Hayden Smith is the co-founder of Pearler, one of Australia’s fastest-growing financial technology companies. Hayden recently sat down with Owen Raszkiewicz, founder of Rask, to talk to us about his vision and what it takes to make a great technology company in the modern era.
Hayden Smith podcast talking points
Ice breaker questions
- What’s one thing you learned about investing in the past year?
- Who’s the greatest software engineer Australia has produced (or that you have met)?
Hayden’s background
- Where did you go to school? Was computer science a focus for you?
- Early entrepreneurial streaks?
- Did you build anything early and learn to code?
- What did you study at uni?
Early days of Pearler
- When did you meet your co-founders Nick and Kurt? How did they find you or vice versa? When and where were you?
- Why did you decide to take on Pearler? What was it about Nick in particular that convinced you to give it a try?
Broker industry
What’s the number-one thing that’s wrong with brokerage today?
Where is the retail brokerage market going? I can see it merging and taking more share of what advisers have been using (e.g. as wraps or platforms).
Platform
What are the top 3 new tools and features you’re excited about?
- Bonus points if you can describe what’s involved in making things like these happen? From feature request to safely in production.
How do you ensure the platform is secure? I think many investors are cautious about “untested” apps or platforms? How do you decide what is partnered and what is built in-house?
If you were starting out today, what are 3 things you would do differently? (Even if you were building a stock market app or wealth platform, I guess just lessons learned about development)
What’s the one thing that you’re most proud of with Pearler?
When you hire people in your tech team, what are 2-3 ways you find great people?
Closing
Which companies or products do you look at and think, ‘woah, that’s a great platform!’ Or ‘how did they pull it off?’
Which companies or products are the opposite?
this episode, you’ll LOVE our series. Episodes go live every Saturday at 7 am and Wednesday arvo.
