in technology, right? They're, they're both doctor doctors. Um my, my father's a medical doctor. My, my mother's a clinical psychologist. She's actually clinical faculty at Stanford. And so in a weird way, I grew up without a lot of exposure to the technology industry. I usually joke that I'm the first engineer in the family type of thing. A big disappointment, I know, it's sad. Um, but no... um but no. So I grew up, but, but you know it was Silicon Valley and it, it was in the '80s, right? So you know, growing up you know, I look back now and realized, "Oh, I did have friends," or "I did know people." I never knew what their parents did, but actually that parent was actually a CEO of a semiconductor company, or you know, like "oh they, you know, that person ended up being the founder CEO of one of the biggest software companies in the world." So I actually knew people like that, but I was a kid. I didn't know anything about that.

So for me, um I actually didn't get very connected to the technology community uh really until college, until Stanford. And I thought I was going to focus on molecular biology, right? Like that's what my first love was, was genetics, and I thought there was a lot of things we'd do... actually ironically now 30 years later it's finally getting to the point where some of the things I was excited about 30 years ago are now possible, which is amazing. But um, Stanford has a wonderful engineering school. And um I was always a big believer in "if you hear there's a great professor, um take their class, even if it's just not a subject you know." That you know, learning from someone who loves their field and knows how to express it is really a, a rare, a rare gift. Um and I took an Intro to Materials Science um for a professor [who] was just phenomenal. Ended up actually becoming the, the dean of the school I believe. But um, all of a sudden I got exposed to engineering. I'm like "what is engineering? This is amazing!" Like instead of just being in a lab and, and trying to figure things out, you actually can design and build things and like change... and so I remember my freshman summer going through this book of course requirements for every engineering major. And I decided that computer science had the fewest classes in the major that I wouldn't want to take anyway, and so I ended up going to computer science. And you know, the rest is history. I still have a love for these other topics and, and there's a lot of interchange between different disciplines and, and areas, but um... so you know I, I did not go to school thinking I was going to end up in software for 30 years. But you know, here I am.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well software there's two sides, but one of it's developing product, and there's the other side which is product development where you have a different view of how the product's going to function and the problem it's going to solve without the coding. When you were at LinkedIn, you were at the, at LinkedIn at a really important time there from the beginning, really when they were going through the IPO. Uh what was your role at LinkedIn on the product side when you were there?

Adam Nash: Yeah, so I met Reid Hoffman in 2007. You [know], LinkedIn for me was kind of mid-career right? So I had, I had worked in another startup before that had gone public in the '90s. I joined Apple when everyone thought it was going to die actually. I actually thought I was joining NeXT, but it turned out NeXT got bought by Apple or either Apple bought NeXT or NeXT bought Apple. I still totally a little fuzzy on exactly what happened. But um the point is I was there when Steve came back, phenomenal experience. Um and then I've been afterward I went to business school, a little bit of venture capital uh for a couple years, and then I was at eBay. And so I had a lot of opinions now about how to build great software, great businesses um on the web. Um like a lot of the folks who came out of Web 1.0. I mean that's what Web 2.0 was, was everyone coming out of Web 1.0. The bubble had burst. Most of the world had decided that that was not going to be a thing going forward. And there was a group of people who said, "No, no, no, we, we figured this out, we're going to make it great." Um and that's really where Web 2.0 was all about, solving all the problems we ran into trying to do Web 1.0. But, but that's, that's always natural.

And so actually my very first conversation with Reid Hoffman, we, we had breakfast at this Hobee's um on El Camino. And by the way, Hobee's, if you don't know, is, is um kind of an, it's very '70s, early '80s kind of notion of what's healthy, which is totally not correct but it's still there. And it's a breakfast place. This one was not the best Hobee's by the way. But we, we met for, we're going to meet for an hour. We ended up talking for four hours [about] what product meant in a Web 2.0 world. Because back then there were a lot of people... there's always this argument, there were a lot of people saying that you don't need product managers right? Like the engineers can now talk with the customer directly right? Design had not yet ascended as kind of being a primary thing. But if the engineers can write the code and they can listen to customers and customer requests, then why do you want someone in the middle of that? Just iterate, just keep iterating. By the way, some people still believe this. Um but I didn't. I actually believed that product had an important role to play um in this kind of triad between engineering and design. Um and um and we spent hours talking about it.

And we were walking out into the parking lot. Um and at the time Reid had this... I mean Reid is obviously a very successful billionaire, that sort of thing. Back then he was not as successful, but he had sold PayPal, like he was pretty successful. But you know, you wouldn't know it from his car, which I think was like a '92 beater Accord and that sort of thing. But he kind of stopped me and says "Well, I know you're looking at other companies, but um you know, we, we have a role. We need someone to run product at, at LinkedIn, the core product." Um and I said, "Well I have these other things in flight, I don't know if we can move quickly enough." Um but just a few days later I had met a half a dozen people there including the, the current CEO, and had an offer in hand and you know, the rest is history.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Was the product that you were working on then vastly different than what it is today?

Adam Nash: You know, from my point of view, no. Because I tend to see these things as it's like building anything over time, right? Like you, you build the base, you start building over it. You, these, these giant platforms, um you might swap out things in the base, but you kind of know what you were building the whole time. Uh it's almost like building a city. Um but uh I think for a lot of people it would be unrecognizable. I mean, if you looked at the, I don't know if you've seen early screenshots of LinkedIn, but uh I mean people are, their minds are blown you know, when I have to explain to people, you know LinkedIn launched in 2003, I think on Cinco de Mayo. But you know, the original LinkedIn didn't even have search. It came months later, almost a year later. Um so many of the features that people take for granted, the feed, so many things you can do on LinkedIn... I mean, when I got to LinkedIn, years later after it was founded, right, 2007. The first feature I worked on was adding photos to LinkedIn. Um and by the way, there was a huge fight about it, but that was the first feature I ended up working on where I, I was coming from Web 2.0 and I said, like, "Listen, photos are better for engagement. And by the way, I'm one of these people, I recognize people by face, I'm terrible with names." Um and uh but there were big fights about it. Because you know, in the US, resumes didn't have photos and so people thought that was more social, not professional.

But um but no, I actually think the bones of it, the genius behind LinkedIn and the clarity of thinking really, the credit has to go to Reid. Um you know, the, from the fundamental principle, this idea that we are increasingly living in a world where people needed to take control of their reputations, of their relationships. Um that they, that no one else was going to do it for them, right? And that people, that the future was very much people being out there and proud of who they are and who they're connected to, and then vice versa. Um making it more accessible to recruiters and companies and business people to know what people are out there, right? People, before LinkedIn, people didn't even really know who was working at their same company. I can't tell you how many times I was at eBay, I'd be meeting with someone on the team and find out years later that they had this impressive background, but that's because LinkedIn didn't exist. I couldn't let, like, the resume was used when they applied to eBay and they got the job, but like no one ever saw that again. It went into some folder somewhere that no one ever looked at. And so um, converting that basic insight into the idea of building basically a marketplace platform, um building something that could solve this two-sided problem of how do you get people to upload their information and share information that historically they kept private, right? Before LinkedIn, the idea of you sharing your resume, even having a resume when you weren't looking for a job... I mean, did that make sense to anyone? Like, no. And, and by the way, in the US, how many people are looking for a job at any given time? Almost no one. A few percent, right? It's very small. Uh and so LinkedIn changed everything.

But the, the real credit I give Reid, that I spent four plus years at LinkedIn evangelizing to every new hire, I do onboarding, etc., was this idea that LinkedIn wasn't an app, it wasn't a feature, that it was a platform. That there were these missing elements um out there in software of who people were and how they were connected to each other, and that every business application would be better if it understood who people were and how they were connected. And so this idea that we were building this platform that then we would launch other businesses on top of, was really counterintuitive to people. I think to this day most people don't see that when they look at LinkedIn. Um but if you look at that business and why it's just so strong now, I think the last year was like 15 billion in revenue, I think they just hit a billion users. Yeah. Um, the reason that business is so strong is that when you build a platform, you build all these fundamental elements. And then as you solve real problems for people, the entire platform gets stronger. Like LinkedIn now isn't just for job searches, it's not just for recruiting right. Some people use it for content. Some people use it for marketing. Some people use it for sales. I mean, if you're a founder and you're not using it for, not just hiring, but you know when you're looking for financing or partnerships with other companies, I mean sorry to say, you're probably going to get out-competed by the people who are. But you got to give Reid an immense amount of credit and the team he built around him to, to make that company and that platform.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, um you know you mentioned when you were there, and I'm, I'm sure this is similar to a lot of other entrepreneurs that are building new companies, or companies that you know, their story might be different than you know the next company that's got tons of funding and they're out there building and they're exciting to be at. Um, the challenge of hiring. And so when you were at LinkedIn, which is really a marketplace of people and work and business and resumes and faces, what was the challenge like that you faced trying to bring people to LinkedIn?

Adam Nash: Oh, it was very... actually you know the truth is, recruiting is a hard problem and has been a hard problem at any company I've been at. And that's because to really recruit well... I'm not going to say that there aren't brilliant salespeople out there who can you know sell anything. I'm not one of those people. But there, there are people out there who approach recruiting purely as a sales problem. Like "how do I get this person to, to buy?" I was never able to do that. So for me, recruiting was always about actually thinking through from the other side. Companies are usually very clear on what they want to do. Like who they want to hire and what they want to do. "I want to get brilliant engineers, talented designers, you know brilliant strategists, marketers, you know whatever they need. Data scientists." Um but they never ask the really hard question: why would they join this company? And I don't just mean like the company itself and the product. And you know, there's always the financial success: "we're going to build the next billion dollar company, we're going to build the next unicorn." Sure, but that's not unique. And by the way, very hard to convince people that that's true in the beginning. By the time you can convince people... like I can't tell you, it was impossible for me to convince a brilliant engineer in the year 2007 that LinkedIn was going to be worth a billion dollars. I didn't even try. That was... I mean we had actually raised money at that point, you know, venture capitalists thought we were worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Didn't matter. People were like, "There's no way you're ever going to make money letting people upload a resume online. Like, they can just do that themselves." Like you could not... it's kind of like if you hear Drew tell the Dropbox story, it's like trying to convince people that like you could build a multi-billion dollar business helping people like send files around. You know, it's just like, "why wouldn't they email them?" Like it's just... it's, it's always impossible.

You have to go a layer deeper. You have to go to the careers. How does this make sense as someone's next step, right? You know, Reid uh often talks about in his book, that "tours of duty." Um but I always think of you know, the average stint in technology tends to be two to three years. And so when you're talking to someone, you're basically asking them and saying, "Hey, I have a great idea of what your next two to three years could be like, and what that will set you up for in the future." Um and I think the best recruiters know that. I think the best hiring managers actually know that. And so as a leader I will tell you that whether it was at LinkedIn, whether it was at uh Wealthfront, um now at Daffy where I'm running... I always have to put... I actually have to once again, you have to embrace a certain amount of humility. The good news as a startup is you don't have to hire a million people, you probably have to hire a dozen people, less, a few people. Um so that's the good news. You don't have to... turns out hiring a million people is actually really hard. I mean, the big companies hiring a lot of people is very hard. Um but who are those people, and why would they want to join your company at this point in time, right?

The answer at LinkedIn I came up with, it took me a few months working with the team. I spent time, I talked to everyone I could at the company about why they joined, I talked to people outside trying to convince... and it took a few months. You have to try these things out. And what I landed on with LinkedIn is that in 2007, there was a whole group of people [who] believed in social media, they thought social networking was a real thing, that adding people to the internet was going to be a massive, massively valuable thing, and they thought it was going to be huge. Not everyone, by the way. These are people who thought you know, Microsoft overpaid you know, valuing Facebook at you know $15 billion or whatever. Like, there were, there were plenty of skeptics. But there were, there was some people, some engineers and designers, who believed social networking was going to be important, going to be big. And there was a subset of those people... because engineers are pretty rational people for the most part... who were actually frustrated that it all seemed frivolous. Like it was all dating and entertainment and poking people and that sort of thing. And so I said like, "Okay, if one in 10 engineers you know believes that social networking is going to be a huge thing, and one in 10 of those actually is frustrated that it's all frivolous, I'm gonna tell them I have an answer for you. That here's a great company, LinkedIn, backed by some of the best people, Reid, done PayPal, that sort of amazing team, who actually believe that not only was social networking going to be really important, but that actually could be useful. And LinkedIn was going to be the site that used that technology to actually make every business problem better and solve it." And so that worked for LinkedIn at least in 2007, 2008.

At Wealthfront I realized that we couldn't promise you know a thousand percent year-over-year growth, this wasn't going to be Instagram. This wasn't going to go to a billion users overnight. Um but that's not how fintech works. Money is a trust business, it builds more slowly. But I knew that there were always two groups of engineers, right? At the high end, you know like you know very experienced folks who had gotten to a point in their career where they had run into money problems and they were frustrated that the tools didn't exist. "Well how would you like to help build that solution that you always knew should exist?" And I also knew coming into career, there were always these college students who had a dual interest in both technology and finance. And they had this terrible choice: "Do I want to go to Wall Street and give up on software, or do I want to uh go into software but kind of give up on finance?" right? That was your choice. And I said, "You don't have to choose anymore, come to Wealthfront. You can do both." That's not enough to hire a million people or a thousand people, but to get a couple dozen high quality people who are motivated, energized and have the right...

Like so, if you get like, for Daffy right now, Daffy.org, recruiting has actually been surprisingly great. Um and I don't think it's just because you know, people think I'm so charming or that sort of thing. I mean, my mom likes me, you know. Acquired taste. But um, but no, the reason is because it turns out there's a lot of talented people in Silicon Valley and, and in other places right now with remote work, you know, they could be anywhere, who actually believe that technology has a role to play in having real, right? They, they like this idea of like, instead of building software to help people save or invest or spend, like let's, let's put our effort into helping people give, right? And, and getting people together for that. Let's take everything we've learned in the last decade of fintech um and actually apply it to a problem that we think can have real positive social impact. That's not everyone. That's not how everyone's doing their career. But I, I will tell you some of the best people in the industry, this is the moment in time where they think that's how they want to spend their next few years. And so like I look out in the room you know at Daffy, and we have you know engineers and designers who've worked on you know the LinkedIns, the Dropboxes, the Slack, the, the, the Twitters, the you know all the, all these products that we now know are fantastic and are everywhere. Um and what are they doing? They, they could be making more money you know working for a big tech company, or at least more reliable money. Um you know, they, they could be working on scale problems, etc. But um they've decided that what they want to do is actually figure out how to take all the current technology and use it to help people give, to help people put money aside for charity.

Um but I, I always tell founders and leaders, if you want to recruit people and you want to do it well, you're gonna have to spend some time actually thinking about it from their point of view and, and why. It's almost like a marketing problem you know. They put so much effort into marketing their product and their service, they don't really think about marketing their company. I mean this is what LinkedIn really built out conceptually. Like that, that phrase didn't exist. I remember when we started pushing this idea of a talent brand right, which was different than your product brand for the company. It was, this is not what your company is for, to Wall Street, this is not what your company is for in terms of an end user, a consumer who's using your product. This is actually: why would someone join your company? Why would they work there? Why would they stay there? Um and actually making that a first class problem for leadership teams to think about.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, well that's really good. You, you, you've spoken very well about where you were at with LinkedIn and kind of the transition to other companies like Wealthfront. Talk to me about Daffy, and when you thought about the idea, what was the purpose behind it and inspiration behind building Daffy?

Adam Nash: Well, you know, um Steve Jobs gave this talk I think at Stanford graduation almost two decades ago, it was early 2000s. And one of the concepts he talked about is connecting the dots of your life. And so I think, I think founder journeys are a little bit similar. I don't know if the idea comes from any one place. Um it's usually a few different things that come together. Because some version of this idea has been in the back of my head for more than a decade. I mean, fintech was starting. I mean, this idea that the donor-advised fund is an amazing financial product that most people have never heard of, right? I mean Daffy literally stands for the Donor Advised Fund For You, right? That's, that's the name. There's a liability when you let the engineer name things, it's a little on the nose, it's fine. But um, but no, I, I think what really happened is it was the pandemic. It was 2020. Um I was thinking... I had, like a lot of founders, I had a Google Doc of different ideas. 82 ideas on my doc.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow.

Adam Nash: Yeah. They're not all good. If you want some I'm happy to, happy to share. Um but uh, some really good ones. But I had on that list, one of the lists were, were great financial products I've been thinking about. But to our earlier conversation, this, this question... um I had been working with Acorns for years now, right? Not as long, but for years. And I said like, "wow, like the donor-advised fund is this niche product for the wealthy that most people haven't heard of. But there's 60 million households in the US who give to charity every year. Like there's got to be a way to actually help them." And um the idea of like, "well what if we made it very easy for people to put money aside for charity?" I'm a parent, I have four children. My kids went to, to this wonderful school where every Friday they would bring in spare change, put it in a little piggy bank, and every quarter the, the class would vote on which, which organization to give it to, which charity to give it to. And I was like, "Why do we teach our kids to give, but as adults we don't put money aside for charity, right?"

And it all clicked that all these problems were related, right? That actually these were all the same problem. That actually people do need to put money aside for charity. I mean, how many of us would save for retirement if it didn't come out of our, our paycheck? If it wasn't automatic withdrawal, right? Like how many would save for any goal without automating it? This is basic behavioral finance. So it all started clicking where I said I think that there could be a great product and platform. I, I saw a world where there were hundreds of thousands if not millions of people all putting money aside for charity. And what an amazing community that would be, and amazing product that would be. If Acorns could do it for savings, if Acorns could get millions of people you know putting money aside for their financial lives, we could get millions of people [to] put money aside for charity. And so that all cooked. I talked, [I] had done some work with, donors choose back in the day. Um I... he was my favorite engineer to work with at LinkedIn. Um we had talked previously about doing a company together, he had a real passion for it. And so that you know, that summer we decided to take the leap.

Um and you know it's amazing. Starting a company is really, it's a, it's a humbling experience and it's also a phenomenal experience in terms of just seeing how little things... I mean you just start, you can't possibly do it all, and so you just start like "What's next? What's the next step? What, what, what's the next problem to take on to build it?" And um, it's been [a] fantastic experience. I mean now it's just a, I mean we launched Daffy uh in 2021, right? September 30th. So we, we just celebrated our second birthday out as a product or service, but it's been phenomenal. Um but so early. Still so early. But just phenomenal to see so many people who actually love this idea of having an app and a service to put money aside for charity and then inspire each other.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: You know if you're a user of the platform and you haven't actually seen it yet, what, when you talk about donations and charities, you know in the back of the mind of a lot of people it's always about "where's my money really going and where's the impact going to be?" So there's this hesitation sometimes about "I'll donate to the companies that I know, hopefully they're on your platform." But talk to us about the, the level of different charitable companies that are within your platform, uh and what's the process if someone wanted to use it?

Adam Nash: Yeah, so that's a, that's a, a great question. I think you're right. I think a lot of people struggle. I think there's actually two very hard problems when it comes to charitable giving, uh and I say this on purpose because I think it gets [to] the heart of what Daffy does. There's one, "How much can I afford to give to charity?" Right? This is one of the things that's very broken right now, right. I, I've been on the board of nonprofits, fundraising is hard because in some ways people, people don't know what they can afford to give. They haven't really thought about it. Um the second problem is, is what you lined into, like "Who do I give the money to?" And they're both really hard problems. The vision behind Daffy is actually as a product is to separate those two problems.

Like so when you join Daffy, it's, it's a really easy experience, it's not unlike other fintech apps, we're just focused on giving. You download this app from the app store, or you can go to Daffy.org. Um and one of the first questions we'll ask you is "How much do you give to charity every year?" Simple question, no judgment. Could be a few hundred dollars, a few thousand, whatever you do. Um and then we say "Oh, that's great! Like, let's say you said $500, fantastic. Do you want to put aside $10 a week, $50 a month? You know, you wanna, you wanna donate stock? You want to donate crypto?" We, we handle everything. Apple Pay. Like whatever you want to do. Our goal is to help people be more generous more often, and so we try to make it as easy as possible. And that's the modern technology right, you can just do it.

And then once you have this account set aside, the money's in there. And anytime you want to give right, you pull your phone out of your pocket, tap, tap, tap. We have every, basically every legal charity in the US. And this is the benefit of actually being a donor-advised fund, right. Donor-advised funds have been around in the US for over 50 years. Like this has been around for a very long time. There's over a million donor-advised funds in the US, [a] quarter trillion dollars now in these accounts. And the fantastic thing about building over a sound regulatory structure when you're building a service is that you can have the confidence that that's all taken care of, right? So you don't have to worry if your charity is not there, right. If it's a legal charity in the US, we either have it in our database already because they filed with the IRS, or we'll add it for you. We see our job as making [it] as frictionless, as easy as possible for people to give when they're inspired. Um and we take care of the rest.

And, and you know um, we have a lot of features to do so. We, we, we love innovating. I mean there's been so little innovation in this category. Um and there's so many ways that people, people tell us every day that they want to give. Um but yeah, that, we try to keep the basic experience very simple. In fact, I'm very happy to share um you know with your audience and that sort of thing... um in fact if you invite someone to join Daffy, we'll give you $25 once you fund your account to give to the charity of your choice. And that's because we do that because we have the confidence that actually people who give, they feel good about giving. They like to give. They may not like the marketing process where charities send them lots of mail or ask things. Like, but fundamentally, most of us were raised... I mean I do, you know, I'm a, I'm a product person my background, a lot of design centric thinking. First thing when we decided to do Daffy I did is I talked to dozens of people across the country about how they think about giving. And, and boy let me tell you, they do not agree on everything. They, they don't agree on the amount, or how to do it, etc. But one thing that they all agree on is almost everyone has a parent, a teacher, a relative, a priest, a rabbi, someone taught them when they were growing up that life wasn't meant to be wholly selfish. That there are other people around them, people less fortunate than themselves, and that part of living a good life is actually giving, right? Giving back. And um, so what I discovered was that actually, unfortunately most of those people weren't hitting their own goals for what they thought they should do. You ask someone how much they should give to charity every year, they'd give you a number. And then you ask how much they actually gave to charity last year. Uh, ugly, ugly pause and silence. But that's not surprising, our lives are busy right.

And, and this is where technology helps. This is why I think Daffy can be a great product for people. Most of us you know, a lot of Americans give to a few charities every year. They might give to their you know, if they're belong to a religious institution, um their kids' school, their alma mater, maybe a national cause that they believe in. Um you know, they just want one place to have it and make sure it happens. And they feel bad when they miss those commitments. And so the great thing about Daffy, simple as you download it, you set it up. I have recurring contributions in there, my kids' school, alma mater, etc. Um it's a wonderful feeling. And the great thing is once you're in the app, you can connect to other people. You know, how many of us know what organizations our, our friends or our family members uh, our colleagues you know donate to? Um it turns out 85% of donations roughly are because someone else inspired them to give, asked them to give. And so um, I actually find the best part of the experience is actually just learning what's out there. What, what organizations you could support.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, no, I, I'm a big surfer and I know that anything that has to do with cleaning up the oceans and the beaches and the environment for me uh is very interesting. So I need to download your app and try it for sure. Um, uh you know, as a not-for-profit company, you've got kind of a who's who of investors in the that's sort, sort of backing this up. Give us like a handful of names that we would know just so the audience know, knows who's really also behind this mission.

Adam Nash: I, I don't want to... this is like, sorry once again, this parent of four, I'm always leery of any... it sounds like me picking amongst my children. Um we have so much great support. Um except, and, and I've mentioned some of the names you know obviously. Reid Hoffman is an investor, and Mike Schroepfer is former CTO of Facebook. Uh Aaron Levie is a founder of Box, um Gina Bianchini runs Mighty Networks. Amy Chang, Mordecai Finley. We have, we, we really have a wonderful set of people. Um we even have people outside of technology. Ronnie Lott, um for the 49er fans out there, fantastic Hall of Famer. Um it's, it's a great set of people for a very simple reason. Um it turns out this is an issue and an area that a lot of people care about. And I think the reason we, we have so many great investors um is because most people see that a, a new modern platform for giving isn't just going to happen. And they don't think that it's going to come out of you know one of the incumbents. They just don't see you know Citibank or Fidelity or Schwab or you know one of these giants doing it, right? It's been too long, it hasn't happened.

And so I think what you see in our investor list is you know people in the community who believe that one of the ways you affect change is by building new businesses and new platforms you know that are self-sustaining. That actually change how consumers you know, what people can do. What, what used to be expensive is now not expensive. What used to be hard is now easy. And they love this idea of applying it to giving. And so I, I think that's why we have such a great set of investors. Um that being said, you know um, they do believe that the platform could be huge. Like I said, you know 10 years ago, 15 years ago, I can't even tell you, I mean "fintech" wasn't even a word. This idea of building software companies, the idea that normal people would trust software with their money... um I can't tell you how hard a concept that was to sell to people you know 10 to 15 years ago when Wealthfront was early. You know trying to, "you're telling me I'm going to have a computer manage my money? Who can I call? Right? Like who's going to, who's actually on my account?" Like that sort of thing. Those are the questions. I mean it seems a little ludicrous now but like, this is how people thought.

Um but um, you know, there's always some people who believe that, that the future will be different, that it, it could be different. You know, for me this idea of having a, a tax advantaged account, a tax exempt account for charity is such a good idea. Um I don't think it should be something only for the wealthy. I don't think it should be just for you know millionaires and billionaires. I, I, I think that software has given, given us the ability to open up these services to everyone, right? And so like when I look at, when I look at Daffy right now, I mean Daffy is doing really well, right? Thousands and thousands of people have signed up and funded accounts and are giving money to charities. Millions of dollars are flowing through. We have accounts as small as $10, um and we have accounts that are now over 10 million and everything in between. Um but I think that comes from a, that really comes from the beginning, like what you're trying to build. Um and, and so I think when you look at our investor set, they just, those are the patterns that great investors look for when they're thinking about "where am I going to spend time, where am I going to invest capital?" Um and so I feel very fortunate that we were able to find so many people who believe in what we're doing.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. You know, for the listeners out there, uh as a not-for-profit company, and some might be looking to build that themselves whatever category they're in. What's the sort of the challenges that you go through that's different than a for-profit company? Like as a not-for-profit company, you still go out, you have to raise capital or maybe you can bootstrap it. But it's got to be a business model that works, that's functioning, that's supporting, delivering whatever you're delivering. Tell us a little bit about the business model and then what were some of the, the, the lessons learned that you could share with others that are maybe right in line with what you're doing.

Adam Nash: Yeah, I'm happy to. And actually the story is a little bit more complex than that. So it's worth talking about. Um you know it turns out donor-advised funds, you know once again going back to things that have been around a long time. It turned out the donor-advised fund industry may not have done everything right, but they had figured out one thing a long time ago, which is actually to build a donor-advised fund, well you needed a partnership between a nonprofit organization and a for-profit organization. So every donor, almost, I shouldn't say every, almost every donor-advised fund in the US um is a nonprofit organization partnered with a for-profit. Um so for example Fidelity Charitable is a nonprofit organization, they're partnered with Fidelity Investments which is obviously a for-profit institution. Schwab Charitable partnered with Schwab, which is a public company.

And so the idea behind Daffy was: well what if instead of pairing with an investment house that has a business charging money as a percentage of assets, what if instead it was partnered with a venture-backed technology company? And it turns out that pattern does exist in technology. You know Reid Hoffman um you know, John Lilly, others... Mozilla right, is bas-, is a not-for-profit organization that actually has a for-profit organization tied to it, which is how they fund the whole thing. I mean OpenAI of course, everyone's talking about OpenAI these days. Also a nonprofit, a for-profit etc. And so this idea of a nonprofit partnered with a for-profit is not one that we invented. Um but actually it's part of how we think of the business.

So there's a, the venture-backed company that we raise money for builds a platform for nonprofits to offer donor-advised funds to their members. Um and Daffy, the nonprofit, is the first customer of that company. And if Daffy is successful enough you know that may be keeping us busy for a long time. Um but hopefully we can open up that platform to others long term. But I will tell you that you know Daffy Charitable Fund as a nonprofit organization, we didn't have a choice about that. That's the regulatory requirement. But it does force you to think: if you're running a nonprofit organization, yes you need to think about fundraising. And there's two ways that you can raise money for your organization. You can go out for donations from people who love your cause and want to fund your organization, but that's hard. You usually have to earn that money every year, right? That's not an ongoing thing. The second way you can make money to fund your organization is by offering services and goods that actually people are willing to pay for to help fund the business, right? So some of the nonprofits I've been on the board of, yes they do fund, funding drives, donation drives etc., but they also offer services to their community, right? I mean how many community centers are partially funded by the preschool they run, or maybe a gym with great services that they offer? Um that's not an accident.

So I think that if you have founders out there in the audience who are looking at building a nonprofit organization, don't just focus only on donations and fundraising. You can do it that way. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of great organizations that do. But you also should be thinking about the goods and services that you can provide to your community that are aligned with your mission that can also help fund what you're doing. And then if you want to raise money from investors, if you want to think about that relationship, just remember that their motivation on the for-profit side means that you actually have to have a business there that makes sense for them as well. And I'm fortunate with Daffy that we were able to do that.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, it's, it's amazing that the strategy uh isn't talked about more because I think it makes so much more sense than trying to grind out and build a non, not-for-profit. And every year you're calling those investors to pony up for you know that next year to fund the company and to keep it around. Where this is a, it's a holistic view, but also pragmatic view. And I think makes a ton of sense.

Adam Nash: Listen, I, I think if you just keep your eyes open, I'm a big believer you know in software. I always came to this industry... we talked a little bit about my history, but I always came to this industry assuming that humans, people have not changed that much over thousands of years. Like you know in some ways we haven't biologically, you know, how we relate to each other and our emotions etc. But technology does change. And so a lot of technology is solving problems that people have had in new ways. But if those problems have been around for a while, then, then other people have tried to solve them, maybe with older technology and other systems, but they have tried to solve them. And I usually learn a lot as a product designer from looking at old solutions to these problems when I'm thinking about new ones. And the same thing applies to nonprofits, right? Like the San Francisco Zoo, right? Yes they do fundraisers. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, yes they do fundraisers. But also they sell tickets and run events for people. Yeah. That doesn't surprise anyone. And yet I see people trying to start nonprofit organizations not thinking that it is a combination of fundraising and products and services. And I get it, listen there are some, like I said, there are some very successful nonprofits that are purely fundraising driven, but you have to find the right fix for the organization that you're building. Um I think for Daffy it turns out that you know the most important thing for me for Daffy is to make sure that it's sustainable, right? I want this platform to exist not just for a few years but for decades. I want to see millions of people inspiring each other, putting money aside um for causes and organizations they believe in. You can't do that unless you actually are sustainable financially. So whatever your solution to the problem is, you need a solution.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well I want to go back to one thing you mentioned a little bit early, earlier. Um you talked about as a, as a company or as a leader you know, you should be thinking about different strategies for a company. One of them being your technology strategy, your product strategy, your talent strategy, and your financial strategy. High level, kind of walk through that a little bit when you're talking to one of maybe the companies you're mentoring or advising of what are the things they should be thinking about when they want to execute on those strategies? Or how they should be thinking about implementing those if they haven't already started them, or maybe they're doing some of them but not all of them. What's your approach?

Adam Nash: It's a hard problem. And to be, be honest, I don't always push it on a founder when I'm you know, when I'm as an angel investor, board member, you know, it's a lot to do all at once. But, but the truth is, that is the problem you're solving if you want to build a company in technology. A disruptive company, a company that's, that's re-inventing that age. I mean this industry is brutal, right? And I don't just mean competing with the, the incumbents, the, the big platforms or competing with the next startup. Um there's always a next company. And technology keeps changing. And so I do believe you have to have all these strategies working together to make a company successful for the long term, right?

So technology strategy, very simple, right? Technology is constantly changing. What is different today that makes your company viable that wasn't true 10 years ago? You know, technology tends to either make things that were very expensive cheap or free, um or things that were very difficult to do very easy to do, right? And so usually part of any software company, technology company, at its heart there's some type of technology strategy that's built on something today that you couldn't do yesterday. And so I always like to keep that in mind. What, why now? Why is that working now?

Product strategy is all the problems that go around everything from what are the features of your product, what value do you create for your customer, who is your customer, what market segment are you going after, and how are you going to reach them, right? I'm, I'm a pretty traditional guy when it comes to these things. You know the four Ps, that sort of like the product problem, like the fundamental problem. Everyone talks these days about product-market fit. But to me it's that fundamental product strategy: how does that fit in the market, why will that be a sustainable thing, how are you going to create enough value for customers where if you take a small piece of it as revenue it's going to be enough to fund a business?

Um there's a financial strategy, right? Like investors don't believe that you're going to solve all those problems right away. And, and you know venture capital tends to be phased, right? So how are you going to raise money? What's that mix of revenue and investor dollars that's actually [going to] get you to that next mile, milestone to inspire the next group of people to take the leap to build a great company? I mean everything from bootstrapping, where it's like, "no, this is going to be profitable from day one, I'm going to grow it organically," all the way to "hey, we're going to raise a billion dollars, and it may not work, but if it does it'll be worth a 100," like. And everything in between. But you need to know what your strategy is and execute against that.

But people is, is nearest and dearest to my heart in terms of the people strategy. And I talked about that a little bit with recruiting. But understanding what, how you, your company and your organization makes sense for the people who are going to be coming in every day to build it. Um that's everything from recruiting to how you manage, career management, retention, all those things. But you need to have a people strategy. And by the way there's a bunch out there that you can borrow, right. There's a classic venture right where it's like, "I'm getting people willing to take a risk on a startup and it's a little bit like a lottery ticket for them. They know like if it doesn't work it's going to zero and if it becomes rich, if become successful they'll become rich." I mean you can do that strategy. I, I don't think that's very sustainable, but you can do it. Um you can say, "no, no, no, we're, we're not after money, we're, we're actually we're after a mission, we're after something else." That there's a lot of different reasons that, that people come into a business. And by the way, it differs by function, right? Your, your talent strategy, your people strategy, it matters: do you have a sales-driven company you're trying to build? You better think a lot about the culture and the people you're building around your sales organization. Is it a product-based strategy, technology-based strategy? That tells you what functions you have to prioritize and, and focus on.

But um you know, I'm a big believer that software is a team sport. [It's] something I always say. Um I played, I played volleyball in high school so I, I like team sports you know. You know there, there are certain games that you play by yourself and there are certain games that actually don't work unless the team is working together in a coordinated fashion. And I just think that organizations, companies are fundamentally a team sport. Software is a team sport. And so if you're not thinking deeply about the people on your team and why they would join your organization and how they work together, um well it's very unlikely you're just going to succeed by accident in my view. And, and by the way, it probably is one of the hardest problems. I do not pretend to have all the answers, right? Every organization, every team I've built, I'm working on has had issues, had problems, had lessons for me as a leader. Um but you have to embrace those problems and work on them um if I think you want to build a successful, sustainable, and impressive organization for the long term that has real impact.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great, thanks for sharing that. If, as a company, Daffy, um if someone wants to go and find your company or your app, where do they go?

Adam Nash: Oh, that, that's actually pretty simple. So um we were actually very proud of the fact that we were the first fully functional donor-advised fund in the App Store. So literally if you just go to the Apple App Store and type Daffy, you'll find us. Daffy Charitable Fund is there. Um you can also go to Daffy.org, right? We, we fully support on the web, desktop, mobile, everything you need to do. So either way you just go in there, sign up. Like I said, we've tried to make it easy to do and, and, and simple to get started. Uh but that's uh, those two ways are the easiest ways to find us.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. And if someone wanted to find you, where would they go to find you?

Adam Nash: Oh I'm, I'm Adam Nash on most platforms. So whether it's uh you know on Twitter, you know, LinkedIn, um you name it. But you can just find me there.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Okay, great. Well um Adam, last question for you. As you head into 2024, what's top of mind for you with Daffy and what's on the roadmap, what's coming that you're excited about?

Adam Nash: Oh yeah, well you know, we're actually in the thick of things. It turns out that uh people don't give in even amounts throughout the year. There's a real surge in giving in the holiday season. It's almost like everyone does whatever they do on Halloween and they wake up on November 1st and say "I'm gonna be good and I'm gonna give," or maybe it's the holidays, maybe it's the end of the tax year. There's all these reasons that people give. So our big focus on team, we just launched a major feature. Our focus on the team that we're excited about is something we call Daffy Campaigns, um which is an exciting new feature. I mean most of us are familiar with online campaigns, you know raising money for this and that. Most of us are familiar with donor-advised funds are putting money aside for charity. Um for the first time we brought those two things together.

And so it turns out to be very powerful. Anyone with a Daffy account can run a campaign for up to six charities. And it can be a matching campaign. So instead of you writing a check for a few hundred to a charity, instead you can match a few hundred in donations by other people. And you get this simple link that you can send around and share. Um we, we've done a lot of innovative things in the feature. Um you can say what impact... you mentioned this earlier, right? One of the things we heard from people, they want to know the impact of their donations. And so for example, we're running campaigns right now to help with food insecurity for food banks across the Bay Area. Instead of just knowing that you're giving $20 on Daffy Campaigns, you can know that for those $20 you're providing 40 meals for people, people who need them. Wow. And so um, so yeah, so Daffy Campaigns is definitely the story right now. And you can learn more about it of course if you go to Daffy.org. Um and I would encourage everyone to do so because most of us have an organization that matters to us. Our, our kids' school might be building a new computer lab or an after school sports program, or you know, you might belong, even at your comp-, you know companies do their own things for people in their community. Like you mentioned the beaches as a surfer and that sort of thing. Like anything that speaks to you or an organization, we've tried to make that very easy to do as another way that you can leverage your generosity to inspire others to give.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love it. Adam, thanks for building what you created and continuing to evolve how we think about donating and charitable causes that we can get involved with. Uh I for one am going to download the app and certainly going to share that with my family and our friends and see how far it takes us. But um I want to give a big shout out to you for joining and uh want to also thank the listeners for listening, where means world to me you've taken your time to spend with us today. My name is Jake Aaron Villarreal, I'm your host and look forward to catching up with you all on the next episode.

Before we wrap up, I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that have joined to make this podcast possible. And for all the listeners for listening, it means the world to me that you chose to spend your time with us today. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now, but can't wait to connect with you all soon on the next episode. Take care.  

This show is sponsored by Match Relevant, a company that helps venture-backed startups find the best people in the market. And they do it in three simple steps. First, they sit down with founders to understand their story. Second, they tell their story into multiple candidate channels. And third, they schedule interviews within 48 hours. Find us at matchrelevant.com to learn more about how we do it.

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