Adam Nash is the co-founder and CEO at Daffy, a platform that makes it easier to donate to charities and non-profits. Before Daffy, Adam was the President and CEO at Wealthfront, where he scaled the company’s assets under management from $100M to over $4B. Adam has also held leadership and technical roles at Dropbox, LinkedIn, eBay, and Apple.
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In today’s episode, we discuss:
• Why founders should build platforms, not apps
• The importance of “delighting” customers
• How Daffy is disrupting donor-advised-funds
• Lessons on strategy from LinkedIn
• How to think about leadership transitions
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Referenced:
• Andy Rachleff:   / rachleff  
• Bill Gates:   / williamhgates  
• Daffy: https://www.daffy.org/
• Daffy’s 2023 Year in Review: https://www.daffy.org/resources/year-...
• eBay: https://www.ebay.com/
• Jeff Weiner:   / jeffweiner08  
• Reid Hoffman:   / reidhoffman  
• Robinhood: https://robinhood.com/
• Ryan Roslansky:   / ryanroslansky  
• The Innovator’s Dilemma: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dil...
• Tim Cook: https://www.apple.com/leadership/tim-...
• Wealthfront: https://www.wealthfront.com/
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Where to find Adam Nash:
• LinkedIn:   / adamnash  
• Twitter/X:   / adamnash  
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Where to find Brett Berson:
• LinkedIn:   / brett-berson-9986094  
• Twitter/X:   / brettberson  
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Where to find First Round Capital:
• Website: https://firstround.com/
• First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
• Twitter:   / firstround  
• YouTube:    / @firstroundcapital  
• This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast
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Timestamps:
[00:00:00] Introduction
[00:02:08] Why the last 10 years have been less disruptive
[00:06:15] Why we think about luck wrong
[00:08:39] How eBay survived the dot com bubble
[00:14:37] The value of building platforms, not apps
[00:22:18] What made LinkedIn successful
[00:27:31] Good company strategy = good product strategy
[00:30:58] Setting LinkedIn’s strategy in 2009
[00:36:41] Why KaChing didn’t work
[00:40:56] Pivoting to Wealthfront
[00:43:23] Universal lesson on customer acquisition
[00:45:11] Treating growth like a product problem
[00:49:01] Advice on successful leadership transitions
[00:54:20] How to delegate moral authority
[01:00:24] The problem with metrics and customer requests
[01:06:41] Apple’s approach to “delighting” customers
[01:09:16] The 70/20/10 rule you’ve never heard about
[01:10:29] How Daffy ships “delight features”