Yogesh Mulwani - VP of Technology at Backbase

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Yogesh, the VP of Technology at Backbase, and we discuss how recent events have accelerated the need for digital transformation, keeping things fun and interesting for your employees in a remote work environment, and how to use failure to your advantage when innovating at a rapid pace. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:37) Now, were you, when you were in school and you were young with your friends, were you all into technology, or how did you first get interested in technology?

(Yogesh at 00:00:44) Not at all. I would say my school was mainly around, if you think of how schools and the education works back in India where I grew up and then I went to school and everything, it is mainly around having focus on science and math and those subjects more than anything else. Right? So my technology, the love of technology, started when I was graduating from my high school, and then I think that's where I started doing some programming. And I started working with the basics, the COBOL of the world back then, and moved into the whole Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C++ stack, which was the modern tech back then in 2000, early 2000s, like late nineties or so on.

(Yogesh at 00:01:30) And then I started working on the product with a product company, which was basically a Germany-based product company building some digital platforms, basically moving away from the Microsoft stack to Java stack. And I think that's where I started working in the Java technology, which I am till date working and love working in that space. And I think that's where I started working with the whole enterprise stack with Java and everything, building digital platforms, doing a lot of product development. And I think that's where I started loving what we can do with technology, right? Giving this whole digital channel and platform to the consumers. And I think that's what I've been doing all my life, working on the customer-facing applications, a lot of digital channel-focused and transformation space. So yeah, I fell in love with the whole space of technology and digital, building some of those products earlier in my career.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:25) Nice. Now do you have any memorable first projects that you really enjoyed?

(Yogesh at 00:02:30) Yeah, yeah. And in fact, it was very interesting back then. So when I started working with the product development, it was a Germany-based company, which was based 30 kilometers away from Frankfurt. And they were into a lot of consumer appliance comparison kind of application. And even though you go and buy products, you still want to do some comparison before you go. And if you can imagine, this is 2000, early 2000s, right, where we can't just go on internet and find a lot of reviews, ratings. Usually you look for some kind of a boxed solution. And this company used to sell the software, which once you sell it, you have subscription for the database that comes as monthly CDs with all the latest and greatest consumer appliances information. And you load that CD, you load that data, and you start using that for making your consumer appliance decisions of which product you want to go with, be it your refrigerator, be it your television, and whatnot, right?

(Yogesh at 00:03:34) But it's pretty cool to see how technology has evolved since then. And now we used to interact with all these desktop applications with CDs coming in with all the data loaded to where we are today.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:45) Yeah. I remember going to the store, and we'd browse all the boxes of software and see what's coming out. And they had those weird Velcro dots on them, and you could open them up and see. Yeah, I remember that for sure.

(Yogesh at 00:03:58) Yeah, old times fun. Yeah, it was all fun. And I think that's where I realized how, after a few years of working in that space and then again working in the internet era of digital applications deployed on the net and then cloud—I mean, the technology moves really fast, so you have to really be on top of the whole tech stack, right? And that's what I do in my job. I'm making sure that we are using the right technology, we're using the right tech stack, the right architecture, right? So you really have to give the latest and greatest to the consumers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:34) Absolutely. Yeah, we were just talking the other day with the difference in government technology being super usable and easy. And everyone expects, you know, you go through a DMV online experience—it is not like an Apple App Store experience. The consumers have a high bar, a high standard.

(Yogesh at 00:04:51) Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think they have seen the best in class now, and they expect that from everyone, irrespective of the size, irrespective of which organization you represent, whether it's federal government or private. So I think that's what I see even in my space right now, where a lot of large banks, national international banks, they invest a lot of money in the transformation, the simplification of the journey, the transformational AI, machine learning-driven solutions. And if a person is still with a community bank or credit union, they really expect the same level of interaction, the same level of innovation coming from even these other banks, right? I mean, because they have seen it working for a lot of other organizations. So I mean, they demand the same level of experience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:40) Oh, yeah. I mean, when COVID happened, all the—you know, I bank at a larger bank and used to that technology—but they were all backed up. So I got through front, you know, when that first happened. Everybody was freaking out, calling each other. You know, everyone went from online world to text and the small groups that you know. And I got connected to a regional bank here and went through the process, and they got me the PPP.

(Yogesh at 00:06:04) Oh, that's great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:06) But, you know, I got an account with them, and they were very fantastic, super, super nice, had that total community feel. But the technology is just not even close to the technology and how simple and beautiful and easy it is on these much larger providers. And I was trying to figure out when I was researching VUE and Backbase, what part of the market are you in? Are you helping the community banks? Do you help the large national banks? Where are you in the market?

(Yogesh at 00:06:34) So we definitely have some of the large banks as our customers, but I think the spot we really focus on is the mid-tier community banks, the credit unions, who really look for the speed, the acceleration, the flexibility of deploying solutions to their consumers and members. They really look for a platform-led approach, and Backbase becomes the partner in the platform that they can really go out with in the shortest amount of time with the most modern-looking applications, sitting on the legacy tech stack. Even if they have the old school core systems, the mainframe systems that have been built in the nineties and early 2000s, and they're still running the core banking applications on that, you can still deploy Backbase for the modern digital touchpoints and experiences. So that's a sweet spot. The community banks, the regional banks, the credit unions are definitely the largest representation of our customers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:31) And I was talking with Jean Denis, who's the CTO over at Plaid, and we were talking about, you know, where they sit in the market. They do these back-end systems for, you know, Robinhood, Venmo, kind of build on top of them. And then I saw a couple different other financial companies, and it seems like the platform word is becoming a really popular word. But usually when that happens, there's lots of differences between what they mean when they say platform. And so I wanted to get some clarity on the financial space. Is Plaid something that's a competitor, or are they just in a totally different part of the market?

(Yogesh at 00:08:07) Yeah, in fact, they are partners.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:09) Okay.

(Yogesh at 00:08:09) And if you see how Backbase plays a role of platform or that engagement banking platform or the unified layer, it actually sits pretty much in the center of your overall digital applications, your third-party service providers like Plaid and Jumio and a lot of other third-party fintechs, and your enterprise systems, which are basically your core banking systems, your CRM, your other enterprise analytics and data systems, and so on. So Backbase actually sits in the center of it as one unified layer of all the microservices, all the business logic sitting there on top of your APIs of your core banking system and so on, and then owning your digital experiences, right? So consider that as a middleware and the digital channels and everything else which empowers this overall solution. The mobile apps, the online banking portals, your employee-facing applications—all of those different fintechs can be plugged into Backbase to build that really powerful system so that customers can get access to the personal finance management functionality using Yodlee or MX or other fintechs through Backbase, or Plaid can provide that account funding or external account aggregation, again plugging into Backbase and delivering that experience on the digital channel. So that's the overall ecosystem you get when you go with Backbase.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:34) I love it. It sounds like a very useful tool inside of the market. I'm curious to know, are you getting requests or have you done anything with the digital currencies?

(Yogesh at 00:09:44) So a lot of our customers who are in banking or even neobank and digital bank space, they are doing a lot of experiments with Backbase, and they're looking to build or integrate some of the digital currencies or cryptocurrencies integration. So it's not limited to just one or two currencies. You can operate in multiple currencies if you have a platform like Backbase. And if you have the cryptocurrency as one of your acceptable currency types, you can definitely bring it on Backbase. So it's basically an international solution which works across EMEA, Asia Pacific, US, Canada, LATAM, the whole Americas. And you can really use any currencies, right? So you can go and extend the platform to work with cryptocurrencies, but we don't limit our customers to any of the currency types. You can pretty much support any currency you want, the national level or the crypto ones.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:38) That's pretty cool. Yeah, so I'm kind of getting a good idea, wrapping my mind around this. Now I had a question. You said you worked with this company in Germany. Did you actually get to live in Germany when you were over there?

(Yogesh at 00:10:49) Yeah, I was there for six months. I was actually working very closely with the end users to understand the behavior and then also how they interact with the system, how they really use the platform and so on. So kind of you get that feeling really sitting with the end users, and then you basically define the journeys. You define the design patterns and also how that system should interact, right? So my focus has been mainly around building that frictionless customer experience. And if you sit with the customers, you go and do double-jacking with the contact center folks, you really see, well, what are the pain points? Where are the frictions? And you pretty much focus on those to simplify the overall journey. So yeah, I was in Germany for six months near Frankfurt, a place called Rüsselsheim. And I was doing a lot of user research. I was doing the architecture piece with my enterprise architecture team there. It was a fun experience. I loved it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:41) That's one of my favorite parts. It's like baking a cake in a kitchen and then getting to come out and serve it and actually see the people interact with it. It really is the most rewarding part, is to see their face when it clicks or to watch them solve that problem, and you get that joy. It's contagious.

(Yogesh at 00:11:59) It is, it is. It's pretty rewarding. Yeah, if you're kind of really delivering something and you're really passionate about how your customers are using and leveraging the platform, yeah, it's pretty rewarding when you see it's really solving the real-life problems, right? So that's one of the goals of Backbase. I mean, if you see our mission, it's basically to make our customers, who are banks and credit unions, the banks that people love, right? So what that means is you really deliver the functionalities, really deliver the innovation to your customers which can really make their financial lives easy, right? To meet the financial goals. They attain the financial well-being and so on. So that's a goal. I mean, that is not a technology transformation. It's basically how you really help your end customers attaining the financial goals. And I think that's how we even deliver or build our features, right? It's all solely focused on what end customers are really looking for. And then you basically go from there. You build the product, you build the features, and you deliver it to customers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:02) Yeah, because these community banks with five or six locations, they don't have a team of software engineers.

(Yogesh at 00:13:07) Not at all. Yeah, they're actually looking for partners who can really think from their perspective and deliver a solution which is competitive, which is modern, and can really solve their customers' or members' problems, right? So I think that's where Backbase really plays a partner role, not a platform, but really a partner role who can sit with you, understand your problems, and deliver the best-in-class customer experience to your members. I mean, if you go and talk to some of our customers, I mean, their members and customers are really wowed by the features because they really don't expect a community bank having just presence in one single state delivering this kind of neo or digital features that you can only expect from fintechs.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:54) And so why did you decide Backbase is the place that I want to work? I want to go and spend time there.

(Yogesh at 00:14:00) That's pretty interesting. So most of my career is spent in consulting. First ten years of my career focused mainly on product development, portal solutions, content management solutions. A lot of these platforms were meant for the customer-facing application build. And then I started working in the consulting space where I started working with financial services organizations, some of the large financial services organizations who have deep pockets. They can spend millions of dollars in building innovation, failing fast, and experimenting and seeing what works and what doesn't. And if you see how they operate, it's pretty phenomenal, right? I mean, they have appetite to pretty much run as a startup and then also bring a lot of wealth of knowledge of banking industry. And they basically deliver the best-in-class solutions, and they deliver it first before any of the other mid-tier or tier-three, tier-four customers or banks do. But if you—and part of my career or the last four or five years of my career has focused on, has been focusing on, the community banks and credit unions, as I said. And I've really seen a big stark contrast in how the large banks operate and how those community banks and credit unions operate, right? I mean, they have a mission to deploy applications in cloud. They have ambitions to really go and deliver the best-in-class digital application experiences to their customers and members.

(Yogesh at 00:15:34) They all really want to use the AI, machine learning, data, and analytics to deliver the insights and offers which their members really care about. But there's really a big lack of knowledge and skill pool within those organizations. So last five years, I focused on building those platform-led or accelerator-led approaches for these banks and credit unions. And I think that's where I saw Backbase was playing a very critical role, focusing and building the platforms just to cater these mid-tier and tier three, tier four banks and consumer and digital banks.

(Yogesh at 00:16:11) And that's where I started my interest in seeing if that's a perfect match between what I've been trying to do being in a consulting world and what Backbase is trying to do leading the platform-led approach. So I started my conversations with a few key stakeholders, executives, and Backbase. I think I found it was a perfect match, what I was trying to solve outside of a platform company and what these guys are trying to solve here. And I think we started a relationship earlier this year, and it's been going really well. I'm trying to influence the product vision and road map to some extent by getting a lot of feedback from the banks and credit unions in the U.S., and also be able to deliver the platform within their ecosystems and landscape.

(Yogesh at 00:16:55) So I think that perfect match or DNA match was a critical, pivotal point for me to make that decision.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:02) Yeah. I saw that you started in February, and it's like you started right before COVID hit. And so you come in, you have all these ideas, and then boom. And out of nowhere, banks become one of the hottest conversation topics in the world with having to distribute these funds. Did it change your thoughts at all about or your development pipeline? What impact did this have on the company?

(Yogesh at 00:17:27) I would say it had a huge impact. I think when the whole COVID situation started, I think there was a lot of concern in the market in general, globally, and I don't think anybody could predict what would happen in the next six to nine months. But I think very soon we realized the banks who had maybe pushed their transformation for another two to three years, they really woke up and they really thought that this is a moment where they have to do something about moving away from the brick and mortar way of working to moving completely into digital. So a lot of pipeline was developed on the prospect side.

(Yogesh at 00:18:04) We got a lot of interest from banks on delivering the PPP solution and also delivering the digital onboarding and origination solutions. Because as you can imagine, nobody is going to the branches anymore for getting onboarded or buying mortgages and so on. So all of these applications have been submitted from digital channels. And believe it or not, I mean, a lot of these community banks and credit unions, they're not ready for end-to-end digital onboarding and origination. There are a lot of frictions. There's a lot of manual steps that are in place right now. And most of the time, we just end up calling call contact centers to speak to a CSR or MSR to complete your application process. And I think that's a problem that I think has been kind of discovered very widely, that a lot of these organizations, they don't have a solution in that space. And I think we launched a very relevant product earlier this year, which is basically digital sales. And we have seen phenomenal interest in digital sales pipeline in the last six months or so.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:08) That's pretty cool.

(Yogesh at 00:19:10) So yeah, huge impact. There's a lot of positive development. There are a lot of programs that have started in the last three months, and there's a big pipeline to start in the next two quarters or so.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:21) So take me out ten years. What's the long-term vision for Backbase?

(Yogesh at 00:19:27) Yeah. I would start with what's our vision for 2021, let's say, and then I'll iterate between 2021 and the next ten years. So the vision for us is, I think, the organizations have moved from just cross-channels or omnichannel solution to basically an engagement banking platform, or you can think of a single solution which kind of gives the same experiences across every single digital and non-digital channel.

(Yogesh at 00:19:59) When you call contact center, when you go to an ATM, when you go to a merchant which accepts your card, you expect the same level of experience. You expect the real-time communication, contextual offers which come to you knowing where you are in your financial journey. And I think that's a goal that we have put in place for ourselves for 2021, that banks should really look at Backbase as a unified engagement banking platform layer. And if you're building a retail banking onboarding solution, you can pretty much roll out a new onboarding solution in a month or so. If you're rolling out a new mobile app for your SME banking, which is small and medium business banking, you have a productized app that you can really launch to your customers in, let's say, two to three months on iOS and Android. So the acceleration is the key to our goal. And I think that's what we are trying to achieve in 2021, making Backbase as a single common layer which empowers every single digital application that you run on any of those channels and locations.

(Yogesh at 00:21:06) Between 2021 and ten years, I would say technology will move really fast. Our mission is to really predict what customer is looking for before they started looking for us. So really data-oriented, AI-driven solutions, and the technology is becoming really invisible. So Alexas and voice assistants and all of those things will take over the real touchpoints. And you would interact with all these invisible technologies that people have started to doing that. So I think our mission is basically to really be on the channel where customers would be looking for your presence and be able to access your services and products.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:46) You gotta build an app for the Neuralink App Store. They don't even have an App Store yet. But when we get the brain interface implants, we'll be able to do our banking through your app on the Neuralink App Store.

(Yogesh at 00:21:58) Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's a good goal that we can put in for ten years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:02) I'll put you—you can pitch it to the investors. Just let me know how it goes. Okay. So with this acceleration, has that created a large hiring need? Are you growing your teams there?

(Yogesh at 00:22:15) Yeah. We've been growing a lot in the last six months, I would say, and I think the growth will only go full speed in the next few quarters. So we have put some goals for ourselves. We almost doubled our U.S. hub presence in last six months or so, and I think the goal is to add another 60 to 70% more strength for our U.S. hub. The idea is also to now go global. So we are also creating and establishing Backbase development centers. One is being erected in Poland, another one being erected in India, and another one in Mexico. So I think the idea is to really have that global support for our customers and have the 24/7 implementation support, production support. So they really have that support from Backbase to run their mission-critical applications.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:08) So looking back, having recently—I love when I get information recently. Past six months, you essentially doubled. What's the one takeaway, the one learning that's going to stick with you for a while from that doubling?

(Yogesh at 00:23:25) I would say while we are doubling and moving really fast, I think we really have to carry the DNA and the culture and the ethos that Backbase has put in place. The values are really important for us. So if I can just highlight a few, I mean, we really want people to have that can-do attitude. So every single person who joins Backbase goes through not just a technical screening and interview process, but also DNA check. So we really make sure that we have people who believe in our values, who have that can-do attitude, who can be entrepreneurial on the job, fail fast, learn from the mistakes, and improve the way of working. So that's a value that we really look for from every single one.

(Yogesh at 00:24:10) So I think it's a challenge that you can find those values in every single person. They're rare. So it's been a challenge to find the right folks who can join and be part of Backbase, but we have had successes as well. I think we have found some really good people in last six months who will join our family, and I think the plan is to just keep on growing that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:33) Do you have any tools that you use? Or do you just—what's your process? How do you figure out the attitude and how do you do that at scale?

(Yogesh at 00:24:43) So we do have tools. We do have tests and assessments that we start the engineer screening process where you basically go through the whole code assessment and coding cycle, and then you submit that application with your code assessment. We have engineers who do the assessment of your submission. They grade you, they rank you, and they basically tell whether you have the right skills to be hands-on developer at Backbase or you miss some of the key skills. And then you have a couple of rounds of interviews.

(Yogesh at 00:25:14) So you basically go through the technical round, you go through the DNA round, and then basically if you cross all of that, you are with Backbase. In some of the other cases or other roles like solution architect and technology manager and so on, we also have a presentation, which is basically a case presentation. You're given a case where panel would do a role play, and basically, you come and present your case. You talk about how you led the transformation, what impediments you faced, what were the learnings, and how would you do differently if you had to do it all over again.

(Yogesh at 00:25:47) And basically, if you present the case well and you have the right skills and cultural values, I think you're a good match. So it's not just a coding assessment, not just the interviews, but also the case presentation, which kind of helps us decide who's the right candidate for a job.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:04) That's pretty cool. I haven't heard that last one yet. I like that.

(Yogesh at 00:26:07) Yeah. And it has proven its value. I mean, you can really see people in action when they come and present, and you'll really see some people who are passionate about what they do and how they present, and some people who have already crossed all the interviews, but they don't really do as good in the case presentation. And I think for us, it's really important that you're not just good at technical skills, but you also cross the DNA match and also have ability to present your own work.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:35) That's so important. Being able to—because if you can't communicate your own work accurately, then how are you going to communicate when your work, on a lower level, when you're with a team, right?

(Yogesh at 00:26:47) Absolutely. Yeah. It's critical for us to have that kind of skill and ability in every single role.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:55) Yeah. I've noticed there's an evolution in the job market because, you know, there was a time when, you know, it was totally cool to be not great at communicating and just really hyper-good at what you do. But then now, now that there's so many different technologies, we're all forced to work together. You can't just be one person. You can't just be an island.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:18) Now that put a premium on people who have the ability to do, but then also to communicate and interact about what they did.

(Yogesh at 00:27:26) Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And Backbase, especially, I think it's key to have that communication skill because it's a highly collaborative environment. You really communicate with your team members, your customers, your stakeholders, so you really should be able to communicate. We do have people who are really good at heads-down development and they're nerds, and they can produce a lot of good code. But we really expect them to kind of present the work throughout and be able to communicate with the team members, have that participation in that collaborative model within the company. So I think that makes that skill a little bit more critical that way, that be able to share what you're doing with others so that everybody can take benefit out of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:08) Yeah. Because it used to be like you had a pass, right? Like, I don't have to—I see this as a separate skill that I don't have to have because I have this other skill. And now it's like you have to develop that skill to some degree. You can't just close the door on it, you know.

(Yogesh at 00:28:25) Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's a trend, industry-wide. I think there's a lot of importance which is given not just on the hard skills, but also the soft skills. The team-working skills, the communication, how you work with the customers and key stakeholders, all of that matters.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:44) Now I wanted—we have a community and we get questions from the community. And I wanted to know one of the recent topics in there was talking about remote pay because there's a lot of people leaving Silicon Valley and, you know, different—that's a hot topic right now going on. And, you know, do they decrease their salaries when they move? Do they increase their salaries if they move to a different place and how that goes about, you know, just you don't have to answer about Backbase specifically. But I'm just curious, have you had this conversation? Has this conversation come up in your world?

(Yogesh at 00:29:21) It does. And as you can imagine, the cost of living and where you live obviously influences the pay. I mean, you pay more at some locations, and there's a premium to live there. So we do consider if we hire people from those high cost of living areas, we understand that there will be a premium that we have to pay to make their life and financial goals meet. So that's obviously the factor that goes in and deciding what kind of compensation structure and package would be given to the candidate. But these days, I mean, it really doesn't matter where you're working from, but we know when we are hiring people from Silicon Valley and New York, there's definitely a premium that you end up paying because, I mean, you don't want to put them on the generic pay scale where it's very difficult for them to manage the higher cost of living in that region.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:16) Yeah. Luckily, the cost of living is coming down in New York because everybody's leaving.

(Yogesh at 00:30:21) It is. It is. Absolutely. I'm wondering how long-term it is, though.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:25) Oh, I know. Yeah. It's definitely—and it's not a ton. I just saw the other day that I think it was 15 or 20% of the commercial buildings were now empty, and that's the highest it's been in a long time. And I was like, yeah. I mean, it's not 80%. It's not like a ghost town. But we'll see what happens with the bigger cities. I think there's a lot of benefits. I don't happen to live in a big city. I tend to like space. I just like more open space, probably because that's where I grew up. So that's just my personal preference. But where are you based?

(Yogesh at 00:30:54) Where are you based?

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:55) I'm based about an hour south of Tampa, Florida.

(Yogesh at 00:30:59) Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:00) So Tampa is usually the city most people know. I'm just an hour south and east of that, like, southeast of it.

(Yogesh at 00:31:07) Got it. Yeah. I've been in the New York area for last ten or twelve years now, almost now. I have lived close to the city for most of my life, and I have recently moved away from the city in the suburbs of New York. So not too far from the city, but still not in the city life anymore.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:25) Oh yeah, I have family in Westchester, so we go up there a lot.

(Yogesh at 00:31:28) I'm in Westchester.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:29) Oh, you are?

(Yogesh at 00:31:30) Oh, nice. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:32) It's a great place. It's a nice little town.

(Yogesh at 00:31:34) It's beautiful. I love it. Yeah, I just moved here a month ago and I love it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:37) Oh, great. Yeah, there's all these little shops and it's like, it's interesting because you can be on a train and you can be in the city, and then in an hour you can be like out in open spaces. And so I really like it up there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:52) Yeah.

(Yogesh at 00:31:52) Absolutely. No, it's good. Let me know when you come next time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:56) Oh, for sure. Yeah. And I bet, you know, it's such a small town up there too.

(Yogesh at 00:32:01) It is. Yeah, it is. It's not a big place. Yeah. I'm in Pelham Manor. I mean, all the Westchester towns are like pretty small.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:09) So you have a lot of experience, I noticed in your profile, with digital transformation. Are there any people that are like hesitant to this, or is everyone pretty much 100% "let's do it" now that these recent changes have happened?

(Yogesh at 00:32:25) I would say that if you had asked me this question maybe six months ago, I think there were a lot of people who were hesitant to leading or taking that leap and going through the transformation, right? But now it's evident that if you're not taking that leap, if you're not going through the transformation now, you're actually risking the presence for your organization. Right? So technology and digital used to be kind of a secondary channel for a lot of financial organizations because it was all relationship based, a lot of community based way of working.

(Yogesh at 00:32:58) But I think now it's pretty clear that if you're not investing in digital technologies, if you're not building that digital infrastructure and giving that touch point to the customer, it's a big risk to the organization. A lot of banks, as you will be tracking, they either get acquired or they lose a lot of customer base because a lot of fintechs are trying to acquire those customers by giving the best in class journeys and financial tools to the customer. So it's a big risk. So I think the hesitance or even the concern has gone away, and I think a lot of smaller banks and mid-tier banks, they're really looking to take that leap and go through the transformation. And I think most of the banks have realized they have to do it sooner than later.

(Yogesh at 00:33:45) So that's the reason we see a lot of intake pipeline, which basically is asking how quickly we can go out and release a mobile app, let's say. How quickly we can go out and release point solutions like the onboarding origination or PFM solutions to our customer. When the whole PPP journey started, a lot of our customers worked with us to see how quickly they can roll out the PPP onboarding, or how quickly they can release a loan amount to the customer. So those are the real problems that banks are trying to solve. And I think the easiest tool or the simplest tool that they can go out with is the digital channels, right?

(Yogesh at 00:34:23) So I don't think there's any concern or confusion there anymore. It's pretty clear that you have to take a leap and you have to go through the three year or five year transformation journey to really transform the organization.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:36) Yeah, and then the leaders that did it early, they paved the way because it's like that first 20% they're doing it, and then all the smaller ones are looking at them like, "Oh yeah, that's nice to have," or, you know, whatever. But then it just becomes that all of a sudden it just kind of happens. There's no like date you get a press release that it happens. It just becomes the standard and it's just like this is what people need now. So then all of that happens, increases, you know, the need for you to grow your organization so you can continue to help and service your customers at scale. And then you have to double and add, you know, all these people within six months. And then how did that impact, like, your direct reports and then the stack of teams within teams? Did you have to develop leadership programs? How did you manage that?

(Yogesh at 00:35:23) Yeah, so the idea is to really scale, right? If you have so many customers who are taking this journey of transformation and they're really looking to kind of implement Backbase and release all these applications over the next six to nine months, we really have to build that scale. And I think that's why we even doubled our presence in the US, and I think it will only grow, as I said, out of the 70% increase in our strength right now and the employee base in the US, and then opening the Backbase development centers globally to provide that support for the growing business. So the idea is to build more leaders.

(Yogesh at 00:36:00) Since I've joined, I have added four more leaders in the organization in the US hub, just in this region, who are helping with leading some of the more complex solutions for our banks, deploying Backbase, implementing and integrating the solution with a lot of core banking systems and the third party systems. So it's all about building that leadership layer and then, obviously, hiring the right candidates and employees to support those transformational programs. So that has been the approach so far, and it's working well. I think we just want to continue doing that at a bigger scale over the next few quarters.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:39) Now if you put yourself in the position of your direct reports, like when you were back at that stage of your career, I was just curious, like, did you ever join any community groups or, you know, VP of Engineering groups, or did you ever do any of that?

(Yogesh at 00:36:58) I have always been mentored by, like, the head of technologies. In my last organization, I was working with a large national bank where I was working directly with the CIO and his teams. So I think I've always found leaders around me and the work that I've been doing. So I think I've been lucky to get that coaching and mentorship from some of the leaders to kind of look up to them and learn from them. And then I try to do the same thing for my team, making sure that they are getting the right coaching, they're getting the right support to do the job well, right? I mean, they have the right leadership skills, and then they have somebody to kind of go and get some guidance from. So I think that's a leadership style that I've been working with, even when I was playing the development and architecture role, and I always had some leader around me to provide that coaching. So I think it's very important to have that mentorship and coaching around you, right?

(Yogesh at 00:37:56) So I made sure that we try to foster the culture within Backbase, and I think that's my advice to everybody. If you are in the growth stage and you're moving from development to architecture to leading the teams, I think you always have that coach around you to guide you and give you those lessons that he has learned from his experiences.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:18) Oh, for sure. When I, if I could like go back in time and tap myself on the shoulder, I would have said, like, find peer groups or find groups of people, you know, start going to meetups when they did happen, but I'm sure they're happening like digitally now. But get involved sooner versus just like reading the books and wanting to be the best engineer. Because once I got plugged in and I got around all of these people and got to see different people from different companies, and really it just gives you a better visualization of your job and what you're doing when you have peers that do, because like, not your peers will never do exactly what you do. It'll always be like what you do but like slightly flavored in a different way. And that for some reason is just, it's like an intangible. It's really useful to hear them talk about it from a slightly different perspective. And we were debating a lot about how to do that with the podcast, you know, because we have such a large audience and people will reach out and, you know, we're on year four now going on for the podcast and...

(Yogesh at 00:39:18) Wow.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:18) We hadn't done anything, but we get a lot of outreach. And then I got connected with Seven CTOs. They're like an executive peer group for CTOs. And they said that they had like a lot of their members were talking about wanting stuff for their direct reports, you know, to help grow their direct reports with peers, because that seems to be like a level that's left out in the, not the financial world, but in business models. You see at the top tier, like, "Oh, I want you to join my group for $15,000 to $25,000 a year." And everyone focuses on the executive at the top, but there wasn't really anything in the middle. So I got together with Seven CTOs and we brainstormed a little bit and created a group called Elevate. And we haven't even like announced it or launched it yet. But I'm curious to get your feedback on it. So maybe after the show, I'll send it to you and you take a look and just be like, "Yeah, my initial impressions are this," because that's the only way we can like calibrate if we're doing the right thing.

(Yogesh at 00:40:14) I would love to. I would love to. Absolutely. I think I really believe in like building that next layer, right? And you can only help yourself in an organization if you're building more leaders, right? So you can have a lot of people who really contribute in the construction and development. But if you don't have that middle layer, the leadership layer, right, you really are not going to scale, right? You're always going to kind of react to situations, but you cannot be prepared for the large scale that you're going for. So I totally believe that if you are running that initiative where you're running that peer group where people can really see how you can get into the role and be successful, I think that's a great initiative. Yeah, I would be happy to give my feedback and participate there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:57) Oh, thanks. Yeah, I was, and then I'm curious to know like how do you, we talked about failure, we talked about growing. You even talked about like how some of these other companies, they'll fail fast. And I know we all as leaders like we talk about failure a lot and with our teams, but can you give me some insight or like something more solid? Like you do a project and like your team failed and then, like, can you give me something raw and real?

(Yogesh at 00:41:25) Absolutely. And I think that happens pretty much almost every other week at Backbase where we attempt something completely new and completely uncharted territory which we haven't tried before. And we quickly try to see whether it will work or not, and we go from there. So even if you see our organizational level experiments or initiatives that we try to take, like we have Banking as a Service, which is basically now a very well-managed hosting solution. But when it started, it was more of an experiment making sure that if we go out and give the managed hosting and deployment models to our customer, for us to own their deployment solutions, whether that will work or not.

(Yogesh at 00:42:07) And if that will work, what would be the monitoring management solution? How will we make sure that it's protected from DDoS attacks, any other cyber threats, and so on? And I think there was a lot of experiment that happened before we said, "Okay, I think this is doable, and the solution will definitely help our customers to unburden from running their own cloud infrastructure and even building their own cloud teams." And they can easily give the whole Backbase and the digital experience solutions for us to manage it on our cloud infrastructure, which is AWS.

(Yogesh at 00:42:41) So I think some of those experiments, this is one of the experiments that worked, and it's successful. But a lot of other experiments, when we try to go and build certain features which are very new, very fintech, very ambitious, they don't turn out to be successful every single time, right? So right now, we are working on a lot of solutions which are, again, very forward looking. We are trying to build applications for families and kids who can go and manage their own finances and learn the finance management very early in their life.

(Yogesh at 00:43:14) So we are building a kids app, which is basically targeted for kids who are 10 years and above, for example. And that will really give them a feel of how they manage the finances. They have a limit that parent can set, and it could be like a couple of $100 every month that they can manage, but really giving them the power, right? So we're doing that experiment, and I think we have a mission and goal to deliver it in 2021. So I think those are experiments that we try. We try to see if they work or not. And if they work, they become part of the product. And if they don't, it's a good learning for the organization.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:50) That is so cool. So is this like hypothetical money or is it...

(Yogesh at 00:43:55) It's real money.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:56) Oh, it's real money.

(Yogesh at 00:43:56) It's real money, controlled by and owned by your parent, but they give you a monthly allowance, let's say $100 or $50, and it's completely up to you how you manage it, right? You can create some pockets, which basically are your savings goals, and you can decide how much money should go in this pocket after a couple of months or six months or whatever period you decide. And basically, you can move your monthly allowances to fill those pockets to achieve your monthly or financial goals, like you want to buy a bike. And you put that target for six months, and you move money as and when you're getting monthly allowance, some money goes in that pocket. And after six months, you should have enough money to go out and tell your parent that now I have enough money saved and let's go buy a bike.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:42) That is so cool because that is one of the beautiful things about technology that was very difficult to try to do at scale with humanity when I was a kid, right? But now can be through technology. I mean, the kids already have devices of some sort, whether they're phones or tablets or whatever they may be.

(Yogesh at 00:45:02) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:02) And so now they can learn these skills that previously people were only learning, you know, after they turn 18 essentially or like 16.

(Yogesh at 00:45:10) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:10) Not young. And I love it that it's set up like that because it also gives the opportunity to send them, like, to put information in there. So they start, they go there because they're going to get their allowance. That's like the hook, that's the bait, that's what they want. They go there, but then they could see this little notification that like explains to them about like interest yielding savings account. And then the little kid, I can almost see it like I never see it for adults. It's always like complex charts and, but like if it would be so interesting to see like the children's version of that.

(Yogesh at 00:45:46) Absolutely. And it's pretty exciting. Yeah. It's very exciting the way the whole design is coming along. It's basically really a fun solution that, it's not complex. It's not like 100 pages of agreement that you have to read. It's basically a very fun interactive way of dealing with money. And if you achieve goals, you get badges, you get notifications of congratulations, and it almost feels like achievement when you perform certain and achieve certain goals, right? So, I mean, it's pretty interesting to see how even our customers and banks are looking forward to these kind of solutions. It's no more a traditional banking landscape. They're really trying to give that interactive engagement to the customers, and I think some of these solutions really bring that interactivity to life.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:33) Yeah. Because it's not about the complexity of the technology. It's about the simplicity of the experience and getting the result. My wife recently, she's got this app. Her goal first was to start drinking more water, just to drink more water in general.

(Yogesh at 00:46:48) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:49) And because she was getting headaches and I was like, maybe it's because you're dehydrated because you're working so much at your job. And so she ended up failing a couple of times just wanting to do it and saying, okay, tomorrow I will. And then she downloaded an app, a very simple app called like Water Llama or something. I don't know. That might be the thing I call it. Anyways, it's a llama. It's like a graphic of a llama and then it fills up with water as you put it in throughout the day. You tap on it and you can change it. It could be a giraffe. It could be like a polar bear. So she lets the kids pick at dinner like what the next day is going to be. Is it going to be a llama or whatnot? And then she fills the llama up. Yeah. But it's a really—but then it worked. Then she, now she's got like 45 days of filling up the llama, you know.

(Yogesh at 00:47:33) I think that's a gamification. That's an interactive engagement-driven goals. Right? So Backbase right now is running, let's say, a running guild, which is basically Backbase employees globally kind of competing with each other and teams. They have like 25 teams, and it depends on how many steps every single team is taking every day. Right? So just because you have that game in and kind of something to look at where you can see the progress, a lot of activities happening. People are moving. They're taking a lot of steps. Even though they're working from home, they're still making sure that their team is ahead of other teams. Right? So I love the gaming and the whole engagement and interaction-driven achieving goals concept. This is amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:22) Yeah. Just, I just had a visualization of like strapping a fitness watch to like a puppy and just throwing some treats.

(Yogesh at 00:48:29) Or to the kids.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:31) Or to the kids. Oh, man. That would go crazy.

(Yogesh at 00:48:34) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:35) They don't stop moving. We took them to the zoo a few weeks ago, and I'll tell you what, I told my wife, I was like, I don't think I'm going to go to the gym today before we go to the zoo. And she goes, why? And I was like, because then I would have to eat more calories because I'm going to be just chasing them around the entire zoo. And I was right. Yeah. It was a lot of work.

(Yogesh at 00:48:55) Yeah. You can you can put your gym schedule for that day out completely. Yeah. It's a lot of—yeah. I have four-year-old twins, and I know. I mean, it's a lot of energy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:04) Oh, you've got twins.

(Yogesh at 00:49:06) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:06) Yeah. So you've had it harder than I have ever had it. Like, I have two. They're only a year and a half apart, but like, the idea of having two—is this your first kid? Yes. Yep. So your very first experience, you get twins. Are they a boy, girl? Boys, girl?

(Yogesh at 00:49:20) Boy and a girl.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:21) A boy and a girl. Nice. That's actually my—that was like my dream. That's what I told my wife. I was like, what I want is I want twins, I want a boy and a girl, and that's what I want. And because I just happen to know—I remember like my friends in middle school happened to be this boy-girl twins. I thought it was so cool. I was like, you have a built-in friend for life. Right? And so my brother just pushes me around. No. But so, but then I ended up having a girl and then a boy, and so I was like, we got it. Like, we got what we're looking for. For Christmas or for the holiday season with your team being remote distributed because of the current circumstances, have you—what we've done is we were doing a gingerbread house building competition. Yeah. So we sent—I don't know if you can see it—sent it to all of our team and we all get the same kit. Right? So there's no, there's no like your kit was different than mine. Yeah. Yeah.

(Yogesh at 00:50:18) Uh—

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:18) So we all got the same kit and then we're presenting next week. So we're all doing the designs and, interesting team thing. But have you guys done anything like that around the season?

(Yogesh at 00:50:31) Absolutely. So there's a lot going on. So while this whole running thing started just a couple of days ago, which is very health-oriented, there's a lot of fun activities happening. So for every single person at Backbase, we've been getting like some kind of fun stuff throughout the year because I think Backbase really cares about the employees and the engagement. So in the summer, let's say we got all the inflatable lounges because we could not go for the summer party this year out and physically eat with everyone. In the Christmas, everybody's getting a gift basket with all the cheese and wine and everything. And while we speak right now, there's a Secret Santa game happening with all the US employees working together and kind of giving gifts to each other.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:18) That's amazing. How do you head that up? I mean, I know you probably figure out what's going on with your direct reports, but how do you enable it at the organization as a whole?

(Yogesh at 00:51:28) So luckily, we have a few folks who are really, really fun-filled, and they have the whole concept of bringing the entire hub together. So we have people who arrange and manage some of these events. So we have a couple of people right now who manage this whole Secret Santa. They reached out to everybody asking for what gifts they want to give to one person. Right? And they don't know who's that person, but they're given that person maybe today, and they have to send the gift to that person's house. Right? So I think we have a couple of people who really go out and make sure that people are engaging with each other. There are these activities where we can bring teams together. They don't always talk about work, but also kind of take a break and relax and enjoy being part of the Backbase family. So it's basically that culture. So we have folks who kind of make sure that proactively everybody is interacting with each other. So it takes a lot of work, but it's great. It's all worth it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:28) I like this type of people too, because that's not my strength at all.

(Yogesh at 00:52:33) Mine neither.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:35) Yeah. So I like them because they're usually very friendly. They'll do it, and I don't really like doing that type of stuff. And I'd love to empower them and help them. And they also—because like, they're around, they remind me like other things to talk about other than work. And it takes the pressure off of me, and then I can just kind of like be there. And yeah, I really enjoy all the variety of people, and it's great how we all kind of like work together.

(Yogesh at 00:53:02) Yeah. Yeah. And I think you need people who can also build that kind of relationships among the entire base. Right? I mean, you really need people who can go out and be the fabric between everybody who's working on different projects, living in different places. Right? Not able to see each other, but still be able to come together, have some fun, talk about the personal lives, and kind of feel like part of family. Right? That's very important.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:31) Oh, yeah. I was reading about like the rainforest, and—

(Yogesh at 00:53:34) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:35) There's like, it's very diverse and then the roots go really far and then there's like the soil and the roots and then there's nutrients that pass like a network that pass between them. Yeah. And there are these little things called mycelium that essentially broker or transmit the nutrients between the roots. And I was like, they're like the glue of—the glue. Yeah. The glue. And I'm like, I see that in people. There are people who—like, everyone has job titles and roles, but it's like what the actions they're actually taking and what they're doing. I'm like, I see those people and it's really kind of cool. I like to—

(Yogesh at 00:54:06) Yeah. And they can come from any background. I mean, you really don't have to put a person in charge of that. Right? I mean, an engineer who loves doing this and be that glue and that fabric between all the people to bring them together. I mean, it could be anybody. Right? Any role, anybody who enjoys that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:23) It's like an emergent thing. It's like, we, when we get together, like as a we know as a group that we need that. And I was—I'm a big fan like of Dunbar's number recently. So like the 150 in group sizing and things like that. Have you thought at all about that in the context of like as the organization continues to grow?

(Yogesh at 00:54:46) I have. Absolutely. And I think that's why I was talking about creating that structure and also the leadership so that we're not always running flat. I mean, I know it worked really well when the organization was like just a few people. Right? And everybody is at the same level. Everybody is working on the same problems and so on. But as you scale, as you grow, there are more problems to solve. You really need that structure. So I think the idea is to scale at a level. So it doesn't need to be that 150 number for us, but yeah. I mean, close to, let's say, 100 people where we reach that point. We really have to create a department or a group who can work independently or run independently with the right structure, with the right leaders running that chapter or running that group. Right? So that's the idea that we are moving towards. So we just crossed—I think we are almost like 160, 170 people. By next year, we'll be almost like 275 people. And I think that will only grow. And we really need to create that independent groups of people who have the right technical leaders, who have the right people to own the different programs and projects independently. So I think the structure is key to building that scale. So I totally agree with that concept.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:00) And when I was researching it, like, 150, I think, was what they said like the max was. But there, in the research, there were different levels. There was like, here's what happens at 20, 40, 60, 100. And so I was like, oh, that's pretty neat. Because you know, we want to grow the community, but I've been a part of communities that have like a thousand or 5,000 people and it's just like, it loses the magic of—

(Yogesh at 00:56:25) It does.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:26) The early community. And so when we were talking, we actually named the company Elevate 150 because that's going to be like the max size we allow per group. And yeah. It was just really interesting because you want a quality close experience, but to scale that is actually really difficult. I was even looking at like megachurches and how they do it. Like how does a church get like so big, but yet they still feel small and have community and everyone still wants to go and participate? And so I'm learning about community every day, but we're at ad time here. So I want to make sure that we get everything out that you want. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you want to get out there into the world?

(Yogesh at 00:57:08) No. I think I covered various topics, and I think I have given a lot about or shared a lot about what we're trying to do over the next few years. And I think Backbase—I'm pretty excited. It's only been 10 months or so that I've joined, but I think I really enjoy working here, not just because of the technology and the modern tech that Backbase delivers, but also the culture, the DNA, the values that the company has, the leadership that Jouk and other management team provides. I think it's really phenomenal to see a company who's almost like 20 years old still be able to foster the culture of a startup in fintech.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:47) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.