“It costs more to be LGBT. When we try to get help, we don’t find it. These things add up so when we look at the long-term financial outcomes of the LGBT community, we find they’re not as strong as in the wider community.”
Rob Curtis and Billie Simmons are co-founders of Daylight, an LGBT+ digital banking platform. Daylight focuses on the LGBT+ community and how to help its customers build a financial plan specific to their needs.
The LGBT+ community faces constant barriers in the financial and banking world. Simply put, the system is not designed for them. There are countless life events and considerations absent in the traditional financial services world. This includes the costs LGBT+ members face in order to have a child. “An LGBT couple will have to pay $55K on average to have a child, a cost most non-LGBT couples will not face… This financial system has not been designed for us. The systemic barriers are huge.”
Daylight is also set up to address the very real financial needs of the transgender community. Gender affirmation procedures require a very specific financial plan not currently offered by traditional institutions. Even credit scores and changing one’s name create a whole host of issues. “Credit scores are broken for trans people. We’re going into the bureaus and saying, ‘Fix it, please.’ And we’ll show you how to do it.”
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
SPEAKERS
Rob Curtis
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder
Daylight
Billie Simmons
Co-Founder & Chief of Staff
Daylight
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Joe Eletto: (00:08)
Hello everyone. And welcome back to salt tux. My name is Joe Eletto and I am the production manager for salt, which is a global thought leadership and networking forum, encompassing finance technology, and geopolitics. It's all talks as a series of digital interviews with the world's foremost investors, creators and thinkers. And just as we do at our global assault events, we aim to both empower big, important ideas and provide our audience a window into the minds of subject matter experts. And we are very excited today to be welcoming. Rob Curtis and Billie Simmons to salt talks. Rob Curtis is the chief executive officer and co-founder of daylight. And Rob has a background in financial services where he delivered technology projects across insurance and banking clients. In the latter part of his career, Rob has been leading LGBT plus consumer businesses. He was previously managing director of gaydar, a dating and social networking platform with over 2 million members worldwide, where he led on brand and customer acquisition and his last startup Hausa connects LGBT plus clients to expert mental health professionals.
Joe Eletto: (01:14)
Billy Simmons is co-founder of daylight and leads operations, and the company's many initiatives targeted at financial inclusion for the trans community. Billy previously founded a startup to help trans and non-binary people access safe services. Her background is in marketing and software engineering at FinTech focus companies such as tech stars and Anthemis group hosting today. Saul talk is Kochi hacia is founder and chief executive officer of lasagna technology. Kogi was previously chief of staff at the block led BCG global FinTech research practice from London and got our earliest experience in capital markets. Kogi is passionate about upgrading financial services across the board, technologically and morally. And now I'll turn it over to Kobe for the day.
Cokie Hasiotis: (02:01)
Thanks so much, Joe. And thank you to small talks for having us as a such a wonderful opportunity to really showcase an important issue. Um, just a little bit of context about why I was asked to do this. Um, I have a strongly held theory that Billy and Rob have really executed on and that there is that banking communities are now moving from communities of geography, to communities of affinity. And that's based upon a number of topics that we'll get into today. Um, but that's why I'm here. So thank you for having me and great to see you Robin Billy.
Rob Curtis: (02:32)
Thanks, cranky. Great to be here.
Cokie Hasiotis: (02:35)
I thought I'd just give everyone a little bit of a, a moment to talk about what daylight is and why it's important. So Rob, I'll turn it over to you.
Rob Curtis: (02:46)
Hi, thanks Cokie. So I'm the CEO and co-founder of daylight, which is the first and only digital banking platform designed specifically for the U S has 30 million LGBT consumers. Now we're going to get into why LGBT folks, uh, need a bank and why they're underserved, but we, uh, really, really privileged to be able to be working within our community, making an impact, not only in terms of financial inclusion, but also in terms of things like healthcare inclusion and other things like that, which we'll get onto. So really, really pleased to be here.
Cokie Hasiotis: (03:16)
Yeah. Wonderful. Um, so I'd love to dive right in. If you don't mind, um, you guys know I'm a little extra, so let's just jump. Um, why does the community meet a bank?
Rob Curtis: (03:29)
Yeah, let me take this and then I'll end up. It's a bit like, so we've all been socialized to believe a certain vision of the LGBT community. Um, and the way we described that internally is what we, what we colloquially referred to as two incomes, no kids, this kind of idea that many LGBT folks are doing really well, that because we don't necessarily be spending our money on school uniforms that therefore we've got a load of extra disposable cash. And I want to start by saying that, um, while this is true for a certain segment of our population, a lot of this came out of magazines and advertisements and companies that were targeting big corporations to try and explain that they should go after LGBT people as a valuable segment. And actually what the buried behind that is a really different story. Um, you can look at two incomes, no kids as reflecting, uh, two probably white gay men living in on a coast somewhere, um, doing particularly well, uh, in corporate jobs.
Rob Curtis: (04:30)
But I think if you look at the other end of the spectrum, 20% of people of color are unbanked or underbanked completely. And when you think about the diversity of financial outcomes that our community can have this kind of thought, this kind of sensitivity and empathy to the lived experiences of LGBT people is something that is just missing an industry. So we have 30 million LGBT folks that are going into the financial services industry to get help when they need to plan their lives. Uh, and they're just not being able to get the help that they need. And we boil this down into really three things. Firstly, it costs more to be LGBT second when we try and get help, we don't find it. And number three is, is that these things add up. And so when we look at the long-term outcomes of the LGBT community, we actually find that they're not as strong as, as, as the wider community. And this is really the reason Detra for daylight is just pay special consideration to our community to make sure that they've got the helping hand and the right start to get their financial matters, um, taken care of and that this the first-generation of LGBT consumers that can live openly and can really achieve whatever they like from a societal and illegal perspective, but they're gonna need financial support and wealth management to help them get there.
Cokie Hasiotis: (05:44)
Absolutely. Um, thank you for that clarity and Billy, maybe I can turn it over to you to ask a little bit about the particular needs of the community. Yeah,
Billie Simmons: (05:54)
Sure. Um, you know, I think when I think about the LGBT community, you know, Rob mentioned that, uh, two incomes, no kids. And then we, you know, think about, um, the unbanked or underbanked, but there's all of the community in the middle as well. Um, and these are people who, you know, maybe have the potential to, you know, climb the ladder and to create, uh, you know, financial stability and wealth for themselves, but don't necessarily know how to get that. And also, uh, face, you know, larger huddles than non LGBT people. Um, you know, a great example of this is, uh, an LGBT couple, uh, will have to pay $55,000 on average just to have a child. Um, that is obviously a huge cost that most non LGBT people don't have to face. Um, you know, the, the other part of it for me is banking with empathy. This is something that's so core and, uh, important to every, every single thing that we do, but, you know, the system has not been designed for us. And when we think about, you know, some of the actual systemic barriers to accessing finance, um, they're huge. And, uh, something that incumbents can't really, uh, grapple with or even solve for. And so, you know, as they, as they, like, we have a huge opportunity here to rethink banking from the ground up and really design a system that works for us.
Cokie Hasiotis: (07:21)
I want to zoom in a little bit on that kind of specialized market, like childbearing in the community, obviously significantly more expensive. Can you give me some other examples of where, uh, the LGBT community is disenfranchised and not empowered to be able to function in the financial world
Rob Curtis: (07:40)
Turkey? Let me make this really personal for a moment and talk you through the lives of LGBT folks in the first few decades of their lives, because I think this will really set the context for you. So by virtue of luck, LGBT folk are born into straight families. Um, that means that from the moment that they figure out that they're LGBT, um, they're already going to be missing something that we often take for granted, which is the ability to learn from our parents about the things that matter. Um, and so what we therefore know about a 14 year old woman, but she doesn't know. And in fact, most mainstream banks have not demonstrated that they understand this either is that that 14 year old woman should be saving for college. Now you might ask why a teenager should be saving for college. Well, here's, the answer is pretty straightforward.
Rob Curtis: (08:27)
And I think you'll understand this, um, an LGBT person that comes out to their parents has a 40% chance of losing financial support. So that 14 year old needs to be preparing for what is almost a toss of a coin about whether she's starting to have support for early adulthood for her college education. And indeed we see some instances of, of young people being removed from their parents' healthcare. And so that 14 year old we zoom forward until the time they leave college. Um, we find some really, really concerning things. And, uh, indeed LGBT folks have on average 50% more college debt than the general population. So this transition from school to work is always particularly fraught and, um, LGBT people are coming out of that transition, settled with debt. Um, and that's when they start making their first tentative steps entitled life. And they find that their healthcare costs are particularly high.
Rob Curtis: (09:24)
Maybe they're not able to get access to advisory support on just the day-to-day realities of, of how your biology or your gender identity affects your finances. And so by the time we get to our, um, late twenties, only 50% of LGBT people are able to develop a savings habit. Now that's 40% worse than the general population. So we come out of school with more debt. Um, we struggle at the beginning to get the right education and support. We need to develop healthy habits. And then by the time we get to thirties, we're faced with these really difficult choices. And the choices are often very simple. It's, it's, it's this? Do you want to have a home? Or do you want to have a family? You can have one, but not necessarily the other and not everybody's going to be able to afford both. And the reason for that is really simple.
Rob Curtis: (10:12)
The money that we all save for a down payment on a home is the money that LGBT folks need to begin creating children. And 62% of millennials, um, in our community want to expand their family. Um, so right out of the gates, we have higher one-off costs. Um, we face structural problems in terms of things that other people can take for granted, like how easy it is to start families for many people. Um, and a lack of underlying support from our family unit means that these things feel particularly bad. So by the time we get to retirement, you know, home ownership rates are really low. And our ability to prepare for retirement is also pretty low. So some of these one-off costs are things like healthcare, actually, you know, what the cost of sexual health prevention for gay men includes buying HIV prevention medication. Um, either because you're, you're a HIV person, um, that needs, um, that needs antiviral support or you're on prep, which is, which is a prophylaxis for HIV. And these things cost real money. They are often areas of our lives that we take for granted. And I think, um, when you look across the life of an LGBT person from their teenage years until retirement, you find all of these examples of where going into, by mainstream products or expecting mainstream services to really understand how those uniquenesses of our community. We just find that those things are really, really different. And that's where we that's, that's a huge part of that focus.
Billie Simmons: (11:34)
The other thing that really drives it home for me is these are just costs that LGBT people face. So in order to live the lives that they want to live and to be on the same equal footing as non LGBT people, you know, when you think about trans people facing up to a hundred thousand dollars, uh, in gender farming, surgeries, and procedures, that is an incredible financial hurdle to face just to be who you are and just to live your daily life. And, you know, we're not even talking about, you know, moving, moving the goalposts beyond, you know, what, where are we where we currently are all beyond equality. Um, this is just, you know, basic human dignity. This is just, you know, being on equal footing with everyone else.
Cokie Hasiotis: (12:18)
Yeah. And allowing people to live their authentic lives is like pretty much the bare minimum. Right. Right. And once again, we're talking about how the American healthcare system is once again the enemy. Um, but that aside, let's talk a little bit about the products and services and solutions that daylight's put together to help combat some of these like extraordinary, extraordinary costs
Rob Curtis: (12:43)
Sure thing. So I'm going to start by setting some context, and then I'm going to hand over to ability who can walk you through some of our features. So, um, the LGBT community, like we said, it has an incredible range of needs, very, a huge amount of diversity within it. And, um, we're going to take out for now, um, both the, the very top end of our community, people that, you know, there's two incomes, no kids probably earning three, four average home income of $500,000 or more. And we're also gonna take out people for now, um, that are living on the breadline and in our community, that can be 40 or $50,000 average household income. It's a little bit higher than normal because we live in cities, um, more often than not. So they're a little bit more expensive. So we are focused on supporting people in the middle of the market, um, who need to have the resources to access the support that is available to people with a private wealth manager, or maybe who don't experience the pain points of needing to save for things like surrogacies, family and transitions. Um, and, uh, and a huge part of what we do is we try and make the tools that are available to the people that have the most income in our community and make them available to the middle of that community. And Billy, would you like to talk through some of the cool features that we have available today?
Billie Simmons: (13:52)
Um, so I think, you know, the feature that as a trans woman, I get most excited about. Um, and indeed, I think most of us are very excited about is, you know, the ability for trans and non binary people, or indeed anyone within the LGBT community who wants it to have whatever name they want on their card, regardless of if it matches their legal identity or not. And, you know, going one step further, the ability to have that name reflected and represented across all of our systems on the app within customer service, within the social features. So, you know, really think again, when I was talking earlier about rethinking the banking experience from the ground up, something that we were so struck by, you know, when Rob and I first started talking about this problem was how much I had to go through how much money and how much time I had to spend to just update my name or my debit card had to go to court.
Billie Simmons: (14:45)
I had to get doctor's letters. I had to get documents notarized. And then I had to take all documents in person to a branch to eventually get a debit card, but I still have to log in every time with my dead name. And there's no way to change that. And indeed I get emails every month from my bank that dad named me because in that CRM systems, there's also no way to update it. And so I think this really highlights a key flow with incumbents, which is that they struggle to innovate and they struggle to, uh, change fast, uh, because their systems are so clunky and outdated. And, you know, we are able to move a lot faster and build, um, in a lot more of a lean way. And so we're able to just completely rethink this and scrap everything. Um, you know, that it has existed before and start from scratch.
Billie Simmons: (15:35)
Um, you know, beyond that, Rob was talking a little bit about, you know, accessing advisory services and that kind of thing, you know, not only is that a service that is typically only reserved for people who make in the mid six figures, this is also something that is often an alienating experience for the LGBT community. You know, uh, the, the most common piece of feedback we had when we were testing out advisory services was, you know, I'm a gay man and I constantly get asked, what does my wife do? And you'd want to share all of your, you know, dirty financial secrets with someone who, you know, can't even understand that you are dating a man or married to a man. And so, you know, we have LGBT financial coaches on the platform that you can book time with because they understand who you are.
Billie Simmons: (16:23)
They understand your goals, and they're going to help you get to them. And there is immediate shared language and understanding that just inherently comes with being part of the same community. Um, and, you know, beyond that community and social features are a huge part of what has inspired us, what drives us and what is available in the app. So, you know, social and community features, um, being able to ask for advice, um, you know, crowdsourcing information, um, the ability to share your savings goal with the community. And eventually we'll be able to actually receive donations to those goals as well. You know, go fund me as the number one, funder of transition surgeries in the us, uh, the, you know, go from me, it takes a huge chunk of money out of those fundraisers. Um, and you know, they're also, it's not integrated into a banking system or anything it's was kind of, again, a clunky process that hasn't been built for us. So, you know, what does, what does it mean to have the ability to crowdfund for a gender affirming surgery in your banking product? You know, when you have access to your whole community, right. That on your phone? Um, you know, I get very excited when I talk about the possibilities of, you know, creating LGBT wealth and helping people live these lives, because there's just so much that we can do. And sometimes it's like a kid in a candy shop or something, so I'll leave it there for now.
Cokie Hasiotis: (17:49)
I have a potentially silly question if you don't mind answering it. So when you went through the process of changing your name for everything, why is that different than a woman changing her name after she gets married?
Billie Simmons: (18:02)
It's not, um, and it shouldn't be patriarchy
Cokie Hasiotis: (18:06)
Anatomy of today. Yeah.
Billie Simmons: (18:07)
And it's because the, you know, all of these systems were designed specifically, you know, and then, uh, for credit scores from the 1950s for debit cards in the 1970s, um, and the only name changed the most people had conceived of was when a woman updates her last name because of marriage. And so updating your first name is a hugely complex process that, you know, I won't even get into what it does to your credit score, but rest assured it does a lot of damage to your credit score. Um, and you know, does things like flag false positives for KYC? Um, you can end up with mismatched documents, you know, this again, the system is not built for us. I felt like I'm just going to keep saying that this entire time, but, you know, um, there we are,
Cokie Hasiotis: (18:49)
But I think that's the message, right? The system is not built for the community. The system is not built for a lot of communities that are traditionally marginalized in this country. So, you know, if you're listening to this, that's the whole thing.
Rob Curtis: (19:04)
And, you know, Koki, that's the, that's the really, really interesting part is that people are obsessed with comparing us to other banks. Are you going to be chased? But for, for, for gay people, are you going to be chime, but for people? And I think the thing that they misunderstand is, um, that we aren't obsessed about our competitors because we have this once in probably a generation opportunity to really, um, build a financial services company from the ground up the technology, the capital requirements, they're all here to allow banks have affinity to start because otherwise it would have been prohibitive, um, on incumbent banks operate on scale to be able to focus just on a very small community. And this is not a small community. If the LGBT community was a state, we would be the second largest behind California. And we may face financial inclusion, but we're an incredibly wealthy segment.
Rob Curtis: (19:54)
We spend more than the GDP of Mexico every year. And so people think that we are coming along saying, Hey, poor us. We need help, but actually there's real money on the table. I mean, if you take the 62% of millennials, the ones who expand their family, and now let's put 70% of them into couples just for a second. So it experiments 70% in couples, actually only 30% of our communities and couples right now. But let's say most of us are in couples. We have a funding shortfall of $20 billion in order to be able to afford one child each at an average cost of $55,000. So we are talking a $20 billion industry that can help family planning for, for just millennial LGBT folks. Um, and these things has made that have been thought about they've not been designed for. And so, um, when we think not only about how we can provide a great retail service, but we begin to think about how the system itself has a compounding effect on things outside of money.
Rob Curtis: (20:53)
Things like what Billy just very briefly mentioned, credit histories. These things are really, really important. And they start often with the financial services themselves. Because if you know, to elaborate on Billy's point before as a trans person, you go through the process of updating your gender markers and your identity documents, your credit history can split into two parts and even in a world where we can merge those together for a complete credit history, um, employers, landlords, other people want to see these information, right? And so if you look at a world where 20% of trans folk have had problems accessing housing because of their, of their agenda, um, and many landlords are asking for a credit score, which automatically adds them as a trans person. We're creating barriers that start from the bank that exists well beyond debit cards, payments, and so on. And I think we are taking this as a real opportunity to look at the foundations that were responsible for building upon those and making sure that we're not just dealing with retail money, but we're also looking at the secondary and tertiary impacts of, um, of how that can affect the lives about community.
Cokie Hasiotis: (22:02)
Well, that's very, that's really helpful Robin. And thank you. Um, I guess I'm, I'm kind of wondering, I hear about these, there's a myriad of problems, right? And there's only so much that y'all can do right now at your small stage. Tell me what's on the roadmap. What's next. And why do you want to achieve this year? Next year, five years? Let's talk about it.
Rob Curtis: (22:20)
Yeah. Thanks Cokie. So in the real immediate horizon for us is continued investment in social and community features. And Billy briefly touched upon this before, but here's how we look at it. We aren't building a product for 30 million individual LGBT folks. We're building a product for a community of 30 million LGBT folks because actually one of the first things that LGBTQ people do is they reach online into their community when they first discovered that there might be a little bit different from their brothers and sisters. So we live very digitally native lives. And, um, we are starting with some of these really clear and immediate pain points that are fundamental for people's financial outcomes. You know, getting a name on a card is really important for both safety and also self-actualization. Um, but that group of people, 50% of LGBT folks that can't develop, um, regular and sustainable savings habits, that's a really important pain point for us to be resolving.
Rob Curtis: (23:12)
Um, and w there are lots of root causes from this, from a lack of financial education to not necessarily the supportive families and so on, but at its core, the ability to put aside a little bit of money every week is, uh, is as important for financial inclusion and, and financial resilience as anything else. So we've been integrating community features to be able to use behavioral science techniques, um, to be able to help people on their journey to develop savings, because it's much easier when you've got an apple watch to close your rings than it is to just do more exercise. Right? So, um, what the first step of that was allowing people to share what they were saving for in a public forum. Um, and we've seen some really, really fascinating results from that. So it's only been around for about two weeks. Um, and the first week somebody created an emergency fund.
Rob Curtis: (23:59)
Now this is something that is not very sexy. This is something that's very boring. Um, and often people feel very shameful about, so what have we done? We've looked at our community in depth. We know that mental health and social isolation and things are a lot of what many people experience. And so we're using the power of social norming in order to be able to drive positive behaviors because that one person creating a, an emergency fund, um, it was actually called when hits the fan, um, with a nice emoji sat in the middle. What that led to was by the end of the week, a third of the savings funds that had been creating on our platform all around emergency funds. So right there, and then using community is not just a way of building social networking techniques for the sake of it. We've been able to show other people in our community what the new normal looks like, financial resilience as part of that.
Rob Curtis: (24:47)
And we've been able to move the dial in terms of their behaviors. And I challenge any startup at this stage to be able to get a third of their clients, to create a, uh, a savings fund just for a rainy day using content. That stuff is really, really, really challenging. And so we're investing a lot in social. The next frontier is allowing people to, to support each other's goals, because there's a real history of mutual aid in our community. People are constantly supporting people that are, that are, um, doing less well to them, less privileged. And so we're going to be continuing to making social and community and integrated part of our experience. Looking further ahead, we've got loads and loads of opportunities to do around rolling out checking accounts, additional savings opportunities. Um, but right now our, our goal is working with our most, uh, our most passionate customers, um, getting them on boarding, helping them to build some basic financial resilience. And as we move into August, then we've got huge amounts of opportunities around that national launch.
Cokie Hasiotis: (25:46)
Yeah, for sure. Um, you guys are both the experts and you've obviously done your homework, right? Like you spent numbers that they left and right. All the time. That's why I love you. Um, let's talk about a little bit about some of the data you're seeing. We're talking about a huge spending group. Um, and you know, you're holding the cards. Have you noticed anything that you didn't know before you noticed any trends that are emerging, that are appearing out of some of this data you're seeing
Rob Curtis: (26:13)
Population level? We know that LGBT spending patterns are really, really, really different. Um, and so, um, we're pretty early on looking at how our own spending patterns match to what we have seen from existing data sets, but here's the, here's the really important thing Koki is that the reason our incumbent, uh, competitors struggle to serve our community is because nobody even knows who their LGBT consumers are. So the states has a real data problem in this instance, um, there is no centralized data on consumer spending patterns, savings times for our community. Um, so how can you help the community if you don't know who they are, and you've not spent the time to understand how their behaviors change. Um, uh, Billy is doing some great work in order to plug the gaps with some of our partners. Um, and I let her tell you about that, but fundamentally one of the opportunity spaces that we have is this, that we're going to be building the richest data source of transactional, um, uh, data and savings data of the LGBTQ community that's ever existed before. Um, but in the meantime, we've got to plug the gap. And so, um, um, I'll let Billy explain some of the great work we're doing with some wonderful players in
Cokie Hasiotis: (27:19)
This space. Yeah. I'd really like to hear about partnership and some of the big wins that I know you guys have had from, you know, conversations with you, both and press releases that you've had through some really successful partnerships.
Billie Simmons: (27:33)
You know, I, I was going to chime in and talk about this when we were talking about, you know, what's on the roadmap, but I think the other kind of core segment to what we're passionate about and what we see as our mission is our advocacy and research. You know, we would be doing our community at a service if we didn't try and move the needle across the entire industry, um, can't necessarily talk too specifically about what is, what is coming down the pipeline, but, you know, advocacy for our community is a huge part of it. Um, we are able to leverage our position as, you know, the only digital banking platform for LGBT people. Um, and you know, something that I have noticed in the last year or two of, kind of a renewed desire from large corporations to actually start doing some work, uh, you know, for, for, for underserved communities.
Billie Simmons: (28:26)
Um, you know, we're able to leverage that position and start to ask, ask the things, um, from some, from some big companies, you know, credit scores are broken for trans people. So we're going in to the, to the bureaus and we're saying, fix it, please, uh, we'll ask nicely, but, you know, we expect change to be done and we'll show you how to do, how to do it. Uh, but you know, I really think that, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a lot of opportunity for us to leverage our position, to actually start making some systemic change here. Um, you know, the other part of it that Rob alluded to is, you know, is our research. There's where we're spending, spending a lot of numbers and there is some very specific research out there, but we've really had to MacGyver and conduct a lot of our own research and pull together different resources just to get a sense of what the situation is for LGBT people.
Billie Simmons: (29:16)
So, you know, uh, with our partners at visa, we are starting to undertake, uh, what I believe is the largest and, you know, first of its kind, um, study in LGBT money and spending habits to really get a sense of not only what the state of LGBT money is, but also, you know, the calls [inaudible] for that. You know, why, why are we in this situation? Um, is that correlation between, you know, family support and your financial habits later, is that correlation between when you came out and your financial habits, um, there's a lot of hunches that we have from just existing in the community and talking to people. Um, but Rob and I, and indeed actually pretty much everyone on our team, uh, big data nerd. So we want to be able to back this stuff up. Um, and you know, I, I see that data really allowing for other organizations too, to help the community too, because you know, this isn't a zero sum game and we're passionate about, you know, making sure that the, that the state of, uh, finances for LGBT people across the world, uh, improves. Um, we can't do that necessarily alone. Uh, you know, I mentioned visa that they've been such wonderful partners for us. Um, we're on their FinTech fast track program and, you know, they've given us a ton of support, um, and really just let us ask them for things, um, and you know, and helped us, helped us get to this point. So they've been really wonderful partners
Cokie Hasiotis: (30:43)
That is wonderful. And it's great to see you guys really push people you work with to do better, to, to improve and to wake up ultimately, um, one of the things that you mentioned that I kind of want to dive into a little bit is your team. Um, I know you guys have an excellent team. I want to talk about how you have an excellent team, and then I want to kind of get into a broader topic. What's it like to be in banking and FinTech? What's it like? So let's start with your team. Um, tell me about them. How'd you find them,
Rob Curtis: (31:14)
Billy and I were very lucky to meet stage in a Google panel. Um, about two years ago, we were both pitching our previous businesses, which were both kind of in the mental health space, um, uh, for LGBT people. So, um, we were very lucky to meet there. Um, when we began the kind of customer validation phase of the startup, we invite a billion to talk about her lived experience and, um, um, w we're all very geeky in our team. So I had had her interview on my, on my, uh, it was, I was wandering around listening to it like a podcast, and I was like, here's a superstar. So, um, I knew that from the first time we met her and then, um, uh, that's, that's how we met Billy. Our other co-founder Paul, um, was introduced to us by one of the co-founders of pestle, um, uh, David, Eric.
Rob Curtis: (31:59)
And, uh, so he's, he's, he's great to have on the team. Everyone in our team is, uh, a direct person, um, or has a family member that is. So why that's important is because every one of us brings to the table, passion and purpose, um, deep lived experience. And while Billy and I are, wants to have a data story to support what we're doing, because we need to be able to advocate to the rest of the world. Everybody on our team has experienced these things first time. What does your wife do? Um, never seeing yourself represented in an ad. Um, and so, um, we have been really lucky to have, uh, never paid a recruitment, um, to hire top talent from fintechs, um, from across the country because, uh, people opt in because more often than not, we, there, there are people in what we often kind of colloquially call the mafia in every possible business out there.
Rob Curtis: (32:56)
There are folks in there, and many of them are just waiting to be activated to do something great for their community. And as well, are those mind feel like addressing systemic things is a way of undermining your competitive advantage? Actually, it's one of our strengths because when we follow through and we're purposeful that shines a light to others to say, we are the kind of company that you might want to work for, you might want to partner with. And so we've hired a third of our team through slack communities of LGBT folks working in tech. Um, almost everybody has come to us. Um, and, and I think that's been an absolute privilege. We've got top talent from, uh, from Braintree and PayPal. We've got folks from breadth of finance we've, um, even pulled our customer ops, um, a team member from another FinTech focus on student loans.
Rob Curtis: (33:41)
So every member of our team brings deep FinTech experience lived experience, which helps us have the instincts to great build great products and to provide an excellent service. And the certainly Billy and I have been building consumer businesses for LGBT folks. And I think, you know, I pride myself on being the only CEO of a bank that was also the CEO of a dating company. Um, but that matters because I think what we've been doing when we, when we hire somebody, when we onboard them, is we make sure that they align with us on purpose and that they're willing to bring part of themselves to the table.
Cokie Hasiotis: (34:11)
Yeah, that's really awesome. And, um, are y'all hiring? Yes. If you're listening and you're an ally you might want to get in touch because these are probably two of the only founders I would give up my gigs for. So, uh, I'd keep that in mind, given that I don't like very many people that said I do, I do want to talk about, um, being in banking. I mean, I can have, imagine, because when I was in banking, I was 24 brown female American outspoken in London. So I was really already asking for it and adding another layer to that would have been, I think, very, very difficult if not insurmountable. Um, so can we talk a little bit about your experiences in finance and FinTech and in banking kind of trying to live your authentic life while also trying to be a productive member of society?
Billie Simmons: (35:08)
Yeah, it's not good. Um, spoiler alert. Um, it has been, but it hasn't, hasn't been great. Um, you know, I, I transitioned while at my first job. Um, and so, you know, before that was a visibly person, um, for me, uh, you know, it, hasn't always necessarily been a question of if I am visible or not. Um, but you know, it's, it's tough world out there, especially, you know, I think, um, not to discount the experiences of, of, you know, uh, gay people and lesbians, but like peop like five years ago, even people didn't even really know what trans people were. And I would argue that even now a lot of people don't really understand. Um, but you know, I think that, you know, it's, it's made us definitely resilient. Um, one thing I, one thing that I was gonna, but I think it's worth mentioning, um, with our team is, you know, all of us on the team have kind of got to this point by assimilation, by and lodge.
Billie Simmons: (36:11)
You know, most of us have advanced our careers by making myself more palatable to, um, the cisgender and heterosexual people that, you know, decide how much money we earn. And if we get to keep our jobs and daylight is our first opportunity, uh, for most of us to actually rethink that, um, and get an opportunity to fully be ourselves and to bring all of ourselves to work. And we've actually really had to be really intentional about that too. Um, you know, I, I still remember a couple of months ago with, uh, on a call with Rob and one of our investors who, you know, was like, you guys are just so pleased all the time. Like when do you ever just like, let go and just like it up. And it was actually one of the, one of the best things and investors ever said to us, because we suddenly realized like, oh yeah, like when we're not bringing any of our queerness to the table, or we're not bringing enough of our queerness to the table. Um, and it really gave us an opportunity to think, okay, like this is a super power, how can we use it? And how can we make our internal culture, you know, the kind of internal culture that we would have wanted when we were working in various corporate environments and it's been, you know, been wonderful, um, watching, or, you know, everyone on the team get to actually just authentically be themselves. Um, you know, I it's, it's such a privilege and it's so exciting to be able to do that.
Cokie Hasiotis: (37:36)
Absolutely. And I would say that it isn't a privilege. It is a right. Um, and I'm glad you guys have created that space for yourself. Um, and if we think, and of course I don't mean to diminish any of our experiences that are awful in the workplace, but if we think that's bad, imagine being on the other side of that, a huge part of the community, especially the young community is their participation in things like only fans and broader sex work as their main form of income and their bank won't let them be there. So we think about it from that angle. I mean, how are you guys going to approach problems like that, that aren't actually problems, but are perceived problems?
Rob Curtis: (38:15)
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, to be, to allow customers to have a card in their own name, we had to go and work with, and I have to say a range of really wonderful partners who were incredibly receptive, um, to what we're setting out to achieve. But we had to really challenge, um, many preconceptions about our community. So if I, you know, and in this instance, um, doesn't mean that there'll be loads of trans folk committing identity theft and crime now, um, there's a lot going on in our community right now. Um, and one of the tools that, um, that people that don't want to support LGBT people use is they lean into extremes and they make up these kind of false, um, narratives about how LGBT people are, uh, are bad for lots of different reasons. Plastic one, um, uh, all of the men who are dressing up as women to go into toilets to take advantage of the situation or the moment huge amounts of anti-trans sporting legislation is coming through because of this perception that unsuccessful male athletes will decide to transition, to win an Olympic medal.
Rob Curtis: (39:25)
Like these things don't exist, they're not real problems. And I think we found exactly the same thing going on, um, with our own community. And I think our, one of our good values is tenacity. And I think we have to have huge amounts of patients to educate the people around us, but it is an important part of what we do. And by engaging with our partners and saying that these, this isn't a real situation, this isn't a real meaningful risk. We've been able to move the dial. Um, and that's, that is at a really top level. But one of the things that our community is known for is being shamed, particularly around sex. You know, um, we cannot exist without understanding that the eighties and nineties was an incredibly challenging time through the aids crisis and our sexual selves got demonized, um, in really, really powerful ways and where that's left us, um, is, um, not only feeling excluded about parts of ourselves, but there are many of us that turn to non-traditional trades that aren't going to necessarily be listening to assault talk, or participating in a corporate panel session, talking about how they feel they workers, like you say, Instagram influencers, only fans, go-go boys, um, arts performers, drag Queens.
Rob Curtis: (40:33)
These are not edge cases. These are important parts of our community, and they represent huge and influential parts of our culture. And I promise you then never going to go into a bank and ask for advice and what all of those people have in common is they're all freelancers. And so what our goal of providing an inclusive space for our community means that we want to include them irrespective of what they're doing as long as it's lawful they're welcome. And so our tax events, as we come to the new tax deadline, won't be focused on here's three ways for a freelancer to manage their tax. It'll be stories told by influences by go-go boys, by drag Queens, by these people that are historically, historically historically excluded from the financial system, because they don't support often the values of the teller, or they they're just not in there in non-traditional, um, in non-traditional occupations.
Rob Curtis: (41:25)
And I think we are very much opening our arms to our community, irrespective of what they do, because we think respectability politics, politics, doesn't anybody more often than not. It's used as a weapon against our community and work is work we've seen in the last two weeks. Just how, um, people that weren't necessarily engaged in sex work have been had their fingers pointed in victim blamed, um, over what amounted to, you know, targeted murders that had a racial element to it. Um, and I think we are very much learning and listening to our community, trying to find ways to include them irrespective of what their profession is, because at the end of the day, if you're faced with 50% less parental support, 40% less parental support, 50% more college debt, no one in a bank that can help you. Um, not only is that an opportunity for us, but it's not, it's not a surprise that people are turning to non-traditional occupations in order to get by because, um, too many of us have been stuck at the bottom layer of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, safety, shelter, food.
Rob Curtis: (42:22)
Our goal is not only to serve those people, but to elevate our entire community to the top so that we can self-actualize. And I think that means being seen. And here's what happens when you tell an entire generation of gen ed kids, that they can be whatever they want. They're going to slam into a financial services industry that doesn't have that same view. And we're, we're incredibly lucky that only 8% of the LGBT community is self identify as a Republican, which means that we can progressively push more and more into, into ideas that will, will not be palatable for our, um, for our competitors, because they will struggle in balancing the, the whole customer base I've got, you know, we can provide financial services, advice for non-traditional families. Non-monogamy, um, there are plenty of people that don't exist in two-partner, um, family units. There's, co-parenting all of these people need to be seen. They need to be recognized, they need advice. And I think that's a really, really powerful place for us to sit and it's plus it's super, super fun.
Cokie Hasiotis: (43:22)
Yeah. That's awesome. I'm cognizant of time. We only have a couple of more minutes, so I'd like to rapid fire a question at each of you. This is actually for both of you, um, there's one problem you could solve for the LGBTQ plus community, uh, at daylight that you would be like, great. I can retire. Now. I have done the best I can. What would it be? Elliot? Let's start with you
Billie Simmons: (43:46)
Because so close to fixing a lot of these problems. I need to pick something really lofty. Um, I, I mean, I, I guess I would, you know, it would be solving systemic discrimination, um, for LGBTQ, but yeah, no, I fixed my name and Rob
Rob Curtis: (44:09)
Too many parents suddenly wake up one day and I realized that their 12 year old is. They have no idea what to do to take care of their financial future. They don't even understand suddenly this alien in the family. Um, and I said that in the kindest possible way. Um, and I think if we can get education into not the LGBT people's hands, but in their support network as early as possible, then I think we have a huge opportunity to be getting the right financial habits in place the right financial education in place. And I think even if it is the right risk management strategies in place for what happens in the event of the world, isn't as kind to that child as, as it should be. And I think, um, I often think about how do we educate that parent when their child is 12 so that they not only have positive messages, they, um, about the, the future of their child, because too many of us have been told that we're going to die young and we're going to die lonely, right? Those things that are not true. Um, and I think if we can not only support the LGBT people that we represent, but the support network around the outside of them, there's six 30 million folk have 60 million families, uh, 60 million parents. If we can get into the family unit, we can help them to build the self-esteem, um, of their, um, of their children to make sure that folk have the best possible shot at life. I think I'd be able to sit back and, and call it mission accomplished
Cokie Hasiotis: (45:27)
Also extremely lofty given that education often is the death of discrimination. So as long as you guys are focused on the horizon, I'm sure you'll definitely take steps towards that. Um, thank you so much for being here today and talking to us about, I think in my opinion, one of the most important solutions that's out there today, um, I really admire both of your passion and your full such dorks. I absolutely love it. I love out. So thanks for giving me the shot.
Rob Curtis: (45:58)
Thanks Turkey. And look, you're, you're a wonderful, uh, person yourself. And I think it's been really, really great to talk to you here about what lasagna is doing and to see some of the trends and themes that are happening with other companies just like ourselves. So thanks for participating today. Well, it was great to have everyone cookie Billy Rob, this was a pleasure, you know, never did. I think that first of all, we would have conversations like this at salt on salt talks, but in the goals that you were going over, this is hopefully a very tiny but important first step in having conversations on different platforms that people might not be exposed to. So I'm thrilled that all of you were able to come on today and thank you so much for the time I'm going to hold up my daylight card because I got that and I get to start using it.
Rob Curtis: (46:41)
I, you know, I, I looked at my bank, which is a large bank and a traditional bank. And I was like, why does my money sit there and, or no interest? So now I can put money where it's important and I'm super thrilled that this is a tangible opportunity in the fact that I can hold a card, but also that I can, uh, do something and put my money where my mouth is. So thank you all again. And thank you for tuning into salt talks. If you want to watch this and other videos, we have a YouTube channel called salt tube where we have over 175 of our previous salt talks available to view on demand. We also broadcast all of these on Twitter with live tweeting. So if you'd like to engage in the conversation there, please check us out at, at salt conference. If you want to see what's coming up, you can always visit salt.org backslash talks and for salt. This is Joe Eletto signing off for today. Hope to see you soon.