It was something decidedly non-technical that beckoned Chris Bigelow to join Stash as a software engineering manager in early 2021.
“It was the spirit of the company that really drew me to Stash, if there is such a thing,” Bigelow said. “It came out in the small moments during the interview process. I would tell a story about a time when I had advocated for someone’s promotion or made room in my day to help my product manager solve an issue, and I would get a knowing smile and nod or a corroborating story about a similar moment at Stash.”
As a startup veteran, Bigelow was also excited about the idea of working in the fintech world which, he noted, “is really exploding right now.” Accordingly, it’s a busy time for Stash right now, too: Fresh off a visual rebrand introduced earlier this year, the company is setting its sights on a bevvy of new features, including a crypto-investing function that the company plans to roll out in 2022.
“The crypto market is riskier than traditional investments,” Zhijiao Chen, lead machine learning engineer, said, adding that the app intends to complement crypto investing capabilities with features intended to educate users about — and help them manage — risk to encourage a healthy and diversified portfolio.
For Hasiba Khan, enjoyment is derived both from her role as a senior technical project manager as well as working on projects with her colleagues, whom she described as “inspiring and supportive.”
“This team’s level of teamwork and commitment never ceases to amaze me,” Khan said.
Built In NYC spoke with Bigelow, Chen and Khan to get a deeper understanding of the projects they’re tackling, take a read on the fintech landscape and learn how the mission of Stash resonates with them in their own respective ways.
What drew you to Stash? Why did you make the leap?
Bigelow: Every day we find ways to laugh and enjoy one another in the midst of doing very serious work, which is one of the smallest but most consistent ways to be people-first. Stash is also the perfect place for me to grow a large team and have a wider impact than at any of the smaller companies I was with before. We’re hiring and looking for new team members to bring their own individual spark.
Chen: I joined Stash about four years ago. As the first data science hire, I was drawn to the investment platform, the products, machine learning opportunities and company culture. From my first interview to today, I’ve always had the opportunity to share my ideas, own and lead projects that bring better experience to users, and learn from my amazing colleagues.
Khan: I was drawn to Stash mainly because of its people-first culture, which reflects internally and externally. I never worked in fintech before and never invested in my life, so I wanted to challenge myself to learn more about a new industry. I have never worked in such a fast-paced start-up. We are constantly innovating and shipping new features to make our customer journey and product portfolio meet the needs of our customers.
Stash Team Members Highlight Some of Their Current Projects:
- Bigelow: “My favorite pet project that I can’t wait to test out soon is personalized search results that learn what users are really looking for and become more relevant in future searches.”
- Chen: “I am working on lifetime-value based proxy metrics to improve our paid acquisition efficiency.”
- Khan is managing a variety of projects, some of which include security improvements, data governance and a migration to Kubernetes. “All of these large projects are enabling us to better serve our customer needs as we continue to grow exponentially.”
What is the fintech industry like, and what sets Stash apart when it comes to cryptocurrency and machine learning?
Bigelow: Fintech is really exploding right now. When I was young, the world of finance was walled-off and unapproachable for me and my family. We put our money in a savings account and that was about the best we could do because playing the stock market was something that only professional traders had access to or knew how to do skillfully. Now, there are tons of new apps that let anybody invest in almost anything, so we’ve all solved the lack of access.
However, few companies seem to be thinking about how to help an ordinary person invest skillfully. This is especially relevant today with the rising popularity of cryptocurrencies and the fear of missing out on the next big thing, but dropping money into crypto just based on intuition is risky. Stash aims to be one of the first places to teach people how to invest in crypto safely as part of a balanced portfolio.
Chen: With our “Learn” platform, diversification-score guided recommendations and fraud detection, our customers will be able to explore the benefits crypto investments create while keeping their risk at an acceptable level.
Khan: What really sets Stash apart in investing is the amount of support you have in the platform. Crypto is a new space, but the same mission applies. Stash lets you know which stocks are volatile and allows you to balance your risks. This machine learning technology enables us to really watch out for our customers and keep their best interests in mind. We use machine learning to help us provide better insight and learning opportunities to enable better decision making when it comes to users’ money.
With consistency and reliability built into our process, we’re able to integrate, test and deliver quickly.”
How does Stash’s mission personally resonate with your passion and purpose?
Bigelow: Stash wants to put a personalized wealth builder in every pocket. A common theme for me at many of my previous jobs, and one that I find really engaging, has been using customer data to power personalized experiences. That’s something we’re really talking about more and more now at Stash. Our platform has always been good about offering expert financial advice to the average customer, but now we’re thinking about how machine learning can take it to the next level and offer tailored advice specifically for an individual.
Chen: Stash’s mission is to simplify investing and make it easy and affordable for everyday Americans to build wealth and achieve their financial goals. We help customers set long-term investment goals and provide diversified portfolios and various account types to fit their financial needs. We recently developed a new onboarding flow based on massive user experience research to better guide users through their journeys. Every project the team works on aims to improve users’ experiences and make investment more accessible to more Americans; this is what resonates with my purpose the most.
Khan: Starting small and staying consistent can make a big difference in your personal finances. This thought process also holds true for our product portfolio. We build in increments and at a consistent pace to enable us to always deliver our best solutions to our customers. We are constantly integrating with new technologies and applications that feed into our data lake. With consistency and reliability built into our process, we’re able to integrate, test and deliver quickly.
What are you the most genuinely excited about when you come to work every day?
Bigelow: I’m most excited about getting to collaborate on really complex problems. If something isn’t working, we change it. The mission of Stash is about empowering our customers to realize their financial goals, but I see us also empowering each other to work the way that we want to work as we try to realize our product goals.
Chen: I am excited about discovering new opportunities from data and applying machine learning to improve users’ experiences. As our user base grows, so do the opportunities for machine learning to make search easier, make home pages more personalized, recommend more diversified portfolios and learn from online feedback. I believe customer empathy is important, and it is always exciting to improve our services based on customers’ direct and indirect feedback.
Khan: The most exciting part of working at Stash is knowing that our solutions are shaping our customers’ future wealth. If that itself isn’t motivating enough, I don’t know what is. But outside of that, I really enjoy working with my teams. They are all inspiring and supportive. They allow me to be myself and help explore new ways of getting things done.
