In this episode of 'Tame the Mobile Beast,' host Tom Butta sits down with Adam Nash, CEO and Co-founder of Daffy, to delve into the inspiration and growth behind this innovative financial platform aimed at enhancing charitable giving.
In this episode of 'Tame the Mobile Beast,' host Tom Butta sits down with Adam Nash, CEO and Co-founder of Daffy, to delve into the inspiration and growth behind this innovative financial platform aimed at enhancing charitable giving.
Adam reveals how Daffy is reimagining philanthropy by tackling two critical challenges that often prevent people from giving: financial uncertainty and choice paralysis. By allowing users to set aside money for charitable causes proactively, Daffy makes it easier for people to meet their philanthropic goals without the usual stress and guilt associated with last minute charitable contributions.
The conversation also touches on the emotional connections people have with their charitable activities, emphasizing how understanding these human insights can considerably improve product design and user experience. Adam’s broader vision for Daffy extends beyond a simple donation platform. He sees it as a communal space where individuals can connect, inspire each other, and amplify their collective impact.
For anyone interested in the intersection of technology, personal finance, and philanthropy, this episode offers a rich exploration of how modern solutions can make giving both simpler and more meaningful.
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Guest Quote
“ 60M [American] households give to charity every year. It's more than half a trillion dollars a year, about 2% of GDP. And yet it had been underinvested in because really people just focused on the act of donating versus the more fundamental goal people had. And so we really started tackling this idea of what if we built an app like that, used all this modern technology, all these capabilities, and made it very easy for people to automatically put aside money every month so that when they want to give, they have that money.” – Adam Nash
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Time Stamps
01:07 Meet Adam Nash, CEO of Daffy
01:39 The concept of giving and Daffy's mission
05:47 The birth of Daffy
08:24 Designing for human emotions
10:57 The role of technology in giving
15:29 The story behind Daffy's name
18:12 Adam Nash's personal journey and passion
23:11 Connecting people through giving
25:57 How to amplify impact
29:05 Understanding and engaging members
33:14 The power of early evangelists
37:56 Rapid Fire Questions
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Links
[00:00:00] Adam Nash: There are millions of nonprofits out there, and they do want to raise money, but they also need volunteers. They need board members. They have events. They have all these reasons they need to connect with people who care about their cause and care about the organization. And by the way, it turns out people who give also care about other things.
[00:00:19] They want to know what their friends and colleagues are donating to. They volunteer together. Families do things together. My real dream is that Daffy becomes more and more of a place where people find each other and commonality around the causes and organizations they support. The organizations find people and that they start using the platform more and more to connect with this underlying base platform, which is that these aren't just people who are talking about things.
[00:00:45] They're putting money towards them.
[00:00:49] Voiceover: Welcome to Tame the Mobile Beast. Just everything you need to capture customer value. Here's your host, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Airship, Tom Butta.
[00:01:04] Tom Butta: Welcome to another episode of Tame the Mobile Beast. I'm your host, Tom Butta, and today we are joined by Adam Nash. Adam is currently the CEO and Co Founder of Daffy. Which is the modern financial platform for giving. Adam's going to share his experiences of founding and growing Daffy, but Adam has deep experience in the FinTech industry and can probably talk about many things as well as other.
[00:01:29] You know, significant computing companies that have really changed our lives. Adam, welcome to the show.
[00:01:35] Adam Nash: That's awesome. Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here.
[00:01:38] Tom Butta: Great. So I want to introduce a concept, maybe just out of the gate here. We often experience struggles, um, both in life, but especially in business that seem like really big ones.
[00:01:50] They almost feel like a beast, you know, as the expression goes. And it was there one particular challenge that you had regarding. Bringing this idea of giving to life.
[00:02:03] Adam Nash: The benefit of working on something like giving is that, you know, there are some markets, some products, we are trying to convince people to do something new, something they haven't done before, something very novel.
[00:02:16] And that's just not true for giving. And in fact, a lot of the research and a lot of the early work that I did before even raising 1 to start Daffy or, you know, any work on the product, it was I was just talking to people about how they feel about giving and it turns out giving is very important to people.
[00:02:33] It's been important to people for thousands of years, right? It's, it's for a lot of people, this is not just something they do financially. It's part of how they want to live their lives as a moral and ethical person. Parents want to teach their children about giving. My children went to a school where every Friday the kids would bring in spare change and they'd put it in a little bank.
[00:02:53] And once a quarter they would vote on what non profit local charity to give the money to. And so when you're dealing with, with a need like that, that, that, that goes beyond just the rational, but it's an emotional thing. It's a, it's an identity thing. You know, from a marketing standpoint or from a product standpoint, it's kind of a playground, right?
[00:03:15] Because what you really have to do is, is listen to people and how they, what are they happy with? What are they unhappy with? Where are they fulfilled? Where are they unfulfilled? And to me, the best inspirations for product and distribution come from those very human insights. And so, you know, in the midst of the pandemic, you know, that's when Daffy was founded, right?
[00:03:34] In 2020, um, I was meeting my co founder in my backyard, keeping distance and that sort of thing. But I started doing these Zooms with people to find out about their giving, and it was really interesting. And just to summarize it, because you don't want to hear the entire war story, but you know, I had dozens of these conversations, people, different stages of life, different walks of life, different geographies.
[00:03:58] And, you know, there's always disappointments. It turns out, you know, one of the questions I would ask people is how much should people give to charity? And it turns out that for most people, they don't agree. Like, I wish I could tell you that there's like one or two answers, but it turns out you asked 25 people.
[00:04:14] You know, how much people should give to charity? You don't get 25 answers, but you get like 20, a lot of answers. And so there wasn't a lot to build a product or an offering around there. But the real aha moment for me was on my third question, where I asked people how much they personally gave to charity last year.
[00:04:33] And when you unpacked it, what you heard from people was that whatever they thought you should give to charity every year. They didn't meet their own goal and they were not happy about it, right? They thought there was some amount that they should give in different situations. But they didn't have time for it.
[00:04:51] It was always a, um, you know, well, oh, there's work. There's their family. There's personal life. There's external events. There's all these different things that happen. And it turns out that for most people, they're reactive when it comes to their giving. They give when they're asked. And that's when the light bulb went off, where I said, well, wait, where have I heard this problem before?
[00:05:11] You know, I teach a class at Stanford, behavioral finance for engineers. And one of the things you learn with financial goals, I mean, how many people would save for retirement if that money didn't just come out of their paycheck? If you only wrote a check into your retirement account, every time someone asked,
[00:05:26] Tom Butta: yeah, exactly.
[00:05:27] Adam Nash: And so the idea, you know, I'd been on the board of this company, Acorns, for about six years. And Acorns is an amazing company. A simple app started with just helping people save a little bit of extra money by rounding up their purchases, right? Their spare change. Now millions of people. Pay acorns every month to help them lead a healthier financial life.
[00:05:47] And I said, wow, if you can do that for goals like saving and investing, why can't we do that for giving? And that's really where Daffy was born was taking this important thing. People thought it was important. They did American 60 million households give to charity every year. It's more than half a trillion dollars a year.
[00:06:06] I'm really an unbelievable number. It's, it's, it's about 2 percent of GDP. I mean, it's bigger than a lot of sectors that we talk about all the time. And yet it had been underinvested in because really people just focused on the act of donating versus the more fundamental goal people had, which is. No, no, no, this is important to me.
[00:06:25] It's not something I'm doing once, you know, people who give to their church or synagogue or to a national cause or their kid's school, they give every year. And so we really started tackling this idea of what if we built an app like that, used all this modern technology, all these capabilities, and made it very easy for people to say, Oh, well, I like to give this amount per year.
[00:06:45] These are the organizations I give it to. And we just help them automatically put aside money every month so that when they want to give, they have that money.
[00:06:53] Tom Butta: So let me just play a couple of things back. First of all, I think what you've talked about both in your experience at Acorns, but also with your experience here in Daffy is by asking people these types of questions, you've actually tapped into not just what they think logically should happen, but what they feel emotionally.
[00:07:12] People emotionally just know they probably should be saving more. Right. We should be saving more. There's a lot of reasons why, but they feel there's a guilt, right? There's a, there's a worry even. And then as it relates to giving, I think you've really tapped into a fundamental human, right, condition. You know, we, I think are wired to be a community and in some ways, you know, giving connects us with others who we could help and I think we generally I mean, fundamentally,
[00:07:45] Adam Nash: well, yeah, I think, um, and actually you're hitting something that I just believe in deeply through my career in both technology product, you know, building businesses is you have to go to that level deeper.
[00:07:56] I know data is invoke. I love data. I'm well known in the industry for being a very data focused data centric type of product leader. I've done growth, right? You're, you're, you're checking percentages, clicks, AB testing, all this. But. I'll be the first to tell you that despite all that experience and all the success you can have using data, data almost always just gives you correlation.
[00:08:18] These things seem to happen. It really doesn't tell you why. In most situations. And smart people can sometimes intuitively figure it out, but I've had a lot of success with my teams over the years of pushing them to actually talk about those human emotions. Because very often, the why Is located there.
[00:08:38] When you talk about basic best practices, understanding the market segments, you know, who is this product for? Um, the why is very often getting inside how they framed their lives. Why do they think it's important? What does success look like for them? And how does it feel to them? How does failure feel? I mean, you know, when I was at LinkedIn and we're doing these products to help people with their career, it was a lesson I learned late, a few years into my career at LinkedIn.
[00:09:04] You know, I was a VP of product. But encouraging people to really talk about those emotions. And we got to some very powerful points. I called it finding the heat. And it can be both positive and negative, right? The heat around applying for a job, for example, It became very obvious as you talked to people, the negative emotion was fear, right?
[00:09:25] There's this anxiety, uh, they won't understand my resume. They don't understand what I did here. I'm not connected. I'm not from a, the best family. I didn't go to prestige school. I didn't there were all these anxieties people had about their reputation that made them feel like, Some people wouldn't even apply for a job because they talked themselves out of it.
[00:09:44] Right, right, right. Whereas the positive emotions were all about hope. My life will be different if I get this job, more money, I can buy a house, I can get married, my parents will be proud of me, I don't know, like whatever, you know, whatever the motivation is. But it was so powerful because once you know that, you give that to a talented team of designers and engineers, all of a sudden, then They inspire, they say, Oh, we can make it when people click this button that they feel like they're connected to the job that they're, I would hire this person.
[00:10:16] I look good. This is great. And you can, you can dampen down those fears and you can amplify the hope of what is possible if they get this job or what careers might look like. And then the best part, of course, Is you can encourage them or actually give them the opportunity to do something. And so many people, granted, I, you know, I, I've built my career on, you know, the web and information, and I am a big believer in giving people information, but you know, more powerful than information is the ability to do something.
[00:10:47] And when I think about Daffy around giving, it has all those same elements, right? There are many reasons people give and their feelings. And if you know them, you can design interfaces for that. Most donor advised funds on the market today, these incumbents who have huge number of customers, billions of dollars.
[00:11:04] They look and feel like bank accounts, and that's not wrong, it's money, I get it, there's reasons, money, but it's missing the entire human side, people do not put money aside for charity, because they want to earn a particular percentage of interest, because, you know, they want to buy a house someday, it's for a goal, right, it's for a purpose, and so I really feel like, and DAFI, a lot of what we hit on is actually the base use case that we optimize for, Um, was very much around this idea that, you know, when someone gives you a pitch, someone talks to you about a cause and organization with an urgency of like, Hey, it would really be meaningful if you gave now.
[00:11:47] The ability to pull your phone out of your pocket and go tap, tap, tap, and actually have that money go to that charity, just like that and feel like you right there. And then you did something and then get the positive feedback. You did something. We spent a lot of time trying to get that experience.
[00:12:02] Right.
[00:12:03] Tom Butta: So is that the friction you had to solve for in giving? Because if people intuitively want to give, they feel guilty they haven't done more, right? When you say, how much have you given? Well, not enough, right? And now you're creating a facility to help them do that. What was the friction that you had to overcome?
[00:12:23] Adam Nash: Well, there's two types of friction here. And by the way, I'm, I'm oversimplifying of course, 'cause No, yeah, of course. Anyone who's done where these products, like we have to solve like a thousand problems, you're right to make this work. But, um, the two big ones, this is where there's a difference. You can assume your customers, your target market, understand their problem well, but they may not, they're not experts.
[00:12:43] They may not understand all the root causes of it. They may not understand what's hard or what's difficult, what's easy. And certainly they may not be technical experts in terms of what's possible or not possible. With a modern phone or a website or that sort of thing. The biggest problem though, that I found, which I, as I mentioned earlier, was similar to other behavioral finance problems.
[00:13:03] Is that if you think about it, giving really combines two hard problems in one, right? The first problem is how much can I afford to give? Budgeting problems are very stressful for people. Most people don't have a budget. Even if they do, they're worried about sticking to it. And even if they are the type of person who has a budget and sticking to it, it's very rare that they put giving in the budget, which by the way, they should.
[00:13:26] So this question of how much can I afford to give is a very hard problem for people. Yeah. But there's a second hard problem in giving. Yeah. Who do I give the money to? There's almost 2 million charities in the U. S. alone, more globally. How do I know if it's a good organization? The people, how do I know my money's doing good there?
[00:13:45] So when you combine those two hard problems in one, and sorry to sound a little bit more like a computer scientist here, it's not just twice as hard, it's like an N squared hard problem. And my experience has been with consumers, That the best thing you can do to simplify a problem is actually break it up and ask the question, do you have to combine those problems together?
[00:14:06] And that's really the first problem we had to solve. So this basic idea of, wait, if you put money aside for charity proactively, kind of like you do for other financial goals, then when it comes time to make a decision to give, You don't have to ask the question whether you can afford it or not. The money's sitting right there.
[00:14:23] You have it. We just took that problem off the table. That's super smart. And then you can focus on the delight in the moment, which is feeling good that not only do you think that there's something wrong that you can help with, but the ability to act immediately to do it. Right. Was really a big problem.
[00:14:41] The second problem we've had to deal with, and we still deal with, is that most people in the U. S. Don't realize that there is a tax free account for charity. So this is where, you know, that dreaded problem around customer education comes in. You know, people know that there are 401ks and IRAs for retirement.
[00:14:59] They know, some people even know that there are 529 plans for college savings, but most, even though donor advised funds have been around for almost a century, I mean, over 80 years, most people don't realize that you can put money aside, tax free, get that charitable deduction, have it invested for you. And have it available anytime you want to make a donation.
[00:15:18] And so part of the thing we had to do was make that education possible. And so we embraced it. Even our, you know, the name of our, our company, Daffy. Yeah. Tell me about that. How'd you come up with that? Well, so this is where I'm going to apologize to everyone who's listening to your podcast. There are some liabilities of letting an engineering.
[00:15:36] Kind of founder, you know, do the marketing. So, um, I've had those experiences personally. Yes. So I apologize to everyone who has any traumatic experiences there, but, um, it turns out Daffy just stands for the donor advised fund for you thought it sounded like a fun app name. It captured a little bit of the delight people feel when they give, but we wanted it to feel a little bit more personal and approachable and so we kind of went with it, you know, so even, um, by the way, even in the logo, The, uh, you know, the two dots in front of the D, uh, we were capturing a little bit of the joy of, of emoticons back in the day, right?
[00:16:10] How do you make a smiley in texts, right? It's a colon and a capital D. We actually still sign a lot of our emails and letters that way. I like brands. I like having fun with it, but really that was getting down to the idea of, we saw a lot of people in the category trying to avoid this idea of, well, the donor advised fund, that sounds too technical, sounds too high end.
[00:16:30] It sounds like something a multimillionaire with a financial advisor has. Maybe we should just call it a charity account, a giving account, um, something like this. And you see these all over in, in marketing literature, and we use these terms sometimes, but we decided to embrace the category and the term.
[00:16:46] Um, this is a little bit of my experience, uh, you know, back in FinTech and, and financial things. It, there's a reason why, I mean, why is a 401k a 401k? No marketer thinks we're going to make a multi trillion dollar category by taking a line in the tax code and making that the name,
[00:17:02] Tom Butta: right?
[00:17:02] Adam Nash: I mean that, yeah, that's not coming from an engineer, but at the same time, it turns out that, you know, in a world of the internet and information where people are querying for things, You know, my experience has been avoiding, you know, being tied to the actual category and technical terms sometimes can be a liability.
[00:17:19] And so we just decided to say, we're going to lean into it. We're going to embrace being a donor advised fund, but we're going to show people that we're different. The brand will be more playful. And by the way, our go to market You know, we launched, we were the first fully functional donor advised fund in the app store.
[00:17:33] I know that sounds ridiculous in the year, you know, we launched the app in 2021. The idea that in 2021, there was any category that hadn't launched an app in the app store seems ridiculous, but it shows that this area just hadn't received the level of investment that most other categories had. As it turns out, strategically, there's good reasons why the existing incumbents hadn't done that.
[00:17:56] Tom Butta: What was the spark for you to found this company? You did it for saving. You did it for career. Was it personal passion of yours, as opposed to what problem is out there that needs solving? Just curious, what led you to this?
[00:18:12] Adam Nash: You know, it's sometimes hard to pull that thread. I've told the founder's story a number of times, and the truth is, You know, Steve Jobs gave that graduation speech, you know, I think it was 2005, you know, almost 20 years ago.
[00:18:25] And he talked about, you know, connecting the dots of your life, looking backwards. And so when I look backwards, there's more than one thread that led to death. I mean, the truth is I was raised to believe that giving is an important part of a healthy life. I was raised to believe that a selfish life is somewhat unfulfilling.
[00:18:44] That, you know, that it's not all for you, right? That there are, no matter how, you know, where you are in the world, success, non successful, there are people who are less fortunate than yourself. And more importantly, just the knowledge and living your life, that it's not all for you is a better way to live your life.
[00:19:02] I raised my kids the same way. Obviously I'm a parent, four children. Um, you mentioned finance. I'm very passionate about personal finance. I mean, I teach a class at Stanford in personal finance. Why? Well, one, they let me, which I appreciate. It turns out they have a lot of control over whether I can or can't do that.
[00:19:18] But the reason I do is because 30 years ago, I wish that class existed. Sure. Right. When it comes to money, you know, it's not about IQ. You can go to the best schools in the country. You could have an IQ of over 160 and still no one really explained to you how credit cards work or how to live a healthy financial life.
[00:19:36] So I'm passionate about that topic. And I do believe that this is actually a financial problem that matters to people. But yeah, there's a little hubris in there too, because, you know, looking at this category, there have been other startups in this space, and there have been different attempts. Over the decades of my career, I've seen them.
[00:19:53] This is an area where I felt like not only was it very important, but I thought I was uniquely situated to build an organization here, that I could raise money, I could get the engineers and designers, that I actually had the product insights to actually do something here. That would succeed where others hadn't.
[00:20:12] And to me, you know, the, the real passion comes from this idea that giving is very important to millions and millions of people. And the proceeds of that giving is important to tens of millions, hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of people. And it deserves, it deserves a company that does nothing but focuses on that problem every day.
[00:20:35] Not as a side activity, not as a, but that's, I mean, this is why, you know, LinkedIn, if you'd asked me back in the day, why did we do LinkedIn? I mean, I didn't fond LinkedIn by the way, I didn't fond. Acorns either, or Wealthfront. Daffy's the first company I founded. But when I look at it, why did I join LinkedIn?
[00:20:49] I remember meeting Reid Hoffman and talking to him, because I believed in the modern world. People were moving between jobs frequently. Careers were not guaranteed. That world of working for one company for 40 years, getting the gold watch, that world does not exist and hasn't existed for some time. And so you had a huge number of people having to navigate this world, and who was building the tools for them?
[00:21:11] Who is building the platform to let people really take control of their reputation and their relationships? And so I think the reason I did Daffy is because I felt like this area deserved a product, a platform, a company. And I was skeptical that it was going to happen if I didn't take a stab at doing it myself.
[00:21:29] And I feel super fortunate that Alejandro felt the same way. I was willing to take the dive with me.
[00:21:34] Tom Butta: Well, you know what's interesting? There are so many tools, especially apps, that are all about this, I would call them this sort of one to one relationship, right? There's a, you know, marketplaces where, you know, it's all about sort of you and what you can access.
[00:21:50] Whether it's a rideshare or whether it's A plethora of things on a marketplace, you know, you have, say, Amazon or the like. And what's interesting, so it's ultimately serving the individual. What's interesting about this, and you sort of tucked it in to your last. Commentary is you're not only satisfying the individual, but this is a one to many of parts in much the same way that LinkedIn really was.
[00:22:20] It creates this one to many opportunity by virtue of doing this, the fundamentals of giving. It's not just for you. Like you're actually enabling so many others to be the recipient of, you know, of those funds that you consciously choose to give. And that's huge. I mean, there's not a lot of businesses out there that have that kind of impact.
[00:22:42] I think it's really a fundamental difference, uh, about this.
[00:22:45] Adam Nash: Yeah, well, you're hitting on something that one of the epiphanies I had along the way. I mean, if you'd asked me when we were starting Daffy, I would have described it very much as an Acorns for charity, right? Acorns is a wonderful app, very successful.
[00:22:59] It's like what they did for, you know, saving and investing, we can do for giving. But actually, you know, this insight you talked about is something that we realized along the way, and I actually wrote a piece about this a couple years ago. I started seeing more and more connections between what we were building and LinkedIn, because it turns out giving is really about people.
[00:23:20] There are millions of nonprofits out there and they do want to raise money. That's, that's true, but they also need volunteers. They need board members. They have events, right? They have all these reasons. They need to connect with people who care about their cause and care about the organization. And by the way, it turns out people who give also care about other things, right?
[00:23:40] They want to know what their friends and colleagues are donating to. They, they volunteer together. They do things together. Families do things together. Um, one of our most successful features that's differentiated that no other, you know, it turns out donor advice funds spin around. Decades, they were all like bank accounts.
[00:23:59] No one had actually rolled out a simple family plan. I know it sounds ridiculous because in a world where Netflix and Amazon, Apple, everyone has a family plan. Xbox has a family plan. Like every tech product has a family plan, but you know, one, our one year anniversary rolled out a feature so that you can actually add up to 24 family members, grandparents, parents, siblings, children.
[00:24:17] My four children are on my donor advised fund, my account at Daffy with my wife. And it's wonderful because every time we make a donation, They get an alert on their phones, and we've had dinner conversations because, you know, one of the children will be like, Oh, I saw that we gave money to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
[00:24:35] Why did we do that? How long are we doing it? When's the next time we're going to go? It's a chance for parents and families to talk about their values and how they think about it. And, you know, you and I both know actions speak louder than words, right? And as a parent, you know, There's a humbling aspect of that too, where you realize you can say as many things you want, but they're watching what you do.
[00:24:55] Modeling the behavior. Yeah. You tell your kids not to text while they drive and say, watch everything. Um, but, um, so many of our best feature ideas have been around people. And so, you know, my dream for the platform as we get bigger and bigger, we had such a huge 2023, right? You know, over 425 percent growth.
[00:25:12] You know, this huge surge in activity. My real dream is that the Daffy becomes more and more of a place where, you know, people find each other and commonality around the causes and organizations they support, the organizations find people and that they start using the platform more and more to connect.
[00:25:28] With this underlying, you know, base platform, which is that these aren't just people who are talking about things. They're putting money towards them. Yeah. Right? That is a level of commitment that goes beyond just, you know, uh, you know, uh, a post, right? Like, or a comment, or a message board.
[00:25:48] Tom Butta: Yeah, or a friend, connect, or follow, or whatever the latest terms are.
[00:25:54] So is that, is that the next thing for Daffy?
[00:25:57] Adam Nash: Well, so we created our first feature in that, in that light last year, and it's been one of the most popular. So once again, a lot of what we're doing in this category in innovation is just bringing great features from. Other areas of the internet and technology and bringing it to giving.
[00:26:14] And so last year for the fall, for the holidays, obviously a lot of people like to give during the holidays. We rolled out what we call Daffy campaigns. Now, you know, internet campaigns have been around for decades, right? So, you know, we, we were all used to now kind of the, the kind of webpage raising money for this, that, whatever.
[00:26:32] But we said, wait, when you have an account for charity, you can do something more. You can actually run a matching campaign, right? Instead of giving 500 to an organization, you could actually say, I'll match the next 500 that people give to an organization. And it turns out this is something that nonprofits love and are looking to do more with their larger donors.
[00:26:54] But it turns out individuals, our members, I had one member tell me that they're not going to do normal donations anymore. They're only going to do matching campaigns. Because it feels so much better to not just give money, but actually to feel like you helped get other people to give as well. It's an accelerant.
[00:27:12] Yeah. And so, um, we rolled it out as an experiment to see how it worked. We did a whole campaign to raise money for food banks across the Bay Area. We found people to do matching campaigns. But, you know, as usual, you always learn a lot from your customers. Um, it's turned out that, you know, of course people are doing campaigns to raise money for the local school or an organization, food banks, like we said.
[00:27:32] We're also seeing these beautiful memorial campaigns, right? People who have passed raising money in their honor, or even on anniversaries of dates, we had one member raise money in honor of a father had passed away 20 years ago, and it was for a scholarship in their name, um, really beautiful human things.
[00:27:50] But this is what I love about working in this space. Like there's the functionality, you know, there's the features, but if you get to the humanity of it, of the cause, this is not an e commerce purchase. You know, you're not going to hit that button on Instagram and then go like, why did I order that thing?
[00:28:05] And when is that shipping? It's, it's not a, um, signing up for a new service or a subscription. Like the things that people are doing with the platform are really amazing. And, um, we got this clue actually from our original product. You know, one of the smartest things we did was when we launched the original product is when people made a donation.
[00:28:23] We had this field where we asked them why it was optional, but a lot of people and that, that content, by the way, is public. It goes on the charity page, um, almost like a Yelp review, but instead of it, a Yelp review for service, it's the why, right? And you'd see things saying like, Oh, this organization was there for my.
[00:28:42] Mother in her last years of her life. And I give every year on the anniversary of her death. I actually think it's amazing for people to be able to see that, to, to, to hear that, um, or this is the school that, you know, I sent all of my children to. I mean, these comments, so we, we, we found a lot of success, you know, digging into these features.
[00:29:02] Tom Butta: How do you stay in touch with, with your customer base? What's the engagement like, and what's the experience like of, of becoming a. Is there such a word as a Daffy? I don't know.
[00:29:13] Adam Nash: Well, you just call them members. Um, it's actually, it's part of what we're trying to build is, you know, when we looked at the terminology, we realized that the nonprofits in the space actually had a lot to teach us about how to build the platform and the organization.
[00:29:26] A lot of the nonprofits we respected actually think of their, their customers as members, right? As people and members. And so we really embrace that idea of it being member driven. And, and, and actually I, you know, we did that at other companies I've been at too, LinkedIn always referred. To people who use the platform as members.
[00:29:44] But, um, I think there's two answers to that question and they kind of cut strategically. There's the classic marketing best practices of knowing what are the actual market segments you're going after? Who are your target customers? And I will tell you that for a product like Daffy. There's more than one, right?
[00:30:01] And you know, we, we have a very large group of members whose primary focus is I give to three to five charities every year. I just want one place to pull all that together. I want to make sure I have recurring donations. I don't forget. I have the money put aside and, um, that's the bulk of our membership.
[00:30:20] And so actually we have different membership tiers. And actually those members tend to be in our simplest tier. We call them contributors and it, you know, it's our most inexpensive tier. There's a second group. It's part of what they want to do with their families. And we have a family tier for them to kind of embrace it.
[00:30:36] It's similar to that basic tier, but it's also embracing the idea that they're connected to their kids schools. They want to involve their children in their giving, teaching them, other family members. And then we have a third group that actually has this additional motivation. They tend to be a little bit wealthier.
[00:30:51] They're more concerned about taxes, right? And, and so actually for them, this actually really is a financial goal. You know, when they have a good year and they might be in a higher tax bracket, the idea of donating stock or crypto or, or money and putting it aside for charity, um, almost like a mini endowment.
[00:31:08] They like, they, they put aside often multiple years worth of giving. Sure. And you know, that logic tends to be, well, if I put this money aside for giving and it's invested well. Maybe I'll have more to give. I can actually give more to charities or give more often. Um, and so we have that group. So that's a classic, I think, best practices in marketing.
[00:31:26] You're designing a product. You need to know who you're designing it for distribution. You need to know where they are. But I will tell you my personal point of view on talking to customers. I learned a little bit of this in the original Web 1. 0 days at eBay. Um, eBay had these wonderful programs that eBay voices where they talk to customers.
[00:31:43] If you remember Jeffrey Moore from Crossing the Chasm back in the day, too few people remember these strategies, these insights, but it turns out I'm also a big believer in learning but also engaging with. Your early adopters and your evangelists. So actually, you know, within Daffy, we have multiple tiers of connecting with our customers.
[00:32:02] Of course, we're data centric. We see every click, the difference between what people say they do and what they actually do, very real. So we know what people click on, where they drop off, all those things. We have our own member service who are talking to customers all the time about problems, right? And issues and making requests.
[00:32:20] But we also have, uh, programs where we actually, I have a person on my team. Who make sure that every quarter they reach out to some sample of our members who just joined in the last three to six months to talk to them. 20 questions about their experience because products change over time and also the market as you grow, the people you hit, you can learn new things about adjacent market segments just by talking to the people who are joining fresh.
[00:32:48] How do you have that exchange? These days, it's more often than not a Zoom. It can be a call. Um, but what we do every quarter is we agree on the questions that are going to be asked. We have several members of the team volunteer and, you know, sometimes I'll talk to customers myself. Of course, I think it's always good to talk to people directly.
[00:33:04] But um, we do that process, um, we call it voice of the customer. And by the way, it's very interesting to see the shifts. And sometimes it teaches us actually about how people react to the macro environment, right? Maybe, maybe people's financial concerns about giving are different in 2024 than they were in 2023 And then we have one last group that we call voices, of course, where I think that every new product and service ends up with a small number of people who just love it.
[00:33:33] They are just so excited that it exists. They're excited about the features. They're excited about the team. And in giving, I will tell you, there are a lot of people who are passionate about what it means to give. And so, um, I think some startups make a mistake. They're so busy thinking about scale, right?
[00:33:52] How do I get a million customers, 10 million customers, a hundred million customers that in the early days, they don't realize that a lot of what keeps you going is the word of mouth and also the excitement of a very small percentage of your members who love you. They don't just like you, they love you.
[00:34:12] And it's a little bit of that vanity that comes from, you know, I found the band first, I have been listening to them forever since even before they went big. Right. But some of it's also the influence. This is an area they care about and they, they feel that by talking to you, it's a way for them to have impact.
[00:34:29] Their feedback will actually influence how the platform develops. And eBay in the early days, I think did this very, very well. I think at Wealthfront, we did this very well by listening to these, not just the early customers, the early evangelists. And we're doing it at Daffy as well.
[00:34:44] Tom Butta: Well, it seems to me that, that, uh, those, I mean, you use the word evangelist.
[00:34:50] These, these early customers have passion and it's not surprising that the passion incorporates them wanting to share.
[00:35:00] Adam Nash: And you want to reward it, right? So, I mean, I think by the way, the best celebrity influencers have learned on social media, that this is actually part of how you get that. Energy going to, because when you need to do something, when you have an initiative, you have a built in fan base ready to get excited about it.
[00:35:16] And by the way, it's such a wonderful relationship because every time you listen to them and do something they think is exciting, you just prove them right. Like they were excited about you last year and now they have another reason that they were right. Right. That they were excited about you for a good reason.
[00:35:32] They'll tell more people, they'll tell people again and vice versa. I would say that, you know, for the company and the product. It is a big difference. The difference between features and capabilities. That offer utility versus those that offer delight. It's not the same bucket of features. It's not the same design principles.
[00:35:54] And I think that by talking to evangelists, you get these clues of what sparks that emotional reaction. And I know I sound like an Apple guy. It was my first job out of school. And Hey, I'm right there with you. I get it. Um, I'm a big believer that, um, that two way relationship with your ardent fans and evangelists, if you manage it correctly, is incredibly valuable in the early days.
[00:36:14] Tom Butta: Yeah, I mean, you're describing something I'm very passionate about also, which is being able to tap into an experience that really resonates, an experience that matters in a positive way. You know, because I think Maya Angelou said, you know, people, people will forget what, you know, what you might've said, they'll forget what you did, but they'll never forget how you made them feel.
[00:36:38] And so to the degree you've created a facility that enables people to feel something, right? We've said, used the word passion before. They don't just like it. They love it. You've created a facility, then an experience that enables them to love this. And you've given them a facility to share that. I mean.
[00:36:58] That's taking what is a feature or functionality or utility, right, in sort of classic coding to An experience that has created the light and that's, that's wonderful. So I have no doubt that we can continue well into the evening here. Uh, and, and talking, it's, it's, it's really, I think for everybody that's listening, but honestly, for me, it's really a pleasure to talk to somebody who's been on the front lines of so many iconic companies that have really altered our lives in many, in many positive ways.
[00:37:34] And. And frankly, it sort of feels like this is where you should, you, Adam, should be right now. Cause like you really, really are making a big, a big difference again, not just for the people who are, who have instinctively want to do more right and give, but also for all those people that benefit from that.
[00:37:53] So thank you for your time and for doing this. So we're going to end the program here with a couple of just quick, quick kind of rapid fire. If you're able, I'll do my best. If you're able to do a soundbite, okay. Beyond Daffy, is there one non utility mobile app that you can't live without?
[00:38:11] Adam Nash: Oh, there's a few.
[00:38:12] I mean, obviously I'm a fintech guy, so there's a lot of financial apps that I find, but I don't know if that's a little too close to utility. I will tell you that for my children, Being able to pay them an allowance, you know, um, pay interest on that. You know, I use an app called Greenlight for that. Um, that's great.
[00:38:28] You know, I think it's fantastic. But if I'm being honest about the one that's had the most emotional impact, and this is going to sound incredibly, it might sound a little childish, but I just need to tell you. I am really a big fan of what Niantic did with Pokemon Go. I, I think whatever hopes and dreams they had, I, I hope they're hitting them.
[00:38:46] But there is this app where, you know, I have four children, different ages, and they've come at different times. And the fact that there's this game that I can play with them that is not just, you know, on a computer fighting, shooting, et cetera, but that involves walking around, little discovery, discussion, detail, all these things.
[00:39:07] You know, there are Saturday afternoons where I've walked around with my children for an hour catching things that do not exist for points that do not matter, costing money that actually had to earn. Right. And I'm so grateful for it. Um, and so, um, I, I will say that, you know, there are these experiences that are differentiated.
[00:39:27] I think there's a reason why it's lasted as long as it has.
[00:39:31] Tom Butta: Is there a feat, like an app feature that you might be noticing that, um, maybe you've or you have experienced before that
[00:39:40] Adam Nash: You know, sometimes these things are really subtle. Um, I, yeah, I love interface design. So I, I noticed sometimes, you know, the little extra effort that goes into having some audio, the right sound.
[00:39:50] You know, I always explain to people, you know, back in the day, Angry Birds wasn't viral. It didn't send out invites to your friends, et cetera. But if you saw someone doing it, you know, when the iPhone was new and it made that little silly noise and fling it, like you kind of wanted to do it. You tried, you did it.
[00:40:05] And so there are these little sparks of joy. But, um, You know, in terms of meeting, I will say the most magical thing that's happened on the mobile phone for me in the last few years is, you know, got to take the family on a trip a couple of years ago, we went overseas. We were actually in, in, in Greece. And, um, discovering that Apple had just integrated into the basic camera app, that I could point to anything and I could translate it.
[00:40:30] And by the way, of course, one of my children actually found it first and then showed me and I was, I was amazed. And I realized that Google has a similar feature on Android and that sort of thing. But when you talk about little features that make a difference. Yeah. Yeah. It's a meaningful difference. That actually made that experience phenomenally better.
[00:40:47] Tom Butta: Well, it's been an absolute pleasure. Like I said, I actually think we could go on and on and on. Maybe, maybe we, maybe we have a follow on, uh, chat here. Uh, but, um, Adam, thank you so much. Uh, thank you for what you're doing, but thank you so much for sharing. Your experiences and, um, and, and the vast knowledge that you have.
[00:41:05] Adam Nash: No, I appreciate it. And like I said, if, if I can encourage anyone to, you know, kind of, you know, any piece of advice, it would just be, um, if you are, if you do give to charity. Ever, like if you give to your kid's school and alma mater. A church, a synagogue, a national cause. Try it one year. Set a goal, figure out how much, just put the money aside for it.
[00:41:25] You'll feel better. You can use DAFI to do it, you can use, you know, something else, but I would encourage people to try it. You'll find that it's a much, much better experience and it lets you to focus on the real positive around giving. Rather than the stress and strain of worrying about how much money you have in your wallet.
[00:41:43] Tom Butta: Yeah. Okay. That's great. Because there is a donor advice fund for you. Thank you very much.
[00:41:52] Voiceover: Thank you for listening to Tame the Mobile Beast brought to you by the team at Airship. Find out more about how you can help your brand deliver better, more personalized mobile experience at airship. com. If you enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to subscribe and rate the show.