Building products that delight customers | Adam Nash (Daffy, Wealthfront, LinkedIn, eBay, Apple‪)‬ In Depth

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: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachleff/


Bill Gates: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamhgates/


Daffy: https://www.daffy.org/


Daffy’s 2023 Year in Review: https://www.daffy.org/resources/year-in-review-2023


eBay: https://www.ebay.com/


Jeff Weiner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffweiner08/


Reid Hoffman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman/


Robinhood: https://robinhood.com/


Ryan Roslansky: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanroslansky/


The Innovator’s Dilemma: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Clayton-M-Christensen/dp/0062060244


Tim Cook: https://www.apple.com/leadership/tim-cook/


Wealthfront: https://www.wealthfront.com/


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Where to find Adam Nash:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamnash/


Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/adamnash


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Where to find Brett Berson:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/


Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson


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Where to find First Round Capital:

Website: https://firstround.com/


First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/


Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround


YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital


This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast


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Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(02:08) Why the last 10 years have been less disruptive
(06:15) Why we think about luck wrong
(08:39) How eBay survived the dot com bubble
(14:37) The value of building platforms, not apps
(22:18) What made LinkedIn successful
(27:31) Good company strategy = good product strategy
(30:58) Setting LinkedIn’s strategy in 2009
(36:41) Why KaChing didn’t work
(40:56) Pivoting to Wealthfront
(43:23) Universal lesson on customer acquisition
(45:11) Treating growth like a product problem
(49:01) Advice on successful leadership transitions
(54:20) How to delegate moral authority
(60:24) The problem with metrics and customer requests
(66:41) Apple’s approach to “delighting” customers
(69:16) The 70/20/10 rule you’ve never heard about
(70:29) How Daffy ships “delight features”