You've never had imposter syndrome? Is that me? No, I haven't.
You came up to me the other day like, 'Have you ever had imposter syndrome? I've heard about it. It's so unfamiliar to me.'
Welcome to Everything's FinTech everybody. My name is Zach Anderson Pettit, VP Fintech Strategy here at Money2020. Mickey, who are you and who are these folks? I'll let you just kind of take it from here.
I'm Mickey. I'm part of the content team at Money2020. And today we are joined by Ali and Bianca, the CEO, co-founder, founder, is it the founder of bunq?
Founder. CEO, unfortunately.
And the chief strategy officer of bunq. How are we doing, guys?
Good. I'm very excited to be here. This is the first time we're doing something like this together.
It's our first time together. So, thank you for having us.
Oh, is this the first time?
Yeah. We don't know what's going to happen. Maybe crazy.
Really boring. We're just really fun.
All right. How could this be boring?
You're on the edge of your seat. Find out how it can be boring. Coming up next, talking of first times, uh, so how long? Transition. When did you guys first meet? Let's start with that. Let's go to you, Bianca. What was the first time you met, Ali?
Well, I actually joined bunq just after we launched in 2016. That was the first time that we met. I joined bunq as customer support, so answering user questions.
And that's where it all started. I think strategy officers.
That's a very natural trajectory.
Atypical trajectory indeed. I bunq it is by the way.
The example right here with us.
Yeah. I don't really remember the first moment though we met. Do you?
I think you were reporting to Yasper.
Yasper. At bunq, we have this thing where we call everyone with their Slack handle, which is also cool because you never really know whether it's a he or she or where they're from, and it allows for more objective assessment of people. So anyway, Yp is a guy—his name is Yasper. Hi Yasper if you're listening. And he hired Bianca, one of his best decisions ever. Bianca just rocked it from day one. In customer support, she was doing like 40% of all the tickets by herself. I don't know what the other guys were doing.
Yeah. And I think what defines Bianca is that she always understands and takes the angle of the user, and obviously that's very important at bunq. Next to her incredible intelligence and drive, that's probably the most important reason why she has grown and gone through that trajectory.
Bianca's not mad about this interview anymore.
Yeah, there you go. That's all you needed.
So, interesting. But how—clearly 40% of things along those lines, you stood out. But how did that trajectory actually go from A to Z?
I think one of the great things about bunq is that we don't look at your background—your experience, your passport, your degree, anything. We look at your ability to solve a problem. I don't know what year it was, but we had a bunq update in a theater where we announced new features. I remember Ali coming to me saying, 'I need a press release for tonight.' I was in customer support at the time, lead customer support. I said, 'You need a what?' He said, 'Yeah, you can do that.' I wrote something which was quite poor because I'd never written a press release. We went back and forth until we had a press release, and then he said, 'I guess you're PR now.' That's how my entire trajectory went: 'Can you solve a problem? Cool. Do it.' Then a new problem. Solve that one. All the way up to here.
Makes sense. How big was the company at that point, employee count wise?
Okay. So still a true startup, wearing a lot of hats you didn't even know you were going to wear when you woke up that morning.
Picked them up anyway. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. So you got a lot of hats. Ali, when you first met Bianca, what was your first impression? Was it from the beginning you were like, 'Okay, I see the talent'?
That's actually really funny because I don't think we were particularly impressed with each other.
Bianca used to work at an incumbent bank before. There's the ABN girl. When we started, we wanted people outside the industry for fresh views and genuine care for our users. I couldn't understand how someone could be compassionate with users while working at an incumbent bank during the financial crisis. But I was wrong. Yasper made a great call, and Bianca did all the hard work. Now I don't have to so much anymore. Thank you.
Love it. The context he was missing is that I worked for eight months at the same bank—I wasn't ingrained in their culture. I joined after my studies because they were looking for people who spoke multiple languages. I always knew it wasn't the place for me. While working there, we had daily stand-ups where we'd go through the news. One day, they were talking about bunq, this new bank built by techies, and they were all laughing, 'They're never going to make it.' After the meeting, I applied right there while working at the traditional bank, and two weeks later I joined bunq.
Wow. We move fast in all aspects. But you said at the beginning, when Ali said he was unsure about you, it was also the same for you, right?
I think we weren't particularly impressed, but not in a bad way. We both showed our true selves. Once we started showing each other things, it clicked. That defines bunkers. From the outside, Victor, a long-term employee, always tells me, 'Ali, you still think you're just Ali, right?' I'm like, 'Yeah, dude. I'm just Ali.' I don't care. Most people at bunq are like that. We're merit based. Nobody cares about background or fancy papers. All we care about is a laser focus on our users and solving their problems. If you're good at that, there's a place for you. Many people, especially those hired in the first couple of years, have that thinking. So it's completely logical for Bianca to look at me and say, 'I don't know this guy. You founded this bank, see if I care.' It's like, 'Okay, can you fix this?' I love that attitude.
Oh, you're looking at me now.
I thought there was something to add, but I can go if you want.
You feel like you have a direction. Keep going.
I was taking it in. I do have a number of questions. I can jump in. It's been a long few days, guys.
Oh, we're all swearing now.
Oh, yeah. Definitely feel comfortable. Swear. It seems as though you two are quite close now. Do you butt heads to get to the right decision? Do you tend to agree often? What is the relationship at this point today?
We used to butt heads. Now we're at a state where everybody is more mature. We can disagree and still move forward. Neither of us has the energy for a tug of war. It's not just us—it's me with other people and Bianca with other people. When we started, there was a lot of energy. Every little thing was debated. Now we're more pragmatic. You see it this way, I see it that way. Are you sure you took this into account? Yes. Okay, let's do that. Fine. Next. The scale of bunq is too big now to stand still on certain decisions for too long.
Is it almost like whoever is more passionate about that specific thing?
Arguments always win. They won in the old days, they win in the new days. It's just that in the old days, both parties would do their utmost to come up with the most possible amount of arguments. But I also learned from Ali that especially as stakes get higher, there's no perfect decision. We sometimes disagree on content, not on who has an idea, and then we decide, 'Okay, we're going to try your thing now. Let's move forward.'
I want to go back to hiring really quick. It sounds like bunkers have a strong culture. As you scale, how do you continue to find that unique kind of wild human who's probably going to run through walls? It sounds like a lot of the people you're looking for may one day end up being founders.
