The consumer debt space is a graveyard of companies with great ideas that got beaten down by the market. TrueAccord stands out as a lone survivor at scale and the only leader. Why is that? Many reasons, one of the major ones is our ability to successfully balance two very different approaches to doing business. This is a note I shared with my team last month.

As we head into 2021 and start investing heavily into [redacted], we also need to continue to reconcile two approaches within our company.

We need a strong Financial Services approach. We need to have appreciation for our clients’ deliberate planning, their risk-averse approach, and their attention to the minutiae of compliance. We need to [redacted]. We need to scale quickly and responsibly.

We need a strong Innovation approach. We need to think from first principles about products, challenge the status quo, ask “why not”. We need to distribute decision making to fast-moving squads, run multiple experiments, talk to our users and find the next 10X or 100X product evolution, without being limited by how things are in the financial system.

We have always combined both approaches to win in our category, and we will need to do so even more in 2021. The problem is these two approaches don’t always agree.

At its best, the Financial Services approach is super professional, attentive to details, and doesn’t miss a beat in servicing. At its worst it is slow moving, risk averse, and defaults to No.

At its best, the Innovation approach is daring, creative, and constantly evolving so its customers are delighted and its competitors never catch up. At its worst it’s reckless, breaks things, and cannot commit.

Winning this market requires that we understand both approaches and use both at their best. Move fast but be context aware. Write the policies but make sure they don’t unduly slow down innovation. Scale without the hiccups. Take calculated risks and pivot if needed. 

It’s not going to be easy, and as CEO it’s one of my top priorities. It will require a lot of good will, coordination, and the understanding that we couldn’t have been, and won’t be, successful without both.

Two approaches, one culture. One company with the capability to think clearly about the problem, and scale it into an unavoidable force.