What does it take to walk away from a big idea and start over inside the same company? In this episode of Not Another CEO Podcast, Adam Dell opens up about the journey behind Domain Money.
A serial Founder with multiple exits, Adam reflects on making hard pivots, recruiting top talent personally, navigating investor psychology, and why execution, not ego, is what earns the right to exist. He also shares how AI is transforming financial services and why the emotional highs and lows of startup life never really go away.
Takeaways:
Recruiting Personally, Relentlessly: Adam still personally recruits on LinkedIn, often spending hours each day identifying talent, crafting outreach, and filtering for startup fit. He believes CEO-led recruiting cuts through noise and shows prospects the role's importance.
A Pivot Before the Crash: Originally conceived as a crypto banking platform, Domain Money pivoted early. Adam made the call based on market fundamentals and moved decisively, even when his team was still optimistic about the original vision.
Transparent, Yet Optimistic Leadership: During the pivot, Adam prioritized honesty with his team while maintaining belief in the mission. He communicated openly about uncertainty and made clear that success was entirely on them.
Investor Support Built on Track Record and Clarity: Adam credits his investor relationships and clear, data-backed thinking for enabling a smooth pivot. Though they challenged him, his investors supported the shift and recognized the market opportunity in personal finance.
AI as a Backbone, Not a Gimmick: AI plays a major role in Domain Money’s operations, especially in improving planning efficiency. Adam is enthusiastic about AI’s pace and scope of change, calling it central to his product vision.
The Mental Game of Being a Founder: The pivot at Domain Money required layoffs and letting go of certainty. Adam talks candidly about staying objective under pressure, fighting through doubt, and surrounding himself with trusted mentors while still waking up every day to earn it.
Quote of the Show:
"That uncertainty, that thing inside of you that forces you to figure it out, is very motivating to me and I quite enjoy it." - Adam Dell
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamdell/
Website: https://www.domainmoney.com/
Ways to Tune In:
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Apple Podcasts:
Transistor: https://podcast.notanotherceo.com/
#NotAnotherCEO #BusinessSuccess #DomainMoney
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:25 Recruiting Strategies for Startups
07:15 Fundraising Insights and Market Sentiment
11:46 The Evolution of Domain Money
16:25 Navigating Pivots and Team Buy-In
23:07 Growth Strategies and Partnerships
26:20 Acquisitions and Exits
29:23 Strategic Partnerships and Revenue Growth
30:37 The Impact of AI on Technology and Business
35:12 AI in Financial Planning and Wealth Management
39:51 Challenges and Pivots in Business
49:09 Personal Background and Entrepreneurial Journey
57:37 Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
01:00:30 Outro
Transcript:
Adam: [00:00:00] We're in an existential fight to prove that we have the right to exist. And that requires an enormous level of commitment and passion and willingness to bear uncertainty and risk.
David: Today's guest is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and operator who has spent the last 20 plus years at the forefront of technology. He has founded and led multiple companies, including buzzsaw.com, which was acquired by Autodesk in 2002. Message one, acquired by Dell Technologies in 2008. Clarity Money [00:01:00] acquired by Goldman Sachs in 2018. His latest venture domain Money is an AI powered personal finance and investment platform designed to help individuals build wealth. They do it by democratizing access to financial expertise. He's someone who I've learned from over the years. Honestly, every conversation I've had with him, he teaches me something new, something that sticks with me.
So I'm really excited to have here today, Adam Dell, founder and CEO of Domain money.
Adam: Thanks for having me, David.
David: I'm very excited. First question right outta the gate. So what is the one thing you've done at Domain Money and your other companies big or small, that's had the biggest impact? And you'll do again, if you're CEO, of another company in the future.
Adam: Yeah, that's a good question. Um. I think the most impactful thing that I do that might be different than a lot of CEOs is that I recruit myself right outta [00:02:00] LinkedIn. It is the most powerful tool I have found to get to individuals directly, and I'm a little bit unique particularly in the New York tech scene in that I've been in and around financial services for a decade now.
And if you're in financial services, if you're in technology, the convergence of those two things, you've probably heard of some of my work. And so I have a bit of an advantage a competitive advantage among all the recruiters who are scouring LinkedIn. Uh, if you get an email from me on LinkedIn, it is in fact from me, and I am in fact reaching out to you.
Uh, and I have found that my hit rate is pretty high. and while it's very time consuming it's really effective for recruiting great teams, which as you know, is at the core of success of any startup.
David: Hmm. you said it's [00:03:00] time consuming. I have done it before. It is very time consuming. how, how much time will you spend on it? Like hours a day, hours a week? Like what, what is, how much time will you actually spend doing this?
Adam: Yeah, I'll spend hours a day on it. and I have a, a system that's, pretty refined at this point, by the way. I have some help. I have my assistant who will help me. But let's say we're hiring for a particular role a product marketing function. you know, I'll identify a list of five to 10 companies that I think there is talent in that is, you know, relevant to the experience set that I'm looking for.
Uh, we will define the years of experience. We'll define the titles and we'll use those filters within LinkedIn to identify a set of candidates that we'll reach out to. And then I'll send a message. Uh some percentage of those people get back to me. and those [00:04:00] filters of somebody responded, okay, they're interested or they're curious.
Uh, we have a series of, of, of filters that we use to try to weed out
David: Hmm.
Adam: Who's ready for and interested in a startup. Who has the requisite experience set and does that meet with the needs that we have as a company?
David: Do you how, when you do an intro call, like I, I'm gonna just guess ba based on knowing you, probably a lot of people may just respond maybe just to talk to you, you know what I'm saying? Like,
Adam: Yeah.
David: you do a five minute, like, do you have some, like, set time so you don't spend hours talking to people who are not really serious or you, you talk to them for half an hour each,
Adam: I mean, we try to weed out the people who are just in it for a meeting. Uh, there are some people who are gracious enough to be honest about it and will say, I'm not interested in moving, but I I did wanna take the meeting because I wanna network with you or whatever. and [00:05:00] I try to be polite and give them some time, but maybe not the full 30 minutes.
I try to be respectful of people's time and hope that they're respectful of mine. It is enormously time consuming, but it is also ultimately a great way to, as I said, get to great talent. Uh, I'm, I'm not a huge fan of using recruiters because they essentially do the same thing but with much less effectiveness because they don't have the.
Depth of understanding of exactly the skillset you're looking for. You know, I sort of know I sort of know it when I see it. I've done enough recruiting and enough hiring that for any given role, I kind of know what I'm looking for.
David: Uh, I, I think this is, so, this is actually the, you're the first person to say this as this answer. I think I've interviewed 50 people now, and you're the first person, but it's, it's something that. Having done it before, [00:06:00] but not as consistently as you and not as aggressively. Like I, I know you hired someone who used to work with me and, and you reached out and you pinged me and you checked on them and then you said, can you and, and, but it's such, it's really good advice.
'cause I think even if you're not a super successful person, multi-time, CEO, there is something when it comes from CEO, from founder, like there's something that when someone like that reaches out, because it's different than 90% of the other companies or 95% of the other companies, you will get responses.
And I, I would actually say, I think it's even past just recruiting it, it's actually for anything, it's for sales, it's for partnerships. Like if you actually, you are the one reaching out, it cuts through noise because people say, wow, that's how important this role is. Or I would be as a partner, like the founder is reaching out like that.
So I think that's really, that's really good advice.
Adam: Yeah, it's worked pretty well for us.
David: you ever do, do, is there a [00:07:00] stage that you give that you stop doing that? Or like you do that regardless of stage of the company?
Adam: No, you can't do it forever. But in the early stages of a business call it the first 50 to a hundred people you can do it, but you know, you can't do it past, excuse me, you can't do it past 300 people, something like that. It
David: Let, I want to talk a little bit so this is you, I have many companies. You've, you've had, it's hard to, it's hard to keep count, but many of them, and in this one you've raised, I'd say a significant amount of money kind of early on to build this business. is that process as easy as people maybe assume it is given your track record?
Like, is that something you just call the people who you invested, who invested in you before and you kind of raise the money? Is that, is that what that process is like?
Adam: Uh, I've been really fortunate to have a consistent set of backers with my startups [00:08:00] and. You know, when the markets are frothy and people are excited and you hit them with something that speaks to what they are looking for it is a pretty straightforward fundraising process, particularly given that I've done this a couple of times.
but of course when markets are more tumultuous and people are are, are less bold fundraising can be challenging. I was able to raise the money for domain money quite quickly. Uh, it was sort of as you described, I sent out a deck to a few of my prior investors, told 'em what I was doing, and pretty quickly got term sheets and commitments.
That's not always the case and I certainly don't, um. Uh, believe that that's always going to be the case, right? You kind of have to prove yourself each time. it is [00:09:00] amazing to me how much is dependent on the psychology of the investor community at any moment in time.
David: Hmm. Can you talk a little bit? I, I, so that, that is, that's the advice I tell people all the time is like it is 'cause 'cause I get in people who tell me, oh, but that company just raised this much and they do the same thing. I'm like, but, but they raised it two years ago. And two years ago it was like, that's different, different time.
And, can, like how does that, because you've also been an investor. I mean, you, you've been you're at Austin Ventures and you've been an investor, you've had some very successful investments. Um. How does that happen? I don't know how to ask that question. Like how does that, that, that, it's like everyone just goes in the same once, once one people, one group starts to get nervous and everything.
It feels like it's just this trickle down that everyone starts to follow that and then vice versa. Like where does that come from, do you think?
Adam: Well, herd mentality is a real [00:10:00] thing. Sentiment in the market is a real thing. Uh, the psychology of the investor. The psychology of the consumer. Uh, there are whole courses taught at the University of Chicago about the impact of psychology on the markets and on consumer confidence and the measure of all those things.
that is a very real dynamic, and it exists even within the intelligent community of the venture capital industry that purports to be contrarian thinkers. Uh, and going against the, the, the, the trend or tide, uh if you wanna be, um. Right. You can't be, uh conventional in your thinking all the time.
Uh, but you know, psychology is a powerful thing. And when people see their, stock portfolios down and they see their portfolio companies struggling because the markets are overall tough, not just the public markets, but you know, when consumer confidence goes down, people [00:11:00] spend less. So consumer businesses don't do as well.
So consumer startups suffer. And so all the things have a cascading effect. that, that is, something that's not, that the venture community and the investor community is not immune from.
David: Hmm.
Adam: I often think about, um. Open table. you know, we went public in 2008 when no one was going public. Uh, and you know, it was sort of a unique thing for us to do and in, in a way we got a lot of attention from the investor community because we were the only company that was brave enough or absurd enough to go public in that environment.
And thankfully, given that we were really one of the few companies to go public at all, it ended up serving us well. 'cause we got a lot more attention from the investor and analyst community than we otherwise would've gotten.
David: interesting. So one of the things I, I think is, you know, maybe you could just talk a little bit about the [00:12:00] evolution of domain money, because it's not what you set out to build originally and it feels like it's taken you time to now find what I feels like fast moving water, you know? Can you maybe just talk about the, the evolution of that?
Adam: Yeah, sure. We set out to build a, a crypto bank effectively, and discovered pretty early on that the world didn't need that. and part of my thesis was that crypto would become a mainstream asset class, which, you know, probably happens at some point, but it's a long way away. And so made the very tough decision to pivot pretty early on well before the most recent kind of crypto winter and well before my employees and uh, coworkers at the company felt like it was the right time to pull the [00:13:00] plug.
Uh, in fact, the team was quite surprised. And, uh. Uh, shocked that I, I made such a significant change. Uh, but it, I think in hindsight has turned out to be a good decision. you know, if you look at the market cap or the relative value of businesses like Coinbase or Robinhood relative to how much cash they have and what kind of margins they.
They create I just don't think that business was worth pursuing. Uh, and so shifted to what we're doing now, which is financial planning, and to be fair and uh, transparent, it wasn't an easy transition at all. Uh, pivots are hard by nature. This one was particularly hard because, candidly, I had a rough idea of what I wanted to try to do within wealth management, but not a precise idea.
I, I knew that there was a real problem with wealth [00:14:00] management in that most Americans can't afford a high quality financial advisor. the do it yourself tools out there many of which I was very familiar with. Really left a gap in between. You know, you've graduated from do it yourself tools like Mint and Betterment, and having a high yield safety account.
Your life is starting to get much more complex. You have another baby on the way, you wanna buy a house, you got a safer college. I. You need to be on track for retirement, you need insurance. you know, all of those pieces need to fit together. And the do it yourself tools kind of fall short when that level of complexity arises.
I knew that that dynamic and problem existed but I didn't know exactly how to crack it. And so it took us a little while to, to find our way. And we candidly tested a lot of different ideas as we found precision around the value prop. We think now we've gotten it pretty tight. Uh, we've [00:15:00] served over a thousand clients at domain Money to date.
Our client satisfaction rates are really high, and we really do a very unique thing. Uh, one is we deliver a very, very personalized financial plan to clients, which give them very specific to-dos. This is how much money you should put into your 5 29 account each month. To be able to pay for shards education.
She's gonna go to college in 12 years. Here's the estimated cost of that. If you contribute this much each month, you'll be on track to pay for her education. We give you very specific, to-dos in each of the areas of your life that are important. You care about travel, you care about a new home, you care about a new car.
We'll build a plan around those goals that fits within your lifestyle, your income, your expenses. What do you have left each month? How do we contribute that to your various goals? And we price it very fairly. You know, you go to a typical wealth advisor and you're looking [00:16:00] for, uh wealth management.
They're gonna charge you 1% fees on your assets or they'll charge you a flat fee 10, $15,000 a year. Our services are priced at $3,200 a year or $4,800 a year. I. Uh, they're very, very fairly priced and the price goes down over time as the needs you have change. Uh, and so we've really tried to price it in a way that speaks to the value and the problem that the clients have.
Uh, and so we feel pretty dialed into product market fit.
David: Hmm. How did you get your, having been through a pivot myself, pretty big one. how, did you get the team to buy in? I mean, it, is a big, it's a big deal, especially, for you as the founder, it's all in your head. You think about it every night, you came to this thing, but to them you're just showing up and telling them Hey, we're going this completely different direction.
How, did you get the [00:17:00] buy-in from them?
Adam: Yeah, it's, hard. it's a lot of communication. It's a lot of back and forth with the team and candidly as the founder trying to find product market fit you've gotta convey confidence and optimism at the same time. You need to be transparent and realistic with your team.
And I try to be both. I try to tell them with all honesty. Hey, it's on us to figure this out. No one's coming. if we don't figure this out, we die. and here's the things we're trying and we're testing and we're in an experimentation phase, and just be clear about that. And I think people who have the appetite to be in an early stage company, particularly one going through a pivot, they understand that and will bear through a lot of pain and work with you to try to discover the [00:18:00] answer to that experiment.
but it did require and does require a lot of experimentation. And we ran into a lot of walls and, had a lot of long nights thinking about. how to evolve the business, and we still do that. as you know, a startup is an unending series of puzzles to solve, and each one has its own unique traits and, complexities, and we're trying to solve them each day.
And I I tell people that I interview, what are you looking for? Or What do you expect to happen here? And I tell them that we're in an existential fight to prove that we have the right to exist. and that requires an enormous level of commitment and passion and willingness to bear uncertainty and risk.
and that's the truth of it. and if you don't have that appetite, [00:19:00] a startup's probably not right for you, especially not one at this stage. and it's not for everybody. I kind of love it. that uncertainty
David: clearly. clearly
Adam: That uncertainty that thing inside of you that forces you to figure it out is very motivating to me and I, quite enjoy it.
David: I think the thing you said there about, I, again, we've talked about this, like the people listening to this, mostly it's early stage founders, first time founders, first time CEOs executives who want to be CEOs or founders one day. And I think, one of the things you said there is really important is qualifying, making sure you have the right people around the table so that when you show up and say, we're gonna pivot.
Of course it's still scary, there's still the uncertainty, but having the people around the table who you've already pre-qualified to make sure that they're. in the mindset that this could happen and that they're [00:20:00] in the mindset, that there is this uncertainty and they're kind of, they embrace that versus are scared of that.
I think what, I see is a lot of times, including myself, frankly, early in my career, I would try to convince people to join versus like, what you just described is almost convincing them not to join and the people who still join are the people you want on the team. You know, it's kind of, 'cause I think first time founders, you're like, no, you're gonna come, we're gonna be billionaires Like, this is gonna be amazing. It's actually, you have to do the opposite to make sure that you, have the right kind of person, at least in the early stage. Right.
Adam: Yeah, I absolutely do that. I, sort of downplay the, excitement and I, really amplify the uncertainty and the risk. Because I want people to understand what they're getting themselves into. and particularly in this current business, because we have, so many of our team members who come from traditional financial services businesses, right?
We have [00:21:00] certified financial planners on staff. they serve our clients,
we Tend to hire from the best banks and financial institutions in the marketplace. Those individuals tend to have come up through corporate American, a more traditional training program. And so they are by definition people who are less, Interested in taking on risk. they're not startup folks by their DNA. And so it really requires us to find, people who have the financial expertise to deliver high quality financial planning services with a culture of risk taking and experimentation which is really not part of the ethos of wealth management as an industry.
David: How did
your investors take the pivot? is it, did you just tell them one day we're pivoting and that was kind of, that [00:22:00] was it? Or do you go have a conversation with them? how, did they react to it?
Adam: I mean, I gave them some data. I tend to be quite driven by data. emotions don't make skilled workers and so I presented them with some facts and data and said, here's what I believe the terminal value this business is at some level of reasonable scale, and I didn't think it was worth it.
and I told them I wanted to go pursue this wealth management thing, and they were very supportive. They certainly asked a lot of probing questions and challenged my thinking, which they're there to do and I appreciate that. but they were quite supportive. we've, worked hard to find our path.
but as I mentioned there's, no guarantees in life. This, remains a startup. and while we've made real progress in the last year and had our best month ever in March, we did nearly 250,000 in bookings in March [00:23:00] which is really good for us as a startup.
we're on a good trajectory and feeling really strong about the business and its prospects. You know, it's still an early stage company and we still have a lot to fight for, to justify our existence, as I said.
David: How did you, you mentioned you've served a thousand, or you're serving a thousand customers on this new, version of the platform, and, did you get the first set of those? I mean, did you call people personally? Did you put on, was it all online marketing kind of demand growth, marketing?
How, how did you get that first set on the new platform?
Adam: Yeah. Well, one thing we did was we, we acquired a very small RIA that had, had a had served a,
A, a,
David: Hmm.
Adam: a, a reasonable number of customers, and we relied on that model of referral and lead generation to begin with. And then we started to do all the things you would expect. We had a referral program, we had some organic content, we did some paid [00:24:00] social we started to try to drive our, our SEO and SEM efforts.
Uh, and so all the things that you do as a growth hack strategy to get early clients, we did, one of the most successful things we did was we partnered with a woman named Katie Gotti, who has a, a platform called Money With Katie. It's a very robust vibrant community of people who are interested in understanding how to empower themselves in their financial lives.
Think about money in from a place of abundance and really not be, subject to the, the bad deal offered by traditional banks or some of the competitors in the market who charge 1% a UM fees. The ethos of that empowerment and taking charge of your life and being in, in command of your financial future.
Those ethos really aligned with [00:25:00] ours at Domain Money and in our partnership with Katie Gotti, she promoted the service offering because of her own experience with one of our advisors. You know, we really do give people an incredible level of clarity and transparency about their financial life. Uh I don't know anyone who wouldn't love to have a spreadsheet that lays out in excruciating detail.
Their net worth, their expenses, their retirement plan, their investments their, their, their project to buy a new home, and the progress they've made toward that new home. Uh, those are things that we present to clients in very clear and digestible terms. Uh, it's not a lot of financial jargon. It's not a lot of gobbly goop and we don't push any products, so we don't sell anything.
Uh, we just provide advice. Uh, and that combination of ethos, really resonated with partners like Katie Gotti. And so those [00:26:00] partnerships really worked well for us. And we've done others one with Anthony O'Neill, one with Caleb Hammer. Uh, we've done a number of partnerships. We had one with Cody Sanchez.
Those partnerships have really worked well for us. Uh, and that's how we sort of got our initial
bulk of.
David: Interesting. Cool. I like that. I like that. And the advisor buying the advisor that's, that's, um. Yeah, that's smart. Okay. the, so let actually, now, now that we're on this topic, you have a number of companies over the years. I know this was a small acquisition that you purchased, but you, you've, you've sold a number of companies over the years. and I'm curious your take on what that is like. I think probably right now in the market, there are a number of companies out there that are later stage that are struggling, that are maybe looking for a home. And I've talked to some of these CEOs and they're like, oh, I'm gonna reach out to [00:27:00] these companies and I'm gonna talk to all their corp dev teams and like one of them is gonna buy me.
And, is that how it works? So let me ask you having been through this many times, is that how it works?
Adam: Not in my experience. Um. I've never really gone out and tried to sell a business. I just wake up and operate a business. and if you do that well enough and you make enough progress, and what you're doing is of value enough to the marketplace, somebody will knock on your door. and that's typically, how companies get bought in the startup realm, at least in my experience, is you are busily going about your work and some strategic stumbles across what you're doing and says, that's really valuable.
That would work well within our business. We wanna own that thing. it's much more, [00:28:00] uh. Powerful of a dynamic to have than you scratching at the door of some corporate development team member begging them to buy you. Uh, so we just tend to go about our business and, try to build things that are of value and, and the rest sort of works itself out.
Felt,
David: Do you take the calls? You know I'm sure you know, again, you, you go out there, you launch something, it's out there, it's public. People see it. I'm sure you get calls quickly not just at this company, at Clarity, at Message one, like do you take those every one of those calls or, or all the time and kind of build those relationships or, I, I know some people who say, take every call even if nothing's gonna happen, and other people say, just ignore them.
You know, just ignore them until you're kind of further down the road. Like, what, what is your stance on that?
Adam: yeah, you, you can waste a lot of time with partnership discussions and. Corporate development people. And, I [00:29:00] tend to try to limit the amount of time I spend on things that don't have an immediate impact on the core KPIs that we're focused on within a given quarter.
David: Hmm.
Adam: Right. And so one of the things I love about KPIs is that it really focuses your time and attention.
Uh, is the thing I'm doing right now contributing directly to one of our key performance indicators? Uh, does it drive one of the OKRs we have for the quarter if it does not remove it from the calendar?
David: Hmm.
Adam: Right. now as it comes to as it relates to strategic acquirers and having those conversations, most of the time those stem from some commercial relationship that you already have with a partner.
Uh, and obviously if those can. Increase your revenue, increase your access to clients, do you know give you access to a [00:30:00] technology that will help power the thing you're trying to do. All those things are super important, to pursue. And we obviously have lots of partnerships at domain money. We have service providers who are technology providers.
We have distribution partners who are third party RIAs. Uh, so we have a lot of partnerships at play at domain money. And so I do the ones that that speak to what my OKR say for the quarter.
David: what is your, you, you've seen a lot, know, over all the years, again, as an investor, as an operator, you've seen the.com boom and bust. You've seen the rise of SaaS cloud. You've seen crypto, like you've seen all of this. What, what is your view on ai?
Adam: Oh my, um. AI is, quite a tectonic shift and technology. [00:31:00] Uh, it is, something that is evolving much faster than the internet evolved. the infrastructure in place that enables its proliferation is massive. The dollars flowing into fueling these experiments is unprecedented. I don't think there's ever been this many dollars aligned to specific projects in such a short period of time.
Uh the velocity of it is just incredible and the utility of it. Um. Is amazing. I think back to the first times I used open ai, uh, and what it was like last month and what it was like this month. [00:32:00] similarly, things like, deep research, which is one of the features on chat GPT where it walks you through the reasoning.
Uh, I asked it a very complex research question and using the deep research function and it gave me 26 pages of reasoning and walked me through all the things it was doing. And each one of those queries takes about five to seven minutes. Uh, and it's much more substantive than just your typical chat gt response and reading through the reasoning that it was doing in real time and watching it.
Go through go down a rabbit hole and get kind of stuck and then reverse course and try something else and explain that to me as it was doing it. To me, that was just an incredible light bulb moment of just how powerful and creative AI is. And [00:33:00] it's to me, you know, bigger than the internet, and bigger than just a technology opportunity because it really does represent an alien species that is, evolving rapidly in our, in our world.
And we'll have profound impact on pretty much everything, whether it's, personalized education and teaching you calculus and understanding where your pitfalls are in your. Your canon of calculus knowledge and reinforcing those areas in a way that, is unique to your learning style. And we've talked about personalized education for a really long time, but AI makes that real,
David: Hmm.
Adam: uh, to the way you peruse a bookstore.
Uh, I went [00:34:00] to the bookstore a couple weeks ago and I had my little air pods in and I was having a conversation with Gemini and I said summarize this book for me. And she did. And then I said, well, let's go a little deeper. Gimme the 10 most popular anecdotes from this book. And she did.
And then I said, well, let's talk about number two, which happened to be. Uh, related to the topic of infinity, and we had like a 15 minute conversation about infinity. And she knows more about that topic than anyone you could ever meet at any conference anywhere in the world who was an expert on infinity because this AI agent knows everything that was ever written about Infinity, everything that's ever been published, everything that's ever been researched, everything that's ever been studied and it's all accessible instantly to her mind and able to distill it in the format that I can then [00:35:00] digest.
And that is just a profound shift in the way information is synthesized and accessed by anyone in the world. And so, I, I couldn't be more excited about ai. I know I've given you a long answer, but it, it, it warrants one and as it relates to our business, um. We really have found enormous efficiencies utilizing AI in the back office functions of what we do.
And we only think that gets better as these models get a more refined and more useful,
David: Do you think you could build this company, the vision you have for it? Everything. Could you do it without ai?
Adam: not as efficiently. No. the, I mean, the business model is predicated on our ability to efficiently do financial planning. Uh, and so without ai, we, we couldn't do that.
David: What, what is the, not in the [00:36:00] product, but maybe the, the actual operations of the business. What do you think today is the most useful use of ai? Whether you're doing it today or you're seeing other companies doing, like, I'm curious, where is it really moving the needle in today's world, in your view?
Like operating a
Adam: In, in,
in wealth management? In our business specifically or just generally?
David: like in a technology company like if there's a place you would go use AI to run the business, where is that? Where is that?
Adam: Well, I mean, it's, it's interesting 'cause I would almost ask the inverse of that, which is like, where is it not being used? Right. So, so I mean, every engineer is using AI to help 'em code. Every marketer is using AI to help them generate copy every operations person using, using AI to generate uh emails for reaching out to prospects or clients.
You know, there's, there's just an [00:37:00] unending list of things that this technology is being used for. I encourage our teams to use it as much as possible. At the same time, it's very important that we deliver a personal financial planning solution. Clients want to sit over, sit over, zoom, or meet with someone in person like we are now and talk through the nuances of.
If I contribute the max to my retirement accounts this year, we'll have less to renovate the house. Uh, and we wanna renovate the house. And those competing forces really do require a nuanced conversation about values and timing and the, the impact of deferring those contributions. Uh, and to make some real decisions about what is most important to a person around their money.
David: Hmm.
Adam: And AI is really good at things like, uh. [00:38:00] Okay, we've aggregated all your accounts, we've extracted all the data, we've put it all into financial model. We can show you what, scenario 1, 2, 3, and four look like if the markets go way up, way down, stay the same, go up, go down a little bit all the different scenarios you could map out.
AI is pretty good at that. Uh, but the nuance of values and, and priorities,
David: Hmm.
Adam: Uh, is something that a human, I think, really requires or wants in financial planning. And so we focus on the pieces of the process that technology and AI can do well. And we try to give more time to clients with human facing interaction with advisors because that's, that's something they really care about and value.
And, and so empowering the advisors with AI and giving them more time to spend with clients is really core to what we're trying to do.
David: Hmm. It's you say that, it's [00:39:00] interesting 'cause I, I had this conversation with my kids the other day. They're nine and 11 and I was basically saying to them when they were born, my dream was that they would learn how to code because I never learned how to code. And I thought like, that's the thing that I wish they knew how to do and that would help them as they go on in their lives.
And, and now I told 'em, actually, really the thing to do is just put your phone away, put your iPad away, don't and just learn how to be a human being learn how to be face to face, learn how to, 'cause that's gonna be the last remaining thing. That's not, that's not AI able it's like having actually that, that personal relationship, having that, that understanding of, of the eq having that, that's gonna be the, the last remaining thing for, for, for humans to do it.
I mean, to some degree it's, it's like, so when you say that Citrix, 'cause I literally just had that conversation with them. I'm like, let's, let's focus more on. Uh, being with pe talking to people, being with people, doing all that stuff and the other stuff, by the time you, you're old enough, you'll just be able to tell it to code something.
I mean, [00:40:00] already now, I mean, so, let me, let me ask you, what, what do you, what is the big, I mean, this, this company has been around not so long, so like, maybe this question is, you could take it more broadly, but what is the biggest challenge, like truly the biggest challenge? You know, you've, you've faced at domain money or, or broadly, like what, what is that, that, that thing that sticks out in your mind that's like the hardest moment in time you've had and how did you overcome that?
Adam: Man, there's been so many I don't even know where to start. well within, within the context of domain money, certainly the pivot was the hardest thing that we've gone through. you know, there were moments when I really didn't know what the right direction of the business was to take during those experimentation periods.
And it's really hard to suspend conviction, right? to be disciplined enough to [00:41:00] say, I don't know. We're trying to figure it out. We're going through this experiment. It's designed to be objectively measurable so we can determine if this is worth pursuing, because it's really easy to just jump to an answer and.
Get bias and conviction behind it. that's what the brain naturally wants to do. You know, if you ask somebody, do you like Coke or do you like Pepsi? They are instantly in a position where they feel as though they need to have an answer and the brain wants to come to the feeling of comfort having produced that answer, regardless of whether or not that is in fact the answer.
And there's a bunch of research that's been done on psychological preferences that confirms that people's need to have an answer outweighs their ability to objectively respond to a question. [00:42:00] And that gives you, I think, an insight into how hard it is to remain objective as you're going through something as monumental, as a pivot when you have a team of, you know.
We were at 53 people, we took it down to 13 people. Uh, and even those 13 people are looking around the table going, Adam, what, what are we gonna do? You know, what's the plan here? How's this all gonna work? And it's very tough as the CEO to be, to, to say to them, I don't know, we're working on it. Uh that's not an answer that you wanna hear from your employer.
and yet that was the right answer, which is we need to go through a period of experimentation to figure out what is the right path and. That's, that's hard to do, especially when you have a team of people who come from traditional financial services, businesses who aren't used to startups, aren't used to pivots, aren't used to the ult [00:43:00] of a startup.
and I have to be grateful and, and, and humbled and, and thankful that, uh many of my team members stuck with me through that tumultuous period and helped us get to the other side. Uh, and it's not for everybody. and I'm sure I could have, I'm sure there were days when the pressure and the intensity got to me emotionally, and I could have been more levelheaded about going through the pivot.
But these things are part of the journey and you do the best you can and you, you try to figure it out. I have an enormous amount of. Personal pride and personal responsibility that I feel to my investors, to my employees to my, to the clients to figure this out and make it work. And despite the prior successes that I've had as an [00:44:00] entrepreneur, none of those really matter in the context of making this thing work.
we're either gonna succeed or we're not. And I'm waking up every day trying to make that happen.
David: Hmm. Did you have a group of people around you? Not employees. Like did you have anyone, let's say, to lean on vent to, you know. Brainstorm with, like, when been through some of these moments, it's ha you know, you can't maybe expose everything to the, to the team, you know? Did, did you have people like that around you?
Adam: I mean, I, I, am incredibly fortunate to have people like Jeremy Levine from Bessemer, who's one of our investors. Uh, bill Gurley from Benchmark, who's a, a longtime friend, and, and a, a close colleague, my brother Michael. Uh, these are all people that I've leaned on heavily at times of, you know tough moments during a [00:45:00] pivot, that have really helped me think through.
I. Different business models. We were contemplating how to manage the team's expectations. Uh, all of those dynamics uh, are at play in the middle of a pivot. And, and I'm super grateful that I, that I have those resources to lean on. It would be very hard to do it without that support system.
David: Yeah, It's very lonely. You know, it's so lonely that it's kind of, I tell people you, you need, you need those, those people who you can speak to openly, and on like just
Adam: Yep,
David: venting purposes,
Adam: yep.
Yeah. Yeah. Your, your team has no conception of how lonely it is to be the CEO and how, um. How hard it is to navigate the the optimism and the, [00:46:00] you know, focus that you need to have in a startup. While at the same time, as I said earlier, being transparent and honest with them.
David: Mm.
Adam: A very hard thing to do.
You don't wanna mislead people. You don't wanna bullshit them. You want to give them the honest truth. At the same time, they need to feel as though they're on a ship that's gonna go somewhere meaningful. And once again, I have a little bit of an unfair advantage there because of my track record, right?
Uh, I'm quite certain that there are people who have backed me and who work with me at Domain Money whose primary thinking is, well this guy has figured it out a few times and he'll probably figure it out again. you know, I guess time will tell.
David: Yeah. well, let, let's talk where, where is domain money in three years? You know, it's 2028. Where, where are you at that point?
Adam: Yeah. we've built [00:47:00] the best AI financial planning solution on the market, and we've found a distribution approach that is unique and highly scalable. And I would think we're, quite far down that path already. We've, we've made some significant investments in technology to enable financial planning to be done, in as much and an automated way as possible.
Um. We've come up with a distribution approach for serving clients and accessing clients that's quite unique. uh, there are 15,000 independent RAs in the country. Uh, many of them have investment minimums. Hey, if you don't have half a million dollars of investible assets outside of your taxable account, outside of your retirement accounts, excuse me, we're not gonna take you as a client.
Some, some firms have a $2 million investment minimum. Some of 'em have a million dollar investment minimum. Uh, a lot of the leads that come [00:48:00] into those firms are basically sent away. Um. We're able to help those RIAs serve those clients in a very technology efficient way and in a way that really delights clients.
You know, we uh, if you were to ask a hundred people, Hey, tell me about your financial planning experience with your RIA, they would not smile with delight. They would throw, shake their head and say they gave me this 60 page plan and had a bunch of sharp ratios and Monte Carlo simulations and charts and figures, most of which I didn't understand.
What I really wanna know is how much can I spend on vacation this year, and should I buy, or should I continue to rent a home? You know, those are, those are fundamental things that people have questions about, particularly in the segment of the market we're targeting, which is referred to as mass affluent.
I. And so we've got a really valuable [00:49:00] and unique solution that really does speak directly to the needs of that mass affluent segment. And we think we can use that technology and approach to power a, a big chunk of the industry. And so that's what domain money looks like in a few years. and we're marching toward that goal.
David: Awesome. Let, let's just quickly transition. I wanna transition to your background. Where, where are you from originally?
Adam: I grew up in Texas.
David: Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?
Adam: I wouldn't say that I, I knew that I liked. New ideas and starting things and, and doing things that was appealing to me. Uh, but I didn't know the term entrepreneur. Uh, when I was a little kid. I was very fortunate in many ways through luck of birth to have the parents I had who were economically minded and at their core intellectuals.
And so our household was filled with [00:50:00] copies of the economist and discussions about the yield curve and interest rates and uh
David: As
Adam: just.
David: as
Adam: Yeah, yeah. Uh, it wasn't filled with talk about football and, and, and things of that nature. And so I was very fortunate to be steeped in a, in a, in a house filled with ideas and, and thinking.
and I was also very fortunate to be the brother of the guy who founded Dell. you know, Michael opened my eyes to the expansiveness of what entrepreneurship can be and what it can achieve. And, uh I marvel at how much Michael has achieved in his life and how many lives he's impacted, how many communities he's transformed, uh, and
David: he older or younger?
Adam: Michael's five years older than I am.
Yeah. Yeah.
David: got it.
Adam: So I, I was very fortunate to have that, that the indoctrination of that at a young age. Uh, [00:51:00] and so that, that opened my eyes to entrepreneurship and I couldn't be more thankful for it.
David: Did you have, like, there someone, is, is it Michael? Like in terms of a role model, someone that you kind of looked up to? You know, I mean, is that, is that who it's been through throughout your career?
Adam: I mean I'm very, very lucky to have two really lovely brothers. Uh. Both of whom I'm, I'm very tight with and talk with a lot. you know, if you, if you're lucky enough to come from a good family and have love and support of your family, you're, you're lucky enough, right? so I, I in that regard, I've, I've been very lucky.
you know, I've had a lot of folks over the years who have been mentors and helped me along. John Mumford from Crosspoint, legendary entrepreneur and venture capitalist, who really taught me the venture business and really taught me the, the entrepreneur, uh, gig. Uh, that's probably who I [00:52:00] learned most directly from, just roll up sleeves in the room with, with him.
he really taught me how to, how to create companies. and so I would, I would credit John Mumford as being my most, um. Direct mentor impacting how I go about starting companies and, and, and how that all works. Uh, but Michael's certainly been, been a great you know, a, a great resource and I'm, I'm very thankful for both my brothers.
David: what, what drives you like at your core? 'cause at this point you've been successful multiple times over, and I mean, you don't need to do it for the money. So like, what, what is the, what is the thing that you, like at, at your core?
Adam: Uh, I like solving puzzles. I like creating things that delight and cr and build value. Uh, to me that's a fun [00:53:00] thing. you know, it's very, rewarding to be in the foxhole with a small group of people and conspire to figure out how to do something great. Um. You know, it's just a, it's, it's kind of a revolutionary act to, band together with a small group of individuals and try to upend an entire industry.
Uh, it feels very, you know, like we're gonna bust the machine and, and, and do something that most thought we couldn't. That sort of underdog mentality very much resonates with me, and I find that to be very fun.
David: Hmm.
Adam: I also feel, as I mentioned earlier pressure to do a good job for my investors and my, my my employees and, and our, our clients.
you know, you take [00:54:00] on this enormous responsibility when you start a company. You know, people have devoted their professional careers to domain money, and I wanna make sure that that pays off for them. Uh, investors have given me lots of. Dollars to and entrusted me with shepherding those dollars into something that is a cashflow generating machine and is of great value.
and I take that responsibility really seriously. And that challenge to me is, an exciting one. So,
David: So one, one last, I'm, I'm curious you spent, you grew up in Texas. You, you spent time in obviously there, in your career, but now you're in New York, and you've built these businesses recently in New York. What, how would you describe the New York Tech scene?
Adam: well, I mean, I think what's. Remarkable to me is when I started back in [00:55:00] 97, which is a long time ago now, you know, the, the Valley was really the epicenter of all things technology and innovation in the United States and the proliferation of technology centers, particularly Raleigh Durham, Austin, New York has been a an incredible thing to witness.
And it, it used to be that you needed the, the concentration of the engineering talent in Silicon Valley, coupled with the risk culture and the venture capital community to have a cauldron of creation in the valley. That unique set of ingredients was a. Uh for a long time considered something that you couldn't replicate.
at least not at scale. And what we've seen now is with the [00:56:00] proliferation of technology, beyond Silicon Valley, uh it used to be that when there were some innovation in the valley around networking three engineers with pocket protectors would jump up and down and nobody would hear about it.
Other than that little small cadre of people now technology is so pervasive in our, in our society and impacts so much that innovation can happen pretty much anywhere. And so, New York being a financial center and a place that has. A lot of highly motivated ambitious intelligent people with access to capital.
Uh, it's become a real hub and obviously all the major firms are here. There's now a massive ecosystem of entrepreneurs, including yourself, who are second, third time entrepreneurs who have fueled money back into the ecosystem with angel investing and [00:57:00] helping young entrepreneurs along in their journey.
And so there's just a robustness to the New York ecosystem that is uh better than it's ever been. when I came here in 2000, you know, it was Fred Wilson and Union Square Ventures and, uh, Stuart Elman and re and Jeremy Levi at Bessemer. And that is kind of it. Uh, now there's pretty much every major venture firm in the country has a presence here.
Uh I was over at a sixteens offices and it's like, I think they have like a hundred people or something that's big office, and I think that's just incredible to see and, and awesome for the, for the community in New York,
David: Yeah. alright. Last question for you is knowing everything you know today, what is the one piece of advice you would go back and give yourself before you started your first job ever?
Adam: I would've held onto the Apple stock that I got from my bar mitzvah and I done [00:58:00] that. You know that would've worked out pretty good. I probably still would've done the, the things I've done as a startup guy, but, but that would've been good advice.
Honestly, the, the, the one thing I probably would do a little differently or wish I knew earlier is when you're working with. People pretty quickly whether or not this person is going to be a, home run employee or partner, a mediocre employer partner or a bad one.
And there's a, tendency in, the mind to rationalize things and hope for a better outcome. And that's a mistake. you know, pretty early, with people and partners, whether or not something's gonna work out well. Now there are things that do [00:59:00] require some nurturing, and it takes time to find your footing with both people and partners.
But it happens quicker than you think. And I think there's a tendency to, string things along and push the can down the road hoping that things will get better. And that's. Something I, wish I had learned earlier and wish I had avoided, at times.
David: That's really good advice. Really good advice that I think. People need to hear and, and internalize because I, even if actually, even if you know that that's true, you still have to remind yourself of that all the
Adam: Yeah,
yeah,
David: you're, always hopeful and it's hard to part with people and it's hard so that, that's, that's really good advice.
Adam: yeah. You spend a lot of time rationalizing in your mind, oh, well we spent all this time recruiting this person and they have the right background and wow, the industry really respects that [01:00:00] person and this is gonna be a great thing. And then you find yourself in a spot where you realize it's not ideal.
And that can happen with partnerships. You know, you spend all this time trying to close a partnership. You get 'em all spun up, you get through compliance, you get the agreement signed, you you have the. Financial entanglement between the two entities, and then you realize, hey, this is not a good deal.
You spent all this time and energy on it. You don't wanna toss that away. That's backward thinking. All that time has sunk, all that time is gone. What matters is right now. What is this yield for, again, the OKRs for the quarter.
David: Adam, thank you very much for doing this with me. I, I love every time I get a chance to talk to you. So, thank you for doing this.
Adam: Great to be with you David. Thanks for the time.
David: Hope everyone enjoyed a lot to lot to, to go through in this episode. So hope you enjoy it and if you did, please share with your networks and we'll see you for not next episode of not another co podcast.
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