YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeff Maggioncalda

lines on the record: 102
first: 2015-11-07
most recent: 2015-11-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“A long time That point. So you're still not. No, we're offering the online tool. In 2002, 2003, we had like a $30 million business. We were cash flow break-even. By many accounts, you'd say, yeah, this company is doing pretty well. But I was like, we're not growing fast enough. And it's just too hard.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah We have 10 billion. Hey, From my own personal From A to B. We started in'96, and I would say that I had a very, very strong conviction that we were going to be very successful.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the glimmer kind of came and went and came and went and came and went a lot of times before I really knew new. Well”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, you know, I did not get it perfect for sure. It was something I was always trying to learn more about. But at least intentionally being aware of what your culture is and what your culture is, is what your people basically say that it is. You can't say as a CEO, this is my culture. You ask your people, what's it like to work here? They'll tell you what the culture is. And then if you want it to be different, you got to say, well, how do we have to change as leaders? To create a different environment for the company.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. And then what you do is you kind of say, and of course you want to be explicit about the types of people you're bringing in so that you can reinforce a certain kind of culture. There are certain people who might have the talent, but they just don't have the personality or sort of the way you want it to feel working with them. And so you say, you're not really consistent with our culture. You don't say it out loud, but you're sort of screening people as you interview them. You're like, this is not going to be having you as an exec might not set the kind of tone that we want to. And culture is really tricky, largely because it is such an outgrowth of...”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It doesn't really make much difference. So, my view is no, you got to get the strategy right. And yes, that's definitely not all. You got to execute. And how do you execute? Well, first you get the leadership team in place because if you're, as a CEO, if your people aren't good, you can't go and hire everybody else. I mean, you've got to really get the talent and the tone from the top.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. And I hear a lot of people say, oh, you know, execution beat strategy every day. Well, I would say, well, it kind of depends. If you have a good strategy, then you're totally right. But if you're really executing well on a poor strategy,”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's going to be authentic. People are going to be like, yeah, that's really our culture. Uh huh So, a lot of it really comes. The culture, so the way I usually think about it is, you know, first of all, get the strategy right. And the strategy is really about where do you choose to focus your energy in a way that you can win a big opportunity. And if you win, you can keep winning because you have some advantage that other people can't compete away. And I think if you don't pick your battles properly, you can execute incredibly well. You can have a great team, but you just won't have a valuable business.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, I'd say that it starts with the leadership team. I mean, it's easier if you're just like, well, what's the personality of the leaders? Because if there's a big mismatch between what you want the culture to be and the way that you actually act and the leadership team acts.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“96. So it was right at the beginning. And so people were hungry for this. And we had the VC money. We had a big idea. We had a Nobel Prize winner. We were in Palo Alto.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That exact thing. Back in the day, though, right? So I had raised a lot of money, that was good. The internet was really just ramping up. I think Netscape went public.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there's huge competition, especially the kinds of bills. Here we're sitting in Bloomberg. This is his testament. To how you have to compete for talent. I mean, you have to have really compelling reasons for people to join your company.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, honestly, it wasn't that hard. I didn't think it was. I mean, I'd like to say it was really hard. Nowadays, it's much harder. There's so much money. And people, I think, are realizing the value of talent. So much comment.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Working on something that we think is going to change the world. I mean, it wasn't hard to hire talent when you've got Bill Sharp there.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll tell you what's awesome you're trying to recruit a team of finance people and you're like how'd you like to sit next to Bill Sharp?”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, right. He was also really clear that Jeff, I don't want to run this business. You're going to run it, which means you're going to deal with the headaches. He did say, I want to spend all the time doing the research. And he was involved every day in actually writing the early code, helping us with the algorithms. That was amazing. It was amazing.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he said, you know, one of the most important things about this business is going to be figuring out how to communicate these principles to people so they can understand it. And if you're not able to communicate, we're going to have to be tough. So for him, it was kind of check the box on the math and economics, but really let's make sure we get someone who can solve the hard problem, which is helping people understand it.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What do you know about graphic arts? And I go, well, I used to have a graphic arts business because I used to, I learned how to use Adobe Illustrator back in the day. Way back when, way back”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I couldn't do that, but I was mostly programming sort of Pascal and kind of lightweight stuff. I mean, I'm not really a hacker, but I programmed enough stuff to kind of know the basics. And then he said”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He quickly said, you know, are you smart enough in terms of the economic stuff? But he really wanted to. Do you know how to program? Like, yeah, and like real programming or like.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he spoke at my undergrad graduation. I was an econ major, but I always thought that he was just a magnificent mind. I was like, this guy's super smart. And I happened to think he could, that he was saying a lot of things that could help people. I didn't ever meet him until he interviewed me And I was shaking in my boots. I mean, I'm like, I'm not worthy. But he was really down to earth. It was interesting. He wanted to make sure this says a lot about Bill Sharp.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And you start thinking about it more because you're getting close to retirement. When you've saved all your life, and now the question is how are you going to invest that money, you really want to make sure that you're not screwing something up and at least for that age cohort, talking to someone to make sure like, you know what I'm saying, right? You know what you got the data right? I want to make sure I understand what you're doing. There's just an interest in knowing, all right, someone is accountable and they know how to use these tools and this technology. So I'm not going to get it wrong.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It absolutely is. So, what we found is that at least for baby boomers, where there's a lot of the five trillion and 401k accounts are with people who are older than 50, I think last time I checked, it was 67% of the 401k assets are held by people 50 and older.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we said, well, what if there was an advisor you could talk to anytime you want who could actually manage your portfolio for you? Now, actually what we weren't saying is it's all the same technology. It's an advisor center with Siri 65 license advisors out in Phoenix, they're financial engineers employees, but they're just basically using our software in a call center, but talking to people and making sure those people feel comfortable about the decisions that they're making.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And so this is something that took us a long time to figure out. We started as an education software company. That didn't work at all. Then we went to advice, but the tagline was your personal online advisor. This was in 1998. Your personal online advisor, our whole thing was we didn't want to have our own advisors. They cost too much. Know we talk to customers and they said is it great that you're giving me a tool? I don't know how to use the tool, I think I'm going to misuse the tool.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Keeps acquisition costs low. And because we manage your 401k, you don't need to sign any paperwork, you don't need to move any money, you don't need to figure anything. It's just like, yeah, please do this. I think without that trusted introduction and not having to move money, it gets very difficult. So I know our unit economics quite well, and they were very compelling. It's a very profitable company. I think it would be really, really difficult to do this without some sort of secret sauce on the acquisition side because acquisition costs are huge.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Betterment has a few different distribution channels, including going through RIAs, not through corporate. Our big thing has been going through RIAs. So we last time, and I'm not the company anymore, so I just kind of read the press releases and the earnings reports when they come out. Company now has more than a trillion dollars in 401k plans that have hired them and managing over 115 billion in AUM. So that's a pretty big company. It's the largest independent RIA in the country. And a big part of the success has been making it really easy and safe for an individual to say, yeah, I want you to be my advisor. And by going through the workplace, we get the trusted introduction from the company.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard to say for sure. I mean, I clearly have a lot of biases because I've been in the industry for a long time and obviously we compete. But you know what I think they're doing right is they recognized a really big need, which is that more and more Americans do need help. And there's a lot of inefficiencies and a lot of conflicts and a lot of poor quality when it comes to individual Americans getting advice. And so I think there is a big need. I think that they are also kind of carving up different sorts of spaces. Wellfront is going after kind of the younger millennial. Generally, tech person who made a lot of money, they're focused a lot on tax loss harvesting”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah. I mean, there was no JavaScript. I mean, web servers were brand new. Java didn't even exist yet. And so there was a whole different world out there. And when we first did this, it took about 15 minutes to download our software when Java finally came out. And people were using dial-up modems. So it was kind of a problem. The technology really wasn't there yet when we were starting.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. And what we really did have a sense for, and so I agree with them. I didn't want to kind of take on that headache of becoming an advisor. But the fact of the matter is most people want to know what to do. And kind of, hey, you're getting warmer, you're getting colder, study a little bit of this. Now they're like, they'll just tell me what I should do. What fun should I buy? What fund should I sell? In order to really do a good job with that, you got to be an investment advisor.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And a couple guys at work, there were only five of us, but two of the guys are like, Jeff, this is so stupid. We shouldn't be just doing education. We should become an investment advisor.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the first thing we tried to do is, and I thought it was a pretty It wouldn't be advice, it would stay on this fiduciary safe harbor, and they could do it without worried being worried that would be constituting advice. And our original thought was lesbian education company. Let's actually just give education. Let's not be an advisor. Let's not give advice. And we'll kind of sell as an employee benefit, kind of financial literacy. And so I wrote up a big business plan. This was my big document. I'm excited to go raise money. I go out to Sandhill Road and all the VCs. And they're like, this is a stupid idea, and we're not going to fund an education company. They didn't really say what to do. They're just like, you know, tell me when you get a better idea.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I had to boil down to kind of one thing, I would say hardcore learning and iteration, which sounds a lot like failure. And, you know, if we had given up, it would have been failure, but it was kind of close to failure a lot of times.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A little bit like predicting other things that are stochastic or uncertain where you say, we don't have a perfect idea, but we can put a range around it. If you're all in very, very volatile stocks, a couple stocks, it's going to be a very wide range. This probably goes down to almost zero in a bankruptcy situation. If you're in money market funds or treasuries, it's going to be a very tight range. And anywhere in between, you're going to have a higher sort of expected outcome, but a bigger range depending on how much risk you have in that portfolio. So the monopoly thing was useful because when Bill Sharp said, hey, you know, we're going to be doing a lot of simulation and a lot of optimization. What do you know about that I said, well, I've already kind of used it to my gain.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and so we would already do this for pension funds to kind of get a sense for like, how much is this pension going to be worth 20 years from now? And he wanted to do the same things for individual to answer the basic question, like, are you going to have enough money Well, it's an easy question. It's a pretty hard answer because you don't know what the future holds. It doesn't mean you throw up your hands and you say, I have absolutely no idea.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so that's kind of how you set your portfolio, but then you even have to say how much money are we likely to have 30 years from now if we invest it a certain way? And that's really about simulating, well, what if the markets do well? What if they do poorly? What if interest rates are high or low or inflation does this or that? Or the spread between small cap and mid-cap stocks varies.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the pension side, how much do we have to fund these pensions and how should we invest to have certain probability of being able to pay these pensions when our people all retire?”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so it only helped me get the job by convincing Bill Sharp I knew something about Monte Carlo simulation. Okay. He had been doing this for the defined benefit pension managers for a long time because they're trying to figure out”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that basically gets you. They're going to jail a lot and rolling anything six to nine is pretty good for the oranges.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. You end up in jail. You got 10 spots to free parking. If you play crafts, what number comes up the most? Seven, right? Well, the other two are going to be six and eight, and those are the oranges.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Plus, the rinse that you get if you have a house or whatever, and then you have to look at the cost of building those houses. But I just want to know what's the probability of landing on every space on the board. And turns out with computers, if you have a game with simple rules, even if it's a very complex set of distributions at the end, you just play the game millions of times and you just see like how often did you land there? My wife didn't know I was doing this. I had actually create a little cheat sheet and I was using it to kind of assess the odds that I buy a proper, trade, a property or collections of properties. And it was basically just a sheet that showed the probability of landing on any space. And it turns out certain spaces are way more likely to be landed on than other spaces.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So monopoly is a really fun game. It's mostly about trading, but a lot of it has to do with the probabilities landing on certain spaces. And so, you know, it's a game with pretty simple rules, right? You roll the dice, you roll doubles, you go again, but if you do it three times and you go to jail and then you pull certain cards, you advance to St. Charles, blah, blah, blah. They're very simple rules, but it's really hard to get a distribution of the likelihood that you land on any property. And so I was like, well, look, the value of a property is going to be based on the probability that you land on it.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It seems to have been doing pretty well among the investing public. So I was really kind of stuck because I was like, well, I'm kind of tied up right now. And I talked to my wife, who's PhD in evolutionary biology. She's like, Jeff, you have to do this. This is a once-in-lifetime thing. You have to do this. We'll figure out the money and we'll figure that stuff out later. And so I was like, you're totally right. I mean, how often do you get to work not only with the Nobel Prize winner, but with like a hero of yours? And so I sort of took the plunge, not having any idea what I was going to do.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I said that would be fun to do. I called McKenzie. I said, well, I'll be coming in January. And then it was during this time that I was writing cases that I got this call from Joe Grenfest, who I had worked with previously at a litigation consulting firm. And I was like, Bill Sharp was my hero. It was amazing because when I graduated in 1991, He had received the Nobel Prize the year before, and he was my graduation speaker. And I just thought this guy was the most amazing guy in the world. I mean, I love the elegance of his model. I thought his overall philosophies, I was totally bought into it. Generally speaking, he can't beat the market, so go for low cost. I thought that was great.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was simulates the account. And I had been approached by our professor at the business school, Robert Bergloman. He at the time, I think he still teaches it. He taught a class with Andy Grove, who was at the time the CEO of Intel. On kind of strategy and information technology, and they had no cases on the internet. And so as an undergrad, I was an English and economics major. So I knew about statistics and quant stuff. I knew how to write. And they said, would you be a casewriter and write a bunch of”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so I was at the time I had worked for McKinsey over the summer. I had taken a full-time job. So my wife had spent the signing bonus on new furniture. And we had two kids. We were way in debt. And this big sum of money comes. What did the economists say? When you get a windfall, the propensity to spend is like one. You like just spend it.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, his pursuit. Of sort of the intellectual breakthroughs and his pursuit of doing good in the world definitely trumps his pursuit for financial gain.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He said, Bill, if you really want to make a difference, you got to start a company. Bill was not really interested in starting a company. He's like, look, I want to do something good for the world. I don't really want to charge money for it. And Joe said, if you want people to really promote the idea and create a good product that people can really use, you got to start a company.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do what that site. So he started a website, and back in the days where they used to index popularity, it was actually a pretty popular site. But, you know, among the people using the internet at the time, which were kind of the more actively, technically it was much more of a geek crowd.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, he saw early on that the demographics of the baby boomers and the shift away from defined benefit plans towards 401ks was going to mean a lot of people had a new responsibility to invest, but really didn't get access to very good advice.”
2015-11-07 · Masters in Business · Interview With Jeff Maggioncalda: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source