Source: EthanBloch.com
Last week, we gave you the rundown on Digit, an app without an interface that helps you tuck away some savings without even knowing it. This week, get to know the brains behind Digit by checking out our conversation with CEO Ethan Bloch.
On the strength of Digit’s rise and the successful sale of his previous startup, Flowtown, Bloch has established himself as one of the sharpest minds out on the Left Coast. As he demonstrates, however, entrepreneurial success is far more the result of overcoming challenges than it is random flashes of inspiration in an incubator.
The long, winding road to Digit’s launch began with Bloch’s bar mitzvah. Bloch wasn’t the first, and won’t be the last, to misspend his bar mitzvah cash, but he may be the first to blow it all on over-indexed technology stocks…
Launching Digit has been a 17-year journey. For me, my passion for finance started when I was 13 years old because I grew up on the web. In 1998, we had the advent of online brokerages and this was at the same time as my bar mitzvah, so I got a bunch of money and started day trading technology stocks.
I had no idea what I was doing but at that time it was impossible to lose money, so I thought I was genius.
In April 2001, I was over-indexed in Telecom and lost everything. I was broke at 16 years old. So, I realized, “I have no fucking idea how this works. I’m going to explore this and find the truths underlining finance.”
Three years later, I was at the University of Florida working in the finance and research department. That’s when I started getting deeper in behavioral finance and started understanding that the human brain is really bad at dealing with the complex system we’ve created around us over the last 400-500 years.
After graduating from school in 2008, Bloch moved to San Fran to produce a video series, before joining Cake Financial. Three months on, he was cut in a sweep of layoffs. Bloch found opportunity in the setback.
I’d been doing a lot of marketing, so I started selling that skill because I needed to pay rent. That ended up becoming a full-fledged, venture-backed company called Flowtown, which I ran for three years.
The resurrection and eventual sale of Flowtown gave Bloch the chance to catch his breath and figure out what comes next.
I found myself in this position where I had enough money to do anything, but not enough where I didn’t have to do anything.
So, I spent some time soul searching because I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to find something I could wake up and derive meaning from. I had money and it didn’t solve everything that I thought it would.
After a few months, I realized I could wake up and work on finance every day and that’s it. I really enjoy the problems and how they help people.
If we have day-trading machines, could we make one for solving basic financial problem for American individuals? Who the fuck knows if we actually get there.
So I started working on Digit in November 2012, but we didn’t get anywhere until summer 2013 and even from there it took another year to get the technology working. In August 2014, we had a product named Digit that would automatically save on the things that you could save.
One man’s “well-rounded” is another’s “jack of all trades, master of none.” Bloch remains cognizant of his diverse background and how it shapes Digit.
I’m a strong generalist. It’s a strength and a weakness, but I try to focus on that. The approach is holistic.
It all starts with the customer. That’s always been the traditional viewpoint from marketing and now it’s the same for design. Don Draper is all about what is the feeling. It’s not even about the product.
Where that comes through with Digit is when we’re building products, we’re thinking, “How this product would be described? How would consumers feel about it? How would people feel using it? What is that customer experience??
We don’t use a single mental model. Psychology, engineering, physics, economics, social science – they’re all considered.
The key to individual success? A great team, of course.
If you’re finishing up school or you didn’t go to school and you want to launch your own tech or software company, I think, if you can stomach it, it’s in your interest to join a company that you admire that is at some stage in their journey.
I joined Cake Financial right out of school and even though I was laid off after three months, that was the network I was able to tap back into when I started Flowtown.
If you work with a great team and company, the people you meet and things you learn are going to be unbelievably helpful when you start your own venture. That’s going to be the first thing you’re asked when you start a new company, “Who is going to be on your team?”
It’s incredibly difficult to recruit in engineering particularly, so having a great network is important. Join something and go from there.
On being labeled an “entrepreneur.”
I didn’t identify with the word entrepreneur until my early 20s. I didn’t understand there was a title for what I’d been doing since I was 10, 11 years old. I started BlockHardware.com when I was 12 years old. I was selling video game parts from China.
I just knew that I liked being able to express my imagination in the physical world, and business has been the medium in which I can.
Be sure to check out our review of Digit right over here.
