Darren [00:00:01]:

Hi, everyone.

 

Welcome back to another episode of One of One. I’m your host, Darren Gold, CEO of the Trium Group. My guest today is Al Ko, CEO of Auctane. Al and I have known each other for many years, which makes this a particularly meaningful conversation for me. Al began his career at Intuit, where he was shaped by formative mentors and experiences that continue to influence how he leads today. Later, as CEO of Early Warning, he helped scale Zelle into one of the leading peer to peer payment platforms in the world, transforming how millions of people move money. Today, as CEO of Auctane, he leads a global company at the very heart of E commerce, powering the way goods get shipped and delivered across the globe. What stands out about Al is not just the scale of what he has accomplished, but the way he’s done it. Shaped by remarkable mentors, he leads with humility, resilience, and a deep sense of responsibility. And at the center of his philosophy is the belief that companies thrive when employees are truly engaged, when people feel connected, inspired, and proud to be part of the mission. Our conversation was a rich exploration of leadership, reinvention and the lessons we carry from those who’ve guided us along the way. I learned a lot from Al, and I’m confident you will too.

 

Darren [00:01:19]:

Al, it’s so great to see you. One of the things I love about this show is I get to speak to people and catch up. And it’s been a. This is an overdue conversation because I don’t think we’ve had a chance to speak since you took over this role over two years ago at Octane. So it may be the place I want to start. But I also just want to mention how good it is to see you because I think we’ve known each other coming up on 30 years, and I’m sure we’ll touch a little bit on that. So maybe I’ll hand it over to you. Where do you want to start? Do you want to start way back when or do you want to start at sort of the last couple of years and work our way backwards?

 

Albert Ko [00:01:55]:

Well, Darren, thank you for having me on the show. It’s great to see you again. I’d like to think we are both aging pretty well given that we both met each other in our 20s and yeah, we can start wherever you like, but we can start right at the present and then go back in time a little bit, if that works.

 

Darren [00:02:13]:

Yeah. Let’s start with this company, Octane, which I love the name and maybe you can even comment a little bit. On that because it has a connotation. I think that’s probably intentional and it’s got some pretty storied brands underneath it. So it was a couple years ago you took on this new role. We’ll start there. I want to dig into that a little bit and then we’ll work our way backwards to your incredible career journey and give our listeners a sense of how you got to where you are today. So two and a half years ago or so you joined this company. Take us back to that point. What happened?

 

Albert Ko [00:02:45]:

Yes. So I got a call from, as these things go, from a friend who heard about an opportunity and had the great fortune. I was at a great company and wasn’t looking. But the more I learned about this new opportunity, both the timing and the opportunity was just right. But a little bit about Octane. It was a public company for many decades as stamps.com and you referenced a couple of the storied brands, but their stamps, their shipstation and in Europe, if you do E Commerce, Metapack and Packlink are four of the many brands that we operate. And, and we are a critical software that enables e commerce sellers large and small to fulfill those orders online. And so we like to describe ourselves as the magic of your online purchase. How does it show up at your doorstep? It’s magic two days later. Well, our software had a big hand in billions of packages, so that’s the best way to describe Oqtane. But we have a series of brands that help people, businesses large and small, be effective online, principally through fulfillment and shipping solutions.

 

Darren [00:03:57]:

Okay, so everybody’s obviously familiar with Amazon, but there are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of small and medium sized businesses and I guess in some cases large businesses that are fulfilling outside of that system. And I’m understanding Oqtane to be one of the platforms that powers the many, many e commerce providers to get know goods to people’s doors. Is that a fair way of describing it?

 

Albert Ko [00:04:23]:

That’s correct. Maybe the easiest way to describe the landscape is there are a number of companies, Amazon and Shopify being the biggest, that enable a business, large or small to be able to find customers and set up a store and sell online. Then there are the very famous and impressive shipping companies, UPS, FedEx, DHL, the Postal Service that carry that package. But in between there is software that helps you pull in all those orders, manage the inventory, help you pick and pack the item, and then ultimately get the right item in the right box with the right label to the right carrier so that it shows up at your doorstep. That orchestration, a lot of that magic happens with our software.

 

Darren [00:05:12]:

Okay, great. That’s really clear. Thanks. And so curious when CEOs come into existing businesses that have kind of an established business model and they’re in established markets, what was the reason for bringing you in? And I think you’re a private equity backed company, Thoma Bravo, if I’m not mistaken. Why did they bring you in and what did you discover in that process? And when you first landed, what would you describe as the vision you had for what you wanted to do under your leadership? And then we’ll get into a little bit about what’s happened under your, under your CEO stewardship.

 

Albert Ko [00:05:46]:

Yeah. There are a number of storied brands as, as we just referenced that are part of the portfolio. And it was a public company for a long time. And opportunistically, Thoma Bravo, a large private equity firm acquired this company because it saw a lot of growth potential, as these things go. And the, the context was that post Covid reopening. So think about during COVID when we couldn’t go anywhere for a year and a half, E Commerce exploded. Right. Because you’re not going to a physical store. Yeah. And there was a lot of overcapacity built in banking on the continued explosion of E Commerce. And when things normalized and people are going back to stores again, the operating rhythm of the company and how effectively a company was built and scaled, there was a premium on that. And I got recruited, I would say for two reasons. One, I have an extensive background in serving small businesses and I could talk about that over the arc of my career. And our bread and butter customer is a small and mid sized business. And the second reason is a lot of my training and how to operate a company at scale efficiently and effectively. That’s different than when you’re kind of an early stage, go for broke growth mode. And so I would say those are the two reasons why, you know, I was brought in and to me why this opportunity was so interesting.

 

Darren [00:07:12]:

Yeah. So how have the last couple of years been? What, what did you set out to do? What succeeded? Where have you been challenged?

 

Albert Ko [00:07:19]:

Yeah. And this is where maybe starting with what might be even the headline for today of, you know, how to build an enduring business. And of course there is no prescription. I’m sure all of your guests, and I’ve heard several of them, they have a completely different story and circumstance. Life and business matters a lot. But this business for many, many years rode the breakneck growth of E Commerce. Where you need the right product, you need to get it in front of the customers. But how efficiently or effectively you operate internally, how clear your strategy is matters less. During a certain window, when you’ve caught the wave and you should just ride that bad boy all the way that it takes you. And then of course, the wave breaks, there will be another wave. But now that’s where sometimes management and strategy comes in. So, you know, again, back to the theme of building an enduring business. I learned this many, many years ago, and I should credit both my employer at the time, Intuit, but also we hired a group, the McChrystal group, which is now a consulting firm, but it was started by Stanley McChrystal, who I think led the joint forces of the coalition in Iraq at a time when we kind of turned the tide on the insurgency many, many years ago. And there were a lot of lessons learned from that. But they introduced a theme and a framework that I still use in business called the alignment triangle. And I think it’s a super important thing. And if you think about it, and there’s variations of it, you have to start with, is your mission clear? Like, why does your company exist? And it’s usually a pretty broad statement. So for us here at Oqtane, we send your business soaring. Of course, underneath that, it’s through E commerce and through fulfillment, but we send your business soaring. And then underpinning that has to be a clear set of company values that you want to operate your business with. You need to have a strategy. Now, typically the mission is enduring. Right? Because it’s why your company exists. That should be a multi decade thing. Although every now and again you look at it and you fine tune it. Your value should be enduring, but your strategy ought to be refreshed. You look at it every year, but probably every three years there’s probably a big shift. And then you have initiatives or priorities, depending on the term you want to use, that are in year initiatives that support the multi year strategy underpinned by the values of the company in service of the mission you want to go to. And there are many variations of this in business, as you probably can teach better than most, but that’s been an enduring framework and we did not have that. And so we set about to pull that together. We did that. And a lot of our operating rhythm is based on that alignment triangle and making sure that we are all on the same page.

 

Darren [00:10:23]:

Yeah, I often work with CEOs that enter situations like yours and one of the things that they have to do is either fundamentally or at least significantly alter the ways people are working. Like there’s something stuck, things are not moving fast enough. People aren’t taking ownership and accountability. They’re not having direct and honest communication. And in order to fulfill the mission and strategy once it’s defined, there’s something in the culture that needs to shift. Is that something that you encountered? And if so, how did you, how have you dealt with that over the last couple years?

 

Albert Ko [00:10:58]:

100%. We had a great product. We are, you know, the market leader in the spaces we play. But I would say the company ran more like a startup who caught that initial wave and grew, that grew the hell out of itself by riding that wave. But at some point you kind of have to retool. You’re a lot larger. You have multiple brands, you have multiple offices, multiple geographies. We have businesses all around the world. And now you’ve got to operate with that kind of line of the clarity of mission, the clarity of the strategy, the communication, the operating rhythm of the business. Those were much more rudimentary than they are today. And that was a very big lift. And of course, then do you have the right leaders in place? Do you have the right succession? All of those things that come into play. But you know, I would say for any leader coming into a situation, you just have to assess, first of all, why were you brought in and are you an agent of continuity because the business is doing great and the succession just happened, or are you an agent of change? And if so, if you’re an early stage company, I suspect generally speaking, it’s kind of go for growth, find that product market fit. If you are a more mature company like ours that has a great franchise, enormous margins, and you’re trying to just execute better to drive more growth and even better margins, those are different mandates and understanding what they are then begets the set of activities. But you know, I’ve been now through a couple of cycles where I’ve had the great benefit of inheriting a good business and then trying to make it better.

 

Darren [00:12:34]:

Yeah, so you’re, you were definitely an agent of change is what I’m hearing. And I’m wondering how difficult it’s been. You know, where did you succeed? Where have things been challenging? And maybe if you could just bring to life, like, what would people say working at a company with Al as CEO is like, like what is the, what’s the felt sense of your leadership? And what I’m trying to bring to life is your distinct philosophy around how to build an enduring business.

 

Albert Ko [00:13:02]:

Yes. I like to believe that a company that I’m a part of, whether I’m the leader of or just in the mix, is one of incredible collaboration and high employee engagement. And I would start there. Of course, the mission and the strategy matter, but at the end of the day, I think it’s really important. Work is such a big part of our lives. I want to be working with friends. I want work to be fun. I want to recognize one another and that’s how you build an enduring business. As opposed to there are all kinds of short term levers you can play to try to goose the numbers or to, to drive short term outcomes. And, you know, I’ve always, and hopefully my background demonstrates this. I’m not one to bounce around different companies looking for the next thing I’m here to sink my roots in and build something great. And so, you know, a couple of thoughts I have on this. First of all, I’ve had incredible mentors in my career at every step. And I have to say, it is as much luck as it is skill that I had people who were great role models and who invested in me. And there are four that I can think of if we had the time to talk about those. And I can even call them out by name, but each of which or each of whom taught me something different.

 

Darren [00:14:28]:

Yeah, I’d love to hear it.

 

Albert Ko [00:14:30]:

So early in my career I had a leader, a mentor and a boss named Alex Lintner. He’s now a very senior leader at Experian, but I worked with him both at BCG and at Intuit. I could go on and on, but I’ll say he was first a master storyteller, so he could just paint a picture. And it was just music just to listen to say, wow, I want to do that, I want to be a part of that. And there’s a skill to it. And he invested the time to demonstrate what those things are like. But perhaps more importantly, he recognized others. And so even when I was unproven, he would talk me up in a way that opened doors and gave opportunities that really early in my career allowed me to succeed. And I’ve never forgotten that. And so again, back to your original question of what’s it like to work at a company that I was a part of. I like to think that we have a culture where we recognize one another and doesn’t matter where you are in the hierarchy. And we open doors to people in whom we see potential, even if they haven’t proven it yet, because everyone needs a chance. And I really learned that from Alex and he’s still my friend. And what an amazing lesson.

 

Darren [00:15:55]:

Well, hopefully he’s listening today. I imagine you’ve returned the favor to many. And maybe we’ll get into your own mentorship at some point. But just while we’re on this point of recognition, is there anything distinctive, unique that you do as a CEO in your company around that kind of a signature practice or something that would be unusual?

 

Albert Ko [00:16:16]:

Yeah, we have a multi layered approach to this and a lot of this is new. But one is we have an all star program where continuously we are seeking stories of employees going above and beyond to be able to gather those. And I read every single one of them, by the way. It’s a great way to end a day, even if it was a hard day to just read those stories, to say, wow, there is a lot of good happening. There’s a lot of people going above and beyond, whether it’s for customers or whether it’s for our fellow employees. That’s an amazing thing. And then on a quarterly basis, we recognize those who little bit of a subjective process, but those who have both the most comments, but also the most impressive outcomes and do that in a very, very public way to be able to just give recognition where it’s due. I would say that’s the fun program. The more formal program is one where we have built in succession planning where we try to identify not just who’s ready now to take Darren Gold’s job when he is ready to move on, but who in the organization has the potential and how do we, what do they need to develop to fully develop that potential, to not just take the next step, but to take the next several steps. And I think just having that dialogue creates an environment where recognition happens versus where you’re not as quite as deliberate about putting those things in place.

 

Darren [00:17:50]:

Yeah, great. Well, you mentioned there were three other kind of key mentors and some lessons learned. You want to get back to those?

 

Albert Ko [00:17:57]:

Sure. The next one I’ll call out is the current CEO of Intuit, Sasanga Darzee. He was actually my boss twice. Once, many, many moons ago. And then later when he became the CEO, I became a direct report. But I’ll share one story from early in my career, and to give you a little context, I just started managing people from being an individual contributor. And I was also relatively new to being a product manager, having started my career as you know, Darren. And we’ll talk about our shared history way back in the day in strategy. And so I had a lot to learn And I’ve always believed, you know, one just the hard work and do the work of 10 people and you’ll be valuable in the organization. And I’d been working for him for some bit of time and I generally received positive reviews and so I felt pretty good about myself. And one day during mid year review season, he took me out to a fancy restaurant off campus. And that was a little unusual. And I expected him to give heap extra praise on me, having picked quite a fancy restaurant, I can name it later. And instead of heaping praise, he was very serious when he suggested maybe I should move on from the company. Because what he observed is I had not made the proper transition from being an individual contributor to a manager of people. And almost verbatim his quote was, I get more value from you making everyone in our business unit. There were about 650 people in the business unit at the time, 20% better than you doing the work of 10 people. And it’s just math. And I see you doing more of the individual heavy lifting and showing up early and going to work late and being hyper productive. And everyone likes you, but you’re not making everyone else better. And unless you can make that transition, there are careers where individual leadership and capability are highly prized. You should pursue those. But in a large corporate environment, as a people leader, that is not it, or that is not enough. And it was a. By the way, I’m putting a more positive spin on what was a pretty tough message. But I credit him for the first time ever, really making me not just evaluate myself as a manager, but even evaluate my career choices. Because I’ve long said if you want to have a successful career, there need to be kind of three circles in the Venn diagram come together and you need to sit in the center and. And one is you got to do something you love. And the second is you got to do something you’re good at. Because there’s a lot of things I love, like singing, that I’m not very good at. So if I tried to make a living off of that, and then the third is that the company needs you to do right and it’s tough to find that match. And some of it’s a choice and some of it is of course your own personality and your likes and dislikes. But I think that conversation I had with Sasan really for the first time, you know, before then I was just looking for a great job and trying to do a great job, but I didn’t have a great sense of what I wanted to be. But that was a bit of the fork in the road. Do I want to be a larger organization leader, or do I want to be a killer individual contributor in a smaller place where that is valued? I’ve always wanted to have huge impact, and so that wasn’t the question, but that was a fork in the road. And after a few weeks of really asking myself that, I tried to take some steps. And the great news is my boss invested in me to say, well, then let me explicitly teach you and point out things that are going to help you along that journey. And I like to think it was pretty successful, although, of course, we’re all still learning along the way.

 

Darren [00:22:06]:

Yeah, I love these crucible moments that define people’s careers. And you had this gift of somebody that could deliver something very direct and that you needed to hear and then invest behind you. Has that translated into what you do for others? Has that become part of your leadership, or how has that impacted you?

 

Albert Ko [00:22:24]:

I try, and I certainly feel that across most of my career, those who work at the companies I’ve been a part of work in the group that I’m a part of. Hopefully, they get the mentorship and the engagement. But more importantly, look, everyone seeks both the recognition and then sometimes with that recognition comes the opportunities. They get that in a outsized dose because we’re very conscious of that and because we know that that is the role of the manager. And one of my favorite books, it’s a bestselling book. It’s by Liz Weissman, who I consider both business guru and a mentor. You know, the Multipliers book. I’m sure you’re very familiar with it. It delves into that concept really well, where your job as a leader is to be a multiplier of others versus the brilliant person who has all the ideas, who works harder than everyone else, but who can have the impact of diminishing the broader team. That’s something I try to remind myself of every day.

 

Darren [00:23:24]:

Okay, so we’ve got two big themes emerging. One is around recognition, the other around this sort of multiplier. And I would also say maybe a third in this idea of just strong, direct mentorship that can really, really serve people. So let’s talk about the last couple people, and then we’ll start to work our way backwards a little bit from there.

 

Albert Ko [00:23:46]:

Yeah, go back in our time machine. Well, the third, and there’s so many people here, but the third that I thought of as I was preparing for this podcast is a woman named Cece Morkin, who is a great leader and is now a board member of a lot of great companies. But she embodies intense lifelong learning and curiosity. And I love literature and I love history. And you know, one of my favorite books is the dramatic German poem by Goethe, you know, faust. And there’s a quote in there that I always love, which Faust in this poem says, he only earns his freedom and existence, who daily conquers them anew. Right and freedom and opportunity are won through consistent effort and lifelong learning. And what a universal concept. And you could say, well, of course that’s true. But how many people are constantly learning and reinventing? And my story of cc, who was both my boss and again all of these people I consider my friend. She was always a better leader than me, but we were for a hot second peers. When she led sales and marketing and I led product for a division and particularly in a role as a salesperson in an enterprise sales company, she beat up product. A lot of, you know, product had to deliver more for her to sell more. And while we had a cordial relationship, it was definitely one sided and I felt a lot of pressure. And when she was promoted to be the division president, I was like, oh my goodness, now she was my boss. We’re going to get a heavy sales and marketing bent. Not that that’s bad, but that just means a heavier lift for everyone on the product and engineering side. And wouldn’t you know it, her first order of business as the new president with all the new responsibilities was to deeply immerse herself in the practice of product management and the whole kind of engineering life cycle. To have deeper empathy into both what the challenges were in just building something that sales team wanted, but more importantly to try to be a better mentor. And I was astounded at the complete shift within a couple of months from being the sales and marketing leader to being the general manager, effectively the CEO of this division. And again back to this quote of in this case, she only earns her freedom and existence, who daily conquers them anew. There are new challenges every day and she just took on a whole new set and just figured it out. And I think that’s so powerful. And that’s why some people ask me, I’ve gone from accounting to payments to now E commerce. And while there are some common threads, they’re very different industries. And to me the subject matter doesn’t matter as much as just there are common principles that can be applied throughout. And then of course just this intense learning and focus.

 

Darren [00:27:07]:

Yeah, and that word intense. As I’ve known you as probably an apt in the best possible way. I think you bring a level of intensity and energy and passion to everything you do. And so I’m sort of seeing the thread of that in this kind of early lesson too.

 

Albert Ko [00:27:23]:

Well, I appreciate you saying that. I feel the same about you. And I’m going to go into some basketball stories down the road where nobody out competed Darren Gold. But again, you learn those life lessons all over the place. And it’s actually something that even though you and I have not shared a court together in 30 years, that I will not forget. Just the going for it. Right. And I don’t want to say you and I or neither of us were the most talented on the court, but let me just say I felt you probably have a different opinion that we had similar talent, but you had more intensity. And so it was a thing to see. And again, I try to apply these lessons with everyone that I encounter and you’re certainly on that list too.

 

Darren [00:28:06]:

Oh, that’s great to hear. It brings back good memories. So you had a fourth person before we go back to that.

 

Albert Ko [00:28:13]:

Yeah, the fourth person, and probably the person that had the biggest impact on my career is Brad Smith, the former CEO of Intuit and the current president of Marshall University. And I will say this, the amazing thing about Brad, I bet 10,000 people would list Brad as their greatest career mentor.

 

Darren [00:28:35]:

Wow.

 

Albert Ko [00:28:36]:

Unbelievable. I might make the list of one or two people, maybe not even that. Right. And this guy, he is in the hall of Fame. First ballot, hall of Fame of Leaders. There are so many lessons here, but I will just share one quote of his. He said, it’s not about me, it’s about we. So the broad term servant leadership, the fact that, you know, he always taught that life is a team sport and that serving others was always the brand that he wanted to build for himself. And that successful individuals play for a cause greater than themselves. And certainly in a company context, it’s true. But just as a US citizen, I feel that way about the community I live in, the state that I live in, and of course the country. And it’s not about individual achievement, it’s about collective outcomes. And he lived it every day. And in fact, all the principles we talked about thus far kind of wrapped into one human being. This was probably the guy. But. But the quote that stands out is that it’s not about me, it’s about we. And again, it goes back to, hey, what do you want to be known for al in your companies? And it’s a place of high engagement where we had common purpose, we had fun together and we drove really great outcomes because we were able to delight customers.

 

Darren [00:30:06]:

Yeah, I think that’s maybe the meta takeaway here is the distinctive, powerful and very clear philosophy of a, of a CEO. It’s why I asked the question I did of you up front and I think how you answered it makes sense in light of these kind of life and career experiences. And I imagine if I were to speak to people, I’d get something similar back to them if I asked the question of what is it like to work at Octane with Al at the helm. So let’s go back now because you’ve had this story career, you’ve referenced a lot about Intuit. You had a more recent stint at Early Warning and for those of you that don’t know, Early Warning obviously is the, or not obviously, but is the company that runs the Zelle Payments network. And you were there at a really interesting kind of inflection point. Talk a little bit about that experience. We’ll then go back to Intuit and then maybe we revisit a little bit about our early days and when we first got to know each other.

 

Albert Ko [00:31:06]:

Sure. We’ll go back kind of five, 10 years at a time from the present, which we’ve been talking about, to about five years ago. So later in my Intuit career, I started to get some calls for CEO opportunities. And I’ll be honest with you, I never aspired to be the CEO, but I was always open to it, obviously when I got to a certain stage and when this opportunity came up again through somebody I knew and they were looking for a product centric leader and I’d been a product manager for the bulk of my career and I had pretty good background in payments and financial technology and even banking. It just was a great fit. And when I joined, and this is in 2019, I believe I’m not the inventor of Zelle. Zelle had just launched, but it was brand new. There were, I believe, 18 banks on it at the time. There were a few million users and it was many, many, many years behind some peer to peer competitors like Venmo and Cash App to name too, and of course PayPal itself. And there was good initial traction, but maybe it wasn’t scaling quite as much as the banks who actually own Early Warning would like. And so they looked for new leadership and I was picked and it was a super exciting opportunity. And I’ll share with you a quick story here. It was again I mentioned it wasn’t growing as rapidly as we wanted to and we looked at the data and of course in a lot of businesses and certainly a peer to peer network, the more payers you have and the more receivers you have, the more frictionless it is. And Zelle at the time had a problem where if I’m on Zelle and you’re not Darren and I send you a Zelle and how do you collect the money and vice versa. So that’s one problem. Number two, it was conceived of as a peer to peer competitor to the Venmos and the cash apps of the world, which had been in market five, six, seven years ahead of Zelle. And so you know, how do you catch up, how do you create that network, that two sided network and then how do you catch up? Maybe not by being the same because of some of the constraints of being inside of the bank app, although there’s advantages too. We couldn’t have the social element and even the user experience had a little bit more friction. And that was just by design and it was built in and it was what it was. And so you kind of have to look at the ball, where it lies and say where do we go from here when you want to grow it? So couple of things. Number one, look at the data. And one insight was the average Zelle transaction was 4x larger than the average Venmo transaction. Again, this is dated info, although I bet the trends are largely similar. It was $80 a pop versus $20 a pop on average. And of course there were way more Venmo transactions at the time. And so it’s like $80 isn’t exactly like two college kids like splitting pizza and beer, right? It’s a bigger transaction. And wouldn’t you know, it turns out even though it wasn’t designed for this and it was connected only to consumer accounts, a lot of businesses were using it. But business owners to their personal account because they like the instant settlement element. Like if I zelle you money, it is in your account within seconds, you know, versus a lot of other peer to peer. It kind of hangs out there for a couple of days or there’s a fee if you want it quickly. So it’s like aha. There’s a huge insight there. One, the transactions are bigger and number two, businesses are using it. So we embarked on a journey to enable business accounts to take Zelle and number two, to increase the limits. And in any payments business there’s always a battle between higher limits, which reduces friction, and then fighting fraud which suggests lower limits. But hey, we think we can reliably Increase limits. Maybe not the first transaction, but by the time Darren and Al have an established relationship, that’s a pretty safe corridor. And those changes alone enabling business accounts and increasing limits created a huge tailwind that dramatically increased the growth rate. So that’s one big insight.

 

Darren [00:35:32]:

Yeah.

 

Albert Ko [00:35:32]:

The second one, and I would call this less insight but more acknowledgment of in many businesses that are network effects, businesses where you need a two sided network, you’ve gotta go for broke to try to build both sides. And so instead of just focusing on enabling larger banks to offer Zelle, we embarked on a very ambitious program to turn on thousands of community banks and credit unions as well. They have lower number of accounts, but it just eliminates the friction of if I want to send Darren the money, can he accept it? Because the answer is yes. Because even if you haven’t set it up yet, you’ll get an alert and you take tap a couple of clicks and you can be up and running. And the combination of those insights and changes led to dramatic growth where by the time I left four years later, it was already by a factor of two, the largest peer to peer network by dollars spent. And I think today it’s 3 or 4x as large as any competitor, again by dollars spent. I don’t know the transactions numbers anymore because I’ve been removed from the business. But it was quite an exciting growth story.

 

Darren [00:36:47]:

Yeah, it’s an incredible story. And I had a small window into that first year of your leadership and I just wanted to sort of double down on. By no means was it clear that you were gonna be successful. You had a really challenging problem and big opportunity ahead of you to build a two sided network, particularly given the competitive dynamics. The other thing that’s worth mentioning is there’s a kind of a DNA in that culture of compliance and fraud prevention that is a little antithetical to innovation moving fast. And I think one of the things you did wonderfully was to not sacrifice those things but build on top of it a company that was much more modern, much more innovative, scrappier. And that was also not clear that that was going to be successful. So I think I just wanted to add that point to what sounds like it was a really important journey for you.

 

Albert Ko [00:37:45]:

It was. I appreciate you calling that out. And of course back to the golf analogy of hitting the ball where it lies. The reality is Early Warning will never be a startup with kind of a risk taking culture because it has the benefit of being inside the financial system and owned by the big banks. On the other hand, you shouldn’t just accept that there is no way to drive change or change culture or move faster and striking that right balance. It’s always a work in progress and it’s like tending to a garden. You look away for two, two days and there’s weeds all over the place. So it’s just a, it’s a, it’s a constant care and feeding effort. But it is possible and I think we showed it.

 

Darren [00:38:29]:

Yeah. I wonder if you were to draw one lesson from that experience and just one. I’m wondering if it’s not that point, which is oftentimes people fall into the trap of kind of black or white either, or we either go for broke or we don’t. And what I’m hearing you say is no, this is a lot more complex and nuanced and it involves balance, it involves trade offs, it involves really being attuned and dealing with what you have as well as expanding into something that you’re not. Is that a takeaway for you or is there another one that you would cite as like, this is my one key learning from that experience?

 

Albert Ko [00:39:07]:

It’s a huge takeaway. Thanks for that insight, Darren. Again, you are unique at seeing and hearing things, but I mentioned earlier the alignment triangle and being clear on the mission and the strategy and the priorities and the values. But I will say it’s important to have those on paper, but it’s important to be flexible and have the nuance. Nothing in business or in life is black and white. That’s why I’m politically immoderate. That’s why I believe in diverse teams with different viewpoints. Because you can have a plan on a page, you can have the top three priorities laid out, but the reality is there’s always a fourth thing you need to keep in mind. Or there might be a set of rules, but you’re also trying to work within those rules to try to change something. That nuance is important. And I will say as a fellow law student, law school graduate, and I have a humanities background, I was a history major as an undergrad. I want to say there are not enough humanities leaders in technology specifically, but I would say business overall. And I think actually society is moving toward more specialization and also more they want the math person or the CS person or the econ person, which is all fine. And maybe not the English major, the history major, the poli sci major. And I think that’s a mistake. Of course it’s a balance. But one thing that I learned from my humanities studies and you know this as a, as a history major Too is history 101 is memorizing names and dates. But real advanced history is taking a set of data, primary sources and figuring out what happened. And to me, the greatest training for me being a product manager was actually being a true historian, which is you take inputs from how are people using the product, what does the data say? But there’s a lot of qualitative too. You observe customers in action doing that which your, your software is designed to enhance. And then you have to make sense of what does this mean and what should I do next? And to me, the lost art of feeling, empathy, nuance, dealing with the gray is something that the humanities teaches through the lessons of history and philosophy and literature that I think is underrepresented today. And I think especially in a world of AI where maybe the machine can do more and more, what is the value add that the human brings and particularly the leader brings is that judgment and that nuance that I am sure grateful for having that background. And I still constantly try to read literature and history and fiction so that I have a sense of the world and my small place in this very complex organism that then almost always translates into as I have a judgment call to make it work. And it often involves people.

 

Darren [00:42:24]:

Yeah.

 

Albert Ko [00:42:25]:

And people are very unpredictable. What should I do? And I don’t get it right all the time, but it certainly is not a math problem.

 

Darren [00:42:32]:

I love that we have probably a whole show to do on that. So I’m going to segue off of history and take us back in time a little bit to your days at Intuit and just, you know, that’s a long experience with multiple roles. But summarize that experience. What did you do there and what were the. You’ve talked about some of the mentorship lessons, but how did it inform your leadership?

 

Albert Ko [00:42:54]:

Yes, I’ll say it informed my leadership in three ways. The first is that it’s an incredibly employee centric company. So this is dated info, but back when I was at Intuit, we had a ex LinkedIn employee who joined Intuit and they had done some studies at LinkedIn that looked at the rate of boomeranging back to a company. So you’re at a company, you leave at what rate do employees go back? And that person shared that Intuit was the highest. Again, this is back in the day. I haven’t validated the data, so don’t fact check me on it right now, Darren. And things do change. But I think it spoke a lot to people for a Lot of reasons you change jobs, but a lot of people come back. Cause it’s a great place to work. And you still see a lot of people with 10, 20, 30 years of tenure. The company is now over 40 years. And I credit a lot of leaders, starting with the founder Scott Cook, and then the many leaders that have guided the company for just establishing a great culture. And of course it’s more fun when you’re winning. And Intuit has won a lot more than it’s lost over the years. But it still starts with a employee centric culture. And I’m not just talking about creature comforts and benefits. I’m talking about investing in people and their careers and what they learn in a really outsized way that says, hey, you know, five years here is worth 20 years somewhere else. Because it’s not just learned by doing, they’re investing in my education. Managers are comped on how good a manager they are. That’s an important, important lesson number one. And again, I’ll credit the founder for getting all of that going. Number two. And again, maybe this is where Scott Cook, the founder, shines. Customer centricity. Every company will say they’re customer centric. This company is obsessed with it. So there’s a term called follow me home. Sounds kind of creepy, but where you, you don’t just ask a customer what they want. You don’t even just observe the customer using their software. You actually go to their place of business and watch them do work even outside of their software, so that you have a visceral sense of this is the day in the life. These are the inefficiencies, these are the challenges, these are the stresses, and these are the joys. And then of course, your software is a piece of, of the solution, but you get that whole context and through that new breakthroughs come about. And just being very maniacal about not only observing the customer and being close to them, but of course then holding yourself to a very, very high bar of did you deliver on that customer benefit that you observed? Can you measure it? Which is not always easy. So then being very, very maniacal about that and investing in that, and then rinse and repeat, especially as technology cycles evolve. And then the final lesson, and I referenced that in some of my early discussion about even Zelle, is to create an enduring business. It sure is hard to do off the sweat of your brow, just working harder and being more clever than the next person. That is not easy. And of course, as you grow, prices go up, margins go up, and it just opens the Door for low end disruptors with, and especially with each new technology cycle, there’s a bunch. And that’s the beauty of the world of competition we live in. And so part of the way you mitigate that is how do you build a network effects business where now you have competitive moats where it’s just harder for someone with a slicker UI and a lower price to come in and just try to take share. And I’ve got countless examples from Intuit where being very deliberate about that allowed the company to build enduring businesses that sometimes you may not be first, but you just have the breathing room because you’ve got that competitive moat to be able to then adapt and make it better. And that’s how you build a 40 year business that’s doing better than ever. And again, a lot of the credit for all three of those things go to Scott Cook.

 

Darren [00:47:16]:

Yeah, that’s the last point in particular is one that most CEOs don’t, I believe, fully appreciate. And we had Hamilton Helmer, the Seven Powers author on the show talking about strategic power. And you could call that competitive moats. But I see you having had experiences and really internalizing that, that. So just in the interest of time, I want to just maybe go back to maybe the beginning of your career. You mentioned BCG, but we met at McKinsey. Take us back to whatever it was. 1998 is probably my best guess.

 

Albert Ko [00:47:51]:

On the right date, 1998. And I was a history major.

 

Darren [00:47:55]:

Yeah.

 

Albert Ko [00:47:56]:

And this was my first job. It was in Los Angeles I met you and so many great, talented people. And probably like a lot of people who show up there, little bit of imposter syndrome. And like, what am I doing here? And I was on a finance heavy case. I’d never cracked Excel before. I had to literally learn how to add two cells together.

 

Darren [00:48:18]:

Well, there’s the learner in you, right?

 

Albert Ko [00:48:20]:

Yeah. Well. And by the way, a admittedly frustrated but incredibly patient engagement manager who invested the time to teach me. And of course I’m capable of learning like most people, but you gotta give me a little time and you gotta give me a little help and then I can fill in the rest. Yeah, it was one of the best places to learn. But I will say, Darren, just to go back to, some of my fondest memories are recall on Saturday mornings we’d play basketball at Palisades High School. I actually don’t know what happened to that high school since the fires. But we’d go and on a Saturday morning we’d play for a couple of hours. And then at least some of us would then just go right down the hill and go to the beach. And it’s an awesome Saturday. What a great way to start.

 

Darren [00:49:09]:

Incredible.

 

Albert Ko [00:49:10]:

But I just remember there. There were all different skill levels. There were definitely some really great players, and you were definitely better than me. But what you saw were different personalities and grit and just commitment to trying to win. That’s one thing I love about sports, and especially competitive sports. Someone wins and someone loses, and of course you want to be a good sport. And as I’ve gotten older, I realize I’m okay losing. I’m just trying to burn a few calories. But so many life lessons there and so many friendships forged out of that competition and collaboration. Right? And I’ve always thought highly of you then, not just because you went to law school, but just because of the competitive fire where you were usually on the winning team. Because any team Darren Gold’s a part of, you know, they’re gonna have someone who’s gonna get every loose ball and rebound and defend like hell and then be at the front of every fast break. I don’t know if you still play basketball, Darren, but I remember it very vividly.

 

Darren [00:50:11]:

I did for a while. I’m onto something else now. But, you know, there’s. You know, there you go. There’s the recognition, strength. So you’re recognizing in me something, and it’s making me blush and bringing back great memories is this great quote that says, sports don’t just build character, they reveal character. And I remember thinking the same thing about you. Sort of a kindred spirit. And it’s been so fun to watch that level of intensity and energy and passion and willingness to practice and get better and give all of yourself to something in these various organizations that I know you were obviously blessed to be part of, but I’m sure they feel very blessed to have had you in various roles. And now, you know, in the last. Your current company, in the last company, in the role of CEO, which is such an important role, we have covered a ton of ground. I think one of the things I’ve loved about this conversation is there are, like, multiple threads that I wanted to pull on. I don’t think I’ve yet said this to any guests, not because it’s not true, but it’s just feeling like I can definitely see us getting back together at some point and pulling on a few more threads and having another conversation, But I wanted to just create some space for you. Anything that we haven’t covered that you’d love to mention that reveals a little bit more about you, is important for you to mention or we have covered, but you want to put a finer point on before we wrap.

 

Albert Ko [00:51:37]:

Absolutely. Darren, first of all, it’s been a pleasure talking to you and we should break bread one of these days very soon for sure. One thing that I am always filled with and reminded of is a great sense of gratitude. We all have our life journeys and I believe that perhaps with the exception of a major health issue, we all have an equal number of stresses and challenges. They’re just different, Right? And all of us are on that journey. But whenever I’m having a hard day or a difficult decision I have to make, I try to ground myself in the fact that I feel very fortunate to have the opportunities I have to live in this country with the freedoms we enjoy as well as the bounty of opportunity. And I’m grateful to those who came before me and I reference the founder of Intuit or my old bosses who helped pave the way for me to enjoy the opportunities that I have today. But I can’t help going back to my parents. So I am an immigrant to this country. We are Korean and my parents left Korea and moved to Iran, of all places, to seek a better life. Because back in the 70s, Iran had a far higher standard of living than South Korea. And the idea was to live there for five years to save money and then to go back home and get started in a middle class life in Korea. Well, the Ayatollah Khomeini had other ideas. And when he returned to Iran from exile in 1979, it was year three of our family’s journey in Iran. And needless to say, it was not a great place for foreigners to be. And through the great grace of friends and even the man upstairs, instead of returning back to Korea penniless, my parents had American friends who said, hey, we’ll sponsor you to come to the States. If you’re going to start from zero, what better place than the US of A? And so I’m an accidental American. Both because of the Islamic revolution and these American friends have said, hey, come live with us in Los Angeles. Which is how I grew up in la. And so I showed up right before I started kindergarten. At the time, I spoke Korean and Farsi, didn’t speak a lick of English, and I went to public school in la. And because I didn’t speak English, they put me in English as a second language class. It was me and 30 Mexicans. And that was my start to the USA and my mom worked the night shift at the post office for 32 years. She also answered phones for my dad during the day and was mom making our lunches, doing pickups so she literally got no sleep my whole childhood. And then my dad was a small business owner, not that successful, to be honest, but just kind of scratching and clawing, as is often the case with a first gen, so that my sister and I could have the educational opportunities to then avail ourselves to the bounty that is the American dream. And it’s shaped my life. And I look at the journey and I even look at my grandparents who had an even harder than my parents did, faced starvation, war, and I’m like, if I’m having a bad day, come on now, let’s keep that in perspective. And so, you know, maybe the word I’d conclude with is gratitude. And I think if we can ground ourselves in that we have good days and we have bad days when we have life’s challenges, but we can pursue them with an optimism and the recognition that we’ve come a long way as a family, as a society. And I think if everyone approached each day that way and we tried to build organizations that recognize that we’d all be a little bit better off, especially in these very contentious times.

 

Darren [00:55:38]:

What an extraordinary way to end this conversation. Immense gratitude to you, Al, for our friendship, for being in this conversation, and for all you’re doing to build an enduring company. Thank you again for being on. It’s been. It’s been wonderful.

 

Albert Ko [00:55:55]:

Thank you, Darren. It’s a pleasure.

 

Albert Ko [00:56:03]:

What a remarkable conversation. Among the many things I took away from this conversation with Al is just how central engagement is to his philosophy of leadership. For him, the true measure of a leader is found in the degree to which people feel connected, energized, and proud.

 

Darren [00:56:18]:

To be part of the company.

 

Albert Ko [00:56:20]:

And what makes that philosophy so powerful is the way it’s rooted in mentorship and the lessons he absorbed from those who came before him and the responsibility he feels to carry those lessons forward. I look forward to being with you on the next episode of One of One. Until then, I hope you live with courage, wisdom, and above all, with love.

One of One is produced by Darren Gold, Emily Shaw, Talia Deer, and Karen Welsh. Engineering by Aja Simpson.