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How Wealthsimple grew to more than $2 billion in assets in less than 4 years

Founder and CEO Mike Katchen on the crucial balance between steady growth and creative innovation when scaling a financial services company.

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Mike Katchen, CEO, Wealthsimple
Mike Katchen, CEO, Wealthsimple
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#ScaleStrategy is produced by DX Journal and OneEleven. This editorial series delivers insights, advice, and practical recommendations to innovative and disruptive entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs. Our in-depth Q&A with Mike Katchen can be found here.

It’s February 2017 and Wealthsimple is woefully unprepared for tax season.

“We didn’t anticipate this huge spike,” says Mike Katchen, Co-Founder and CEO, Wealthsimple, which got its start at OneEleven. “The industry talks about taxes being super seasonal and it’s the busy time of year, but we never experienced that before. During last year’s tax season, we were wholly under-resourced on our customer support team, which led to delays. People were working 120-hour weeks for a couple of months straight to try and dig our way out of that hole.”

Since its launch in September 2014 with 3 people, Wealthsimple has grown to over $2B in assets under management, 175 employees, and raised $165 million in capital from Power Financial Group. In 2018, it landed on the 2018 Narwhal list, a University of Toronto report that highlights Canada’s 50 most financially attractive tech companies. The story of its scale up is filled with moments of challenge where Katchen and the Wealthsimple team learned on the fly how to best balance steady, consistent growth with innovative leaps forward.

For tax season this year, Katchen wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. It was time to innovate.

“Rather than hiring an army of customer service people, our technology team tried to figure out if there was software we could build that would both support our customer support resources as well as eliminate the need for customers to call in,” says Katchen.

It worked. In 2017, there were more than 35,000 interactions in the month leading up to the RRSP deadline. In 2018, despite tripling their customer base, there was only 5,000 more interactions and no additional customer service people. “People were working harder than they normally worked, but nowhere near 100-hour weeks and it was a very manageable process,” he says.  

Gardening vs Planting

Tax season 2017 is a stark reminder for Katchen that Wealthsimple must ensure it is two things: robust and scalable.

“Historically, we like to do a lot of things,” he says. “We get really excited about big ideas and don’t always see the ideas all the way through.” Katchen realized that they needed to be selective in what they pursue because “real technical debt accumulates if you build things you’re not going to commit to, and it becomes more difficult to manage as you scale.”

In the last year, Wealthsimple has refined their product planning process to better activate the great ideas within their team. Now anyone in the company can pitch their ideas, but with a process in place to determine what actually gets built and what gets killed.

In an effort to balance growth with innovation, Katchen recently introduced a new framework for thinking about how teams can be more disciplined about allocating resources: “gardening” and “planting”. Gardening is about tending to the current business. Planting is about new ideas.

Katchen says 75 percent of team effort is now spent on gardening in order to grow their market share, optimize on delivering a better experience to customers, and to continue improve the business fundamentals.

The other 25 percent is reserved for planting new ideas to support Wealthsimple’s much bigger aspirations.

We want to build a business around the world that truly transforms the landscape of financial services. And to do that requires some big bets,” he says.

Whether gardening or planting, Wealthsimple teams are empowered to build processes and develop solutions to get work done. Plus, some of Katchen’s favourite moments are when his team accomplishes something he has no involvement in.

“The ethos of building a team is to find people who are way smarter than you,” he says. “If I feel the need to exercise control, then I’ve hired the wrong people. If I am exercising control over people who are much smarter than me, then I am not letting them reach their potential and I’ll never know what they could possibly bring to the table. I want the company to do great things that I have nothing to do with.”

Power of Transparency

One key way Katchen supports his team to get work done is with practices that promote and support transparency.

Consider the company’s long-standing weekly all-hands meetings; not only does everyone on the team get to hear at the same time how the business is doing that week, along with priorities and challenges, each of the members of the leadership team also take turn leading the meeting. This allows for different perspectives to be openly shared.  

Another example is a practice from within the weekly meetings called FUD (which stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt). The practice invites anyone in the company to publicly or anonymously share an “an existential concern” — aka a fear, uncertainty or doubt — that they have about the business. Katchen was inspired to adopt FUD by Stripe and believes it re-enforces that it’s okay to have tough conversations at the company.

The last transparency practice is a bit unorthodox: Katchen makes Board documents accessible to the whole company. Again inspired by Stripe, Katchen says that when smart people are given access to information, they make better decisions. Katchen would much rather err on the side of transparency than hiding things from people, or labelling documents “privileged information.” The only thing he removes is highly sensitive content such as compensation, but company financials are available to any employee who wants to see them.

As a first-time entrepreneur Katchen readily admits that Wealthsimple has more work to do around building a scalable process. “[Good process is] something you can’t even see. It’s just a way of operating that makes everyone better, but not something you pay attention to or gets in the way of work,” he says.

As he continues to grow Wealthsimple, Katchen welcomes the unforeseen challenges and remains committed to his larger vision.

“I’m on a personal mission to build a Canadian champion globally. I want to see more companies in Canada take on the world and build long-lasting global institutions,” he says. “The only thing that’s true is that if you’re scaling a business, every six months it’s going to be a different business. In order for you to be successful in your role, you just have to keep learning and stay one step ahead of where the business needs to be at the next journey.”

Up next: Learn more about Wealthsimple’s ScaleStrategy story in our Q&A with CEO Mike Katchen

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How businesses can protect themselves from the rising threat of deepfakes

Dive into the world of deepfakes and explore the risks, strategies and insights to fortify your organization’s defences

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In Billy Joel’s latest video for the just-released song Turn the Lights Back On, it features him in several deepfakes, singing the tune as himself, but decades younger. The technology has advanced to the extent that it’s difficult to distinguish between that of a fake 30-year-old Joel, and the real 75-year-old today.

This is where tech is being used for good. But when it’s used with bad intent, it can spell disaster. In mid-February, a report showed a clerk at a Hong Kong multinational who was hoodwinked by a deepfake impersonating senior executives in a video, resulting in a $35 million theft.

Deepfake technology, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), is capable of creating highly realistic fake videos, images, or audio recordings. In just a few years, these digital manipulations have become so sophisticated that they can convincingly depict people saying or doing things that they never actually did. In little time, the tech will become readily available to the layperson, who’ll require few programming skills.

Legislators are taking note

In the US, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a ban on those who impersonate others using deepfakes — the greatest concern being how it can be used to fool consumers. The Feb. 16 ban further noted that an increasing number of complaints have been filed from “impersonation-based fraud.”

A Financial Post article outlined that Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner, Patricia Kosseim, says she feels “a sense of urgency” to act on artificial intelligence as the technology improves. “Malicious actors have found ways to synthetically mimic executive’s voices down to their exact tone and accent, duping employees into thinking their boss is asking them to transfer funds to a perpetrator’s account,” the report said. Ontario’s Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence Framework, for which she consults, aims to set guides on the public sector use of AI.

In a recent Microsoft blog, the company stated their plan is to work with the tech industry and government to foster a safer digital ecosystem and tackle the challenges posed by AI abuse collectively. The company also said it’s already taking preventative steps, such as “ongoing red team analysis, preemptive classifiers, the blocking of abusive prompts, automated testing, and rapid bans of users who abuse the system” as well as using watermarks and metadata.

That prevention will also include enhancing public understanding of the risks associated with deepfakes and how to distinguish between legitimate and manipulated content.

Cybercriminals are also using deepfakes to apply for remote jobs. The scam starts by posting fake job listings to collect information from the candidates, then uses deepfake video technology during remote interviews to steal data or unleash ransomware. More than 16,000 people reported that they were victims of this scam to the FBI in 2020. In the US, this kind of fraud has resulted in a loss of more than $3 billion USD. Where possible, they recommend job interviews should be in person to avoid these threats.

Catching fakes in the workplace

There are detector programs, but they’re not flawless. 

When engineers at the Canadian company Dessa first tested a deepfake detector that was built using Google’s synthetic videos, they found it failed more than 40% of the time. The Seattle Times noted that the problem in question was eventually fixed, and it comes down to the fact that “a detector is only as good as the data used to train it.” But, because the tech is advancing so rapidly, detection will require constant reinvention.

There are other detection services, often tracing blood flow in the face, or errant eye movements, but these might lose steam once the hackers figure out what sends up red flags.

“As deepfake technology becomes more widespread and accessible, it will become increasingly difficult to trust the authenticity of digital content,” noted Javed Khan, owner of Ontario-based marketing firm EMpression. He said a focus of the business is to monitor upcoming trends in tech and share the ideas in a simple way to entrepreneurs and small business owners.

To preempt deepfake problems in the workplace, he recommended regular training sessions for employees. A good starting point, he said, would be to test them on MIT’s eight ways the layperson can try to discern a deepfake on their own, ranging from unusual blinking, smooth skin, and lighting.

Businesses should proactively communicate through newsletters, social media posts, industry forums, and workshops, about the risks associated with deepfake manipulation, he told DX Journal, to “stay updated on emerging threats and best practices.”

To keep ahead of any possible attacks, he said companies should establish protocols for “responding swiftly” to potential deepfake attacks, including issuing public statements or corrective actions.

How can a deepfake attack impact business?

The potential to malign a company’s reputation with a single deepfake should not be underestimated.

“Deepfakes could be racist. It could be sexist. It doesn’t matter — by the time it gets known that it’s fake, the damage could be already done. And this is the problem,” said Alan Smithson, co-founder of Mississauga-based MetaVRse and investor at Your Director AI.

“Building a brand is hard, and then it can be destroyed in a second,” Smithson told DX Journal. “The technology is getting so good, so cheap, so fast, that the power of this is in everybody’s hands now.”

One of the possible solutions is for businesses to have a code word when communicating over video as a way to determine who’s real and who’s not. But Smithson cautioned that the word shouldn’t be shared around cell phones or computers because “we don’t know what devices are listening to us.”

He said governments and companies will need to employ blockchain or watermarks to identify fraudulent messages. “Otherwise, this is gonna get crazy,” he added, noting that Sora — the new AI text to video program — is “mind-blowingly good” and in another two years could be “indistinguishable from anything we create as humans.”

“Maybe the governments will step in and punish them harshly enough that it will just be so unreasonable to use these technologies for bad,” he continued. And yet, he lamented that many foreign actors in enemy countries would not be deterred by one country’s law. It’s one downside he said will always be a sticking point.

It would appear that for now, two defence mechanisms are the saving grace to the growing threat posed by deepfakes: legal and regulatory responses, and continuous vigilance and adaptation to mitigate risks. The question remains, however, whether safety will keep up with the speed of innovation.

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Small banks emerge as the top source for small business financing

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Findbusinesses4sale used the Fed's Small Business Credit Survey data to compare approval rates among small business financing options.
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When it comes to borrowing money, small businesses are most likely to apply at large banks. But they often find success with their counterparts in the finance world: small banks.

Small banks—or those with less than $10 billion in total assets—comprise most of the banks in the U.S., much like small businesses account for nearly all U.S. businesses. More than 80% of small businesses that applied for financing at small banks were at least partially approved in 2022, according to data from the Fed’s most recent survey of small business employers. However, only 30% of small businesses applied at small banks when they sought financing.

About 2 in 5 small business employers applied for some traditional financing in 2022. Most needed the money to meet operating expenses, while a little over half sought cash to expand their operations.

Findbusinesses4sale used the Fed’s Small Business Credit Survey data to compare approval rates among small business financing sources, taking a closer look at their differences. Approval rates are based on applications for loans, credit, and cash advances at the various institution types. The Fed report was released in March 2023 based on a 2022 survey of nearly 8,000 small businesses with employees.


A bar chart shows the share of small business applicants at least partially approved for loan requests, separated by the type of source applied to.

Findbusinesses4sale

Small banks surpass online lenders, finance companies in approval rates for small business applicants

Also known as community banks, small banks are well-equipped to lend to small businesses because of their intimate knowledge of local economies. Small businesses are often young, with short histories, small operations, little collateral, and unproven financial success. These factors can make it difficult for founders to qualify for credit and loans—they’re simply a riskier investment for a funder to take on.

Small banks’ decision-makers live within the same areas where they grant loans, and they have insight into how certain businesses could fare within their neighborhoods. That makes it easier for them to analyze the risk of lending to small businesses and, in turn, decide whether to approve their applications. At least 3 in 5 (61%) applicants considered to be a medium or high credit risk were approved for financing at small banks; at large banks, not even half (45%) of these riskier applicants were approved.

By operating across smaller locales, community bank operators also have the opportunity to forge stronger relationships with business founders. The Fed survey shows that about 2 in 3 small businesses that applied for financing with these banks did so because of an existing relationship. Many of these relationships were forged in the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic, when community banks came through for small businesses with relief funds, including more intensive support in understanding and completing complex applications.

Small firms applying to other sources, such as online lenders and finance companies, are most often motivated by making quick decisions and perceiving that they have a higher chance of being approved. That was the case five years ago, but approval rates for both sources lagged behind small banks in 2022. Indeed, approval rates at both have fallen significantly since 2019, while approvals at small banks have grown.

Both online lenders and finance companies still approve slightly higher shares of applicants with medium to high credit risks compared to small banks, but only by a few percentage points. At the same time, many more borrowers reported dissatisfaction and challenges working with these lenders, including high interest rates and unfavorable repayment terms.

On the other hand, the vast majority of borrowers from small banks were happy with their experience—much more than those who borrowed from any other type of lender.

Story editing by Ashleigh Graf. Copy editing by Paris Close. Photo selection by Ania Antecka.

This story originally appeared on Findbusinesses4sale and was produced and
distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.

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The new reality of how VR can change how we work

It’s not just for gaming — from saving lives to training remote staff, here’s how virtual reality is changing the game for businesses

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Until a few weeks ago, you might have thought that “virtual reality” and its cousin “augmented reality” were fads that had come and gone. At the peak of the last frenzy around the technology, the company formerly known as Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021, as a sign of how determined founder Mark Zuckerberg was to create a VR “metaverse,” complete with cartoon avatars (who for some reason had no legs — they’ve got legs now, but there are some restrictions on how they work).

Meta has since spent more than $36 billion on metaverse research and development, but so far has relatively little to show for it. Meta has sold about 20 million of its Quest VR headsets so far, but according to some reports, not many people are spending a lot of time in the metaverse. And a lack of legs for your avatar probably isn’t the main reason. No doubt many were wondering: What are we supposed to be doing in here?

The evolution of virtual reality

Things changed fairly dramatically in June, however, when Apple demoed its Vision Pro headset, and then in early February when they were finally available for sale. At $3,499 US, the device is definitely not for the average consumer, but using it has changed the way some think about virtual reality, or the “metaverse,” or whatever we choose to call it.

Some of the enhancements that Apple has come up with for the VR headset experience have convinced Vision Pro true believers that we are either at or close to the same kind of inflection point that we saw after the release of the original iPhone in 2007.Others, however, aren’t so sure we are there yet.

The metaverse sounds like a place where you bump into giant dinosaur avatars or play virtual tennis, but ‘spatial computing’ puts the focus on using a VR headset to enhance what users already do on their computers. Some users generate multiple virtual screens that hang in the air in front of them, allowing them to walk around their homes or offices and always have their virtual desktop in front of them.

VR fans are excited about the prospect of watching a movie on what looks like a 100-foot-wide TV screen hanging in the air in front of them, or playing a video game. But what about work-related uses of a headset like the Vision Pro? 

Innovating health care with VR technology

One of the most obvious applications is in medicine, where doctors are already using remote viewing software to perform checkups or even operations. At Cambridge University, game designers and cancer researchers have teamed up to make it easier to see cancer cells and distinguish between different kinds.

Heads-up displays and other similar kinds of technology are already in use in aerospace engineering and other fields, because they allow workers to see a wiring diagram or schematic while working to repair it. VR headsets could make such tasks even easier, by making those diagrams or schematics even larger, and superimposing them on the real thing. The same kind of process could work for digital scans of a patient during an operation.

Using virtual reality, patients and doctors could also do remote consultations more easily, allowing patients to describe visually what is happening with them, and giving health professionals the ability to offer tips and direct recommendations in a visual way. 

This would not only help with providing care to people who live in remote areas, but could also help when there is a language barrier between doctor and patient. 

Impacting industry worldwide

One technology consulting firm writes that using a Vision Pro or other VR headset to streamline assembly and quality control in maintenance tasks. Overlaying diagrams, 3D models, and other digital information onto an object in real time could enable “more efficient and error-free assembly processes,” by providing visual cues, step-by-step guidance, and real-time feedback. 

In addition to these kinds of uses, virtual reality could also be used for remote onboarding for new staff in a variety of different roles, by allowing them to move around and practice training tasks in a virtual environment.

Some technology watchers believe that the retail industry could be transformed by virtual reality as well. Millions of consumers have become used to buying online, but some categories such as clothing and furniture have lagged, in part because it is difficult to tell what a piece of clothing might look like once you are wearing it, or what that chair will look like in your home. But VR promises the kind of immersive experience where that becomes possible.

While many consumers may see this technology only as an avenue for gaming and entertainment, it’s already being leveraged by businesses in manufacturing, health care and workforce development. Even in 2020, 91 per cent of businesses surveyed by TechRepublic either used or planned to adopt VR or AR technology — and as these technological advances continue, adoption is likely to keep ramping up.

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