Full Transcript for Jordan Wright, Atomic

how we do things, but as an eight-year-old mind works. Matt: Yeah, my the first business me and me and my little brothers or me my little brother used to when we were the summers when we would be at our lake house, my dad's a dentist. He would work until noon on Wednesdays and then we would leave at noon and we would go up to the lake and then he would, and this is, I don't know, I'm probably like criminalizing him by telling this story because he would then leave us on Thursday to go back into town to practice on Thursday and then he would have Fridays off. And so we would be at the lake from Wednesday at noon until, you know, sometimes Monday morning would drive back real early, but Those Thursdays were the best days of the summer, right? And so me and my little brother and my older brother, we would just go crazy. And we're like, I want to say it was probably nine or 10. And we would drive jet skis all around and there weren't a whole lot of people in the lake during the day. And so anyways, we found a hole, a par three course that was over the water. And me and my little brother would go just camp out. And sometimes we would heckle them. Sometimes we would yell things when they're backswing, but we would just watch for balls to drop into the lake. We would jump in and then we would fill up our, little container in the sea do with balls. And then we would go to the, we'd go to the, uh, back to the golf course, like the 19th hole and we would sell them. balls for 50 cents, know. So that was that was our first our first business selling people the balls that they had already hit into the water. So is fun though when I hear stories about like there's some people who just kind of like know what they want to do. I was kind of jealous of that when I was growing up. Like I think if I look back like I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I just didn't understand. That's what it was right. Jordan Wright: It's amazing. Matt: But it sounds like from a very young age, that's what you wanted to do. And then to hear you like while you're in college doing full-time stuff, it's impressive. Do you have an idea of where that came from? Like were your parents entrepreneurs? Was it just kind of like a bug you got early and kind of like to create? do you know where that came from? Jordan Wright: I don't know where it came from. know, have siblings that are, ⁓ have three that are doctors, one that got her MBA, one that was a high school teacher. So ⁓ maybe a little bit different than those ⁓ in regard. I don't It just like, you know, I converted my parents' barn into Hogwarts castle when I was 12 and like made wands for people and charged bittons from the neighborhood. And so like, you know, it was just, yeah, it was always there. And ⁓ Matt: That's awesome. Yeah. Jordan Wright: I don't know. I've wondered that. My dad a small business. So, ⁓ but didn't see a lot of that growing up. It's not like I was there all the time. So yeah, I've wondered where that comes from, where that bug comes from, but I got it early. ⁓ Matt: Yeah, right, yeah, this is, well, congrats on what you've done to now and what you're doing at Atomic because I just think it's incredible. And as I said, you guys have a great team. mean, I'll give you a really quick side story. I had a call with somebody from ⁓ your probably like months ago. And he said, hey, I'm gonna share some info with you. I'm gonna keep you guys in mind as things come up. And fast forward like literally two weeks ago, just out of the blue, he sent me an email. goes, hey, I was thinking about you and I wanna make this introduction. Are you cool if I send this email this afternoon? And was just a unprompted, like thoughtful thing that you don't see a lot of partners do. And so I think that's a... It's a testament, I think, to the kind of people that you're hiring and quite frankly, I to your leadership. again, thanks for all that you're doing and what you're building at Atomic. I'd love for you to kind of give our listeners just a rundown of what Atomic does. And I know you gave a little bit of it with your experience with UpBill and then Q2, but kind of like what spurred you to start it? Jordan Wright: Yeah, thanks, Matt. Thank you for the compliment. So I think that when you look at Atomic, we started as helping consumers switch direct deposit. And our thought was, if we can make consumers, if we can make it easier for consumers to switch, we can make it a better experience for them. Also, the financial institutions that offer the best experiences will win the most opportunities in the market. And so that's kind of where the idea originated. ⁓ I can't say that we had the grand plan when we first started that we're doing right now, which is far broader than that. it's really about how do we help these people be better with their money? And leveraging our ability to create connections out there with all different kinds of systems outside of banking really ⁓ so they can do that. like MX, Finicity, these went and built banking connections. We went and built connections into most other things, And so merchants, payroll systems, that kind of stuff. so, and these are systems that don't have OAuth yet, a little bit like early days for the open banking industry, right? So like these systems don't have OAuth, needed, so consumers don't have that data. So like a really good example of how we're going about that work today is if a consumer sees a transaction come into their bank and they don't know what it is, By the way, like up to 70 % of the disputes people file are purchases they actually made. They just don't remember making that purchase when they see that data inside the banking app. if we can come in and move the context from the merchant into the bank, into the transaction feed, the chances that person files a dispute once they know what the purchase is for drops dramatically. ⁓ then Matt: Mm. Jordan Wright: We also have the ability to go in and say, okay, great.

Now we can do payment switching off of that same connection that was established for the merchant transaction data. We can do skew level data, bring in ⁓ here's all the purchases made through this merchant. Through Starbucks, we can tell you, you got these two Caramel Macchiatos this time. We can tell you all that kind of stuff. That's data that's not as existed in banking before. And that's ⁓ what going to unlock. And that's what we're working on unlocking with our customers. We also see a ton of people right now with moving into the agentic world and saying, okay, we're to have these agents that can go do things on behalf of our customers within our bank. But then how do we enable them? If we're going to give them a recommendation via one of these models that they should cancel the subscription or merge these two subscriptions or do sorts of things, how are we going to enable them to take action outside of their bank? And right now we're working with some the bleeding edge fintechs on launching that technology. And I think, you know, in a year or two, you'll see some of those large systems from the largest banks in the United States that have created bots like that begin to use technology like ours or us to be able to enable that to happen for a consumer to be able to take control of some of those things outside their finances. That's how I would describe it right now. Matt: That's so cool. really fascinating. ⁓ also really cool that you guys, like one of the things you said in there that I think is ⁓ most business can empathize with is like what we're doing today isn't exactly what we started out to do. And I think that there's that whole premise of this is what I set out to do, but then the market started changing or we identified an even bigger opportunity and we just evolved with it. Again, I think that comes, a lot of that comes to leadership. Can you talk about kind of what some of those processes have been like with your leadership team? Like what is that, when you start to identify things, do you have people that are specifically going and looking for like where... Where's the market headed and coming back and saying, here's where we think we should go, or is that you? Are you the one that's kind of looking long-term strategy and then having these conversations with your leadership team? Can you give us little insight into how that transpires? Jordan Wright: Sure. So when we started Atomic, it was my same business partner from Unbill. So the two of us started the company. About a year and a half in, a woman joined us named Andrea Martone. And she's our chief product officer. And we also ended up making her co-founder and title. And when joined us, we saw her some skill sets that we felt we possessed and that would put her in a position to do a really good job. both getting to know customers, but also understanding their needs like this. So the three of us as co-founders that run the company, our mandate is to spend at least 50 % of our

time with customers. All of us have to spend at least 50 % of our time with customers. And we feel like the best opportunities are created and found when we do that. And so we, ⁓ that, I say practice, And the three of us largely determine what we go work on next. So it's not just me, it's not, but it is largely the three of us. We get feedback from our team members and they say, ⁓ I had this really interesting conversation. Then we'll go have a further conversation with, these large clients that we have with others. But that's largely where the ideas come from is the three of us spending time together. And then there's just become a trust between the three of us that, you know, I early days it was me and me and Scott quite a bit more. Now it's Scott Andrea myself, we just had a meeting yesterday where Andrea's like, I really think we should be chasing this one thing. And we're like, sweet, like she's just as smart as I am just just as tapped into the customer. Really, I would say that's the lesson I learned early on at Nextpage at the company I worked for in college and has been reinforced for me again and again in B2B. you're not just super, super close to your customer, you can go dream up lots of things ⁓ a vacuum. But if you aren't spending your time so close to that customer, it's going to fall short. It's not going to be the thing that they, cause you need to match it to what they're going and seeking to accomplish. sometimes that's not going to match with what you, what you dreamed up. Matt: That's so good. think ⁓ are times where people will go try to build things that they think are cool and that they think will resonate well in the market. And I love the way that you guys are doing it is go in like, let's, maybe ends up being something that's cool, but let's go sit down and validate it. Let's go hear from them or let some of those conversations spur the product the direction that we're gonna go in. So hats off to you. That's really ⁓ impressive. Can you talk about one of the things I always enjoy hearing and ⁓ kind of ⁓ to run with. I used always ask people like, tell me your favorite sales story. ⁓ when from, your, your business, it doesn't have to be a sales story. I've kind of evolved it a little bit now to say, just like, tell me something that you've been really proud of or something that you've has been like a really, a moment in time and building this business that jumps out as something that, that you guys were really excited about. you know, like when I think about like my early sales stories, there was, you know, there were some times where I had, I was a hundred percent commission sales rep, my first job. And there were times where I had to get. really creative to get deals across the finish line. And so when somebody goes like, what's a really cool story from your career? Like that's immediately where I go to, right? Or there is anything like that, that's popping into your head as I bring that up. Jordan Wright: Sure. a few

that pop into my head that are favorites. I say probably one of my favorites was we had our product in August of 2020. In January, February, March, like that of 2021, Plaid announced that they were launching the same product. And we had just raised some money and my investor called and said, Jordan, his language is a bit different than mine. You're F'd like. it's not going to work. Just like take the money I gave you and think about a new idea. And I was like, yeah, it's Plaid's pretty great company, right? So I was like, I don't think so. We don't know that for sure. Why don't we just hold on a little bit and see what happens here in the market? And he was like, do whatever you want, I guess. I already gave the money, but he was a little bit frustrated with me. So we just, had one of our clients, we were like, hey, try them out and try us out and tell us the difference. Matt: Right. Thanks. Jordan Wright: And Black came and it wasn't just like they just came out and said they were doing a product in this space. ⁓ for certain like 30,000 employer mappings payroll systems. They came out and said that they knew hundreds of thousands out of the gate. And we thought that that was a key metric at the time to be able to know, to be able to be successful. And so ⁓ this had good reason to think this ⁓ would not out well for us. So we had a customer run both of us in parallel. Matt: Mm-hmm. Jordan Wright: and we were converting like four times better than them. And we're like, that's weird. And we started thinking about it more, you know, and it was like, well, you know, who's running the supply? It's probably not the, it's certainly not Zach and team, right? It's not the, it's not the best people, right? And we have, ⁓ not, they don't have the incentive we have to win here. And so we went heavy after that space. We went digging deep. We figured out what was really the, the things that would lead to success and conversion rate and things like that. Matt: Well. Jordan Wright: insights that we didn't think Plaid would be able to go as deep on. And within six months, they exited the market and realized it was a little bit tougher than they wanted to maybe get into the thing that they wanted to get into. But I love that story because sometimes you feel like, gosh, this, I think the term is the 800 pound gorilla in there, like somebody comes into your space and you feel like I'm toast, right? But they do have advantages, but so do you. Matt: Thank Right. Jordan Wright: I think that's a key thing to remind yourself of in those moments. I'm not saying that sometimes it's not a bad idea to walk away, but sometimes you can, yeah, pull off the, yeah. Matt: All Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's great. Well, it's also, think that's also sometimes, know, there's, ⁓ takes discernment, right? When you get a call, especially from somebody who's written you a big check and they're, you know, they're kind of raising the flag. It takes a lot of discernment to say like, yeah,

well, time out, like, let's, let's, let's keep forging ahead and let's figure some things out. And so ⁓ do like, like, I always enjoy hearing stories like that because it shows this creativity and the scrappiness, right? Like, What the 800 pound gorilla typically does not have is scrappiness, right? They've got a lot of, they've got a lot of processes and procedures that they've got to follow and it's very regimented. And if it doesn't hit these, you know, these metrics, then they're going to pull out. And so it allows you to kind of go, all right, well, what are different, different ways we can, we can win. of my, one of my favorite scenes ⁓ a, movie is, the opening scene or one of the opening scenes of gladiator where Maximus is on a horse like up high while there's a battle raging down below. when he's like before the movie really gets going, he's like the general, right? And he sees these guys fighting and he sees them coming in from the side to flank them. And they're trying to signal him, but they're like in battle, man. They don't hear anything. And so he gets his guys and they ride down in and they save them and then come back up. And it's one of those things where I think about that a lot in a leadership position of like how we should be here and we should be aware because where we are, we can see things that other people can't see. And there are times where we've got to get down in the muck, right? But then it's always important to me from a leadership perspective and a building people perspective to pull back up. And that to me is like, you've got to get scrappy, you got to get creative. And so sometimes we can get down in there go, all right. Hey, I've got a concern about this. I'm going to pick up the phone and call some customers and figure out what we're doing better than they are and what they're doing better than us and how we can, we can evolve. So a great story, man. Thanks for sharing that. I want to hit on, of course, it's like the, the, the topic de jour. in every podcast and every conversation you have. So anything you can share where you guys are seeing AI impact your business and ways that you're leveraging it. Obviously anything that you feel comfortable sharing, but ways that you're leveraging it to help create efficiencies or continue to impact your customers and partners. Jordan Wright: Yeah. So every month our senior leadership team, we have to share one way we've used AI in the last 30 days that we hadn't prior. And so we're doing that as a senior leadership team right now. And I've been, and that includes me, obviously. One thing I did this last month was we use a tool to respond to RFPs and to other like major requests from customers. work with lot of banks, large banks, Matt, you know, like Matt: Hmm. Jordan Wright: Some of their documentation work is very, very extensive. And that can be a mind-numbing work. And used to use a tool ⁓ that would help with that. It was purpose-built for that. We built a project in

Claude through three examples in from past responses. And then we went in and we added some of our own internal documentation to it. And it's more accurate than that purpose-built tool was. And it's just our per seat price per month on Claude. It also allows us to tailor and make our own modifications and kind of training in our instructions files to it. But it also allows me to share it across my whole team. ⁓ And now we can say, hey, know, like in these, these, these, these RFPs are actually an opportunity to sell, not just be ⁓ most boring on planet. So let's make sure they're. Matt: Hmm. Jordan Wright: highlighting the key things that we succeed at. The reasons we've, ⁓ things that we see are differentiation. ⁓ make sure it's highlighting these, ⁓ is sometimes just very burdensome. When a person is on question 256, they don't want to, ⁓ don't have the mental energy oftentimes to start putting more of that sales pitch into it, but also that identifying the strength in the question they're asking, our strength in the question they're asking. ⁓ that's one example. I mean, we use it on the coding front all the time now. also probably the biggest gain I've seen the last 30 days on it is I ⁓ have connected to a database where I track almost all of my stuff personally. I have my to-do lists and I have a lot of personal writing in there and things like that. ⁓ every month I publish for our company are my top priorities that I'm working on and progress toward those top priorities. And so I'll say like, Matt: Mm-hmm. Jordan Wright: Top priority number one is help us close largest opportunities and all that kind of stuff, right? Top priority number two, and I'll just work through my, I have six top priorities. But now ⁓ I do with AI and built this in Claude is it will go into that database. It will analyze my to-dos. It will also analyze sent emails, receive messages on Slack and Gmail. And it will just identify, it's just read only, right? But it'll just identify progress towards any of those initiatives and it will help me. It will help me see, Hey, you haven't spent time on this key initiative in the last 30 days, at least via messaging. Is there something else I'm missing? Right. And so, ⁓ or you sent, this was a really key top priority for you. You sent a message to this person. It's been five days. They didn't respond. Like that would historically be like a HubSpot kind of thing, but now we've connected all of those things together and I can be in one interface and engaging across. Matt: Hmm. Jordan Wright: all of those things. It's been tremendously beneficial. Matt: Very cool. Yeah, that is awesome. Where did you, the priority, like sharing your priorities with your team, was that something you saw in companies you worked with, that's something you just kind of developed on your own as like, want to have transparency with the way I'm leading. Jordan Wright: Yeah, we're we try to run a fairly transparent ship. So everybody knows how much cash we

have in the bank all the time. Everybody knows what our revenue number was, what our goal was for the year, how we're tracking towards it, all that kind of stuff. we, anybody our company could tell you any of those numbers. We do that on a monthly basis, but they could get them ⁓ more easily than if they wanted to. I think that leadership that withholds is ⁓ typically out of fear. Matt: Mm-hmm. Jordan Wright: ⁓ And I worry, my dad always counseled me to not take counsel from your fears. And think that that's good wisdom, right? And so we've tried to be open with our team. We're very candid about where we are and how the company's performing. After every board meeting, ⁓ I all the board slides to the team unless there's something highly sensitive. ⁓ I present the board slides to the team and give them an overview of the board meeting and how it went. ⁓ We try to demystify a lot of that stuff. Some people use that as like, you know, ⁓ well, the board said this and the board said that and it's like, well, who's the board and how does that work? And we just try to keep it pretty transparent. Matt: Yeah, that's great. Good for you. It's one of the core values we operate with it at immediate is transparency as well because it's to your point, like I mean, I've been at companies before where you're, it's like the scene in Wedding Crashers where he's like, what is she doing? I never know what she's doing. Like, you know, I think about that, like some of my previous jobs, like what are they doing in there? Like, I've know, I never, and so this for us, when we got this going, I was like, you know, from day one, we wanna be really open and transparent with the things that are going on with the organization and how we're leading. And I like that kind of setting your, top priorities and sharing that with the team on a regular basis. Jordan Wright: How has it come out in your organization, Matt? Tell me a little bit more about how, because it sounds like you've, what are some of the steps you've taken from a transparency standpoint? Matt: Yeah, it's we we do similar to what you just shared. ⁓ We usually go through after board meetings. We go through in our company all hands and we'll do the board presentations. I don't go. I don't do the whole thing. I usually like pair it down. I have just kind of a paired down version. It's also good because those are opportunities where different. different team members don't get to hear from other team leaders as often, right? And so it's like, it's nice for the growth team to hear from the head of customer success. So I'll kind of let her jump in and do slides ⁓ what's ⁓ well with the CS team. And here's some of our metrics that we're... we're achieving and some that we're working on. so that's a big thing that I've felt because I felt that and all of the previous companies I worked for where I'm like, I know there's, I've been providing a lot of reports and data for these board meetings, but I'm not in them and I don't know how they went. You know what I mean? And so that was like one of those, you kind of have this experience and go, right, well, I don't want people to feel the same. So there's usually, ⁓ I usually put together a summary that I send out on Slack to everybody, just about some of the outcomes of those board meetings. Jordan Wright: Yeah. Matt: and then also going in and presenting those out. Some of the other things ⁓ do that I think is important, we do share, we share a lot on Slack. We're spread out. We're about 50-50 between Birmingham and Atlanta today. And so we do try to keep a really tight, alignment. I learned this early on in the company is we started feeling like it was very siloed, almost like it was two different companies because, these things happen in Atlanta and that wasn't shared over to the Birmingham office. And so we've done a much better job of trying to bring everybody together and sharing with them more readily on Slack and then trying to do things. I'd say at least twice a year. regular togethers outside of work and in both but at least twice a year, we were aiming quarterly. just starts to get, it just gets tough with everybody's calendars, but trying to get both the, know, the full Atlanta and full Birmingham team together. Well, we'll say, know, for this day, I want everybody to drive over and let's spend a day together. You know, we'll all go do Topgolf. ⁓ things, one, it creates an opportunity for collaboration and teamwork, but also when we get everybody together, that's when we can kind of sit down and we do these open town halls where we're like, all right, ⁓ coming here, we're going to give you an update on where things stand with the company. then, throughout the day, we'll leave, we'll leave, ⁓ bowls out and people will write questions. And we do kind of leadership team hops up at the end of the day and just answers, answers questions about the company. And it's completely, you know, it's, it's completely anonymous. So nobody knows who the questions are coming from. And I've found that that's, that's really helpful and, just helping people understand, ⁓ Jordan Wright: Nice. Matt: one, what we're doing, but two, just gives this feeling of like, there's nothing going on behind closed doors that we're not willing to share with the whole team. Jordan Wright: Yeah, you know, after selling my last company, I remember going through a period where I was like looking at working with other people and what that might look like. I couldn't find a place where I I called my business partner Scott, was like, I can't find a place where I can do the best work of my life. We need to start another company. ⁓ hopefully we can also create a place for other people where there's enough autonomy, where there's enough information flow, ⁓ you feel like you can do the best work of your life without being ⁓ somebody micromanaging you but also with opportunity to just go chase things and chase them hard. so yeah, it's a me transparency is

so critical in that because if everybody knows top priorities and how people are working towards those across the organization, they can align themselves with what's most important because there is an information nexus you and I sit in a position where we have information coming investors that are that our employees are not seeing right information coming from the market that some of our employees are not seeing. information coming from our employees that those other two groups are not seeing. And so we're an information nexus and anywhere there's an information nexus, there's a power dynamic, but also an opportunity to be able to create leverage across an organization. And so I think about that information nexus a lot and say, as much as I can push that information nexus and the information that I have across an organization, the better we're all going to do because I think better informed people are going to make better choices. Matt: It's man, it's I've never heard it an information Nexus, but love that ⁓ because so right. It's I mean, it's like you do you get fed info from so many different places when you're in this position and and it is really important to share that across the organization because it's going to just make the company better. So yeah, that's great man. Hats off to you for for setting out to build something like that and then and and doing it. Jordan Wright: I'll be back at you. Yeah. Matt: Thank you. thanks for asking me a question. It's nice to get asked questions every now and again. ⁓ I enjoy that. I love doing this because I get to talk to people that are really smart and that are really successful. And I enjoy learning on these, but it's nice every now and again to be asked a question back. So appreciate that, Jordan. We're coming up on 30 minutes, we'll wrap this thing up. Anything you're excited about in the next, we're doing this early May, so you got seven months left in the year. Anything else you're excited about between now and December 31st? Jordan Wright: You know, I'm excited about a lot of things. One is that I'm taking my first time taking more than a week off since I started this company. So we're taking three weeks off as a family this summer. We've never done that, something like that before. But my oldest is 13. I've got four kids and we're like, we're not going to get this time back. so, you know, one of my one of my favorite people to read from is historian that was very popular in the 40s, 50s, 60s and maybe 70s and kind of had his heyday in that time period. ⁓ but he, talks about the desire to want to know that the big things are big and the little things little and know that before it's too late. you know, I would just say, I think I work pretty hard. I think I, ⁓ I, I I'm vicious. think I, I'm trying to accomplish important things in my life, but if I were to fail at being a husband and a father, those would be the things that I just wouldn't, couldn't allow myself to fail at. And so ⁓ sometimes when you're something, It feels like you have to be there for this thing all the time. And I think that's pretty darn true actually. I think making sure that we find time for the things that are the most important and for me, that's family. And ⁓ we make sure that those things are most important. I think at the time that's most important. That's the thing I'm most excited about this year actually. ⁓ We're killing this year. We're doing better than our revenue expectations as a company. But I do know, I feel like I see now today better than I have ever in my whole life. What are the big things and what are the little things? Success in business is a medium sized thing or a small thing compared to what matters most. yeah, that's it. Matt: Yeah, that's great and good for you. Well, jealous. I'd love to I'd love to take three weeks off. Maybe ⁓ maybe I need to ⁓ wife listen to this. I might I might get a note that says let's start with like a week and a half Matt. ⁓ It's ⁓ it's yeah, there's ⁓ to your point this work and I think this is for anybody right? I do feel like as entrepreneurs ⁓ we're Jordan Wright: Yeah. Matt: We're wired differently and it's hard to shut it off sometimes. And so it's nice to power down the engines and recharge. We ⁓ try to do an international trip at least once a year and like leave on a Friday and come back the following Sunday or Monday. So it ⁓ up being like 10 days and I on purpose do not do the international plan when I go so I can, you know. got three daughters and so I live in a house with four women. And so I usually spend a lot of time waiting around, you know, it's time to go to dinner or whatever. So I'll, you know, I'll connect to the internet and like check email every now and again when I'm gone, just to find the big stuff. But, but, by and large in that week, I usually just try to completely unplug. And I come back with like really clear vision and, I'm much better at prioritization when I'm back. And so I hope that happens for you, that you come back with really clear vision for the back half of the year. And you're getting to do something fun. Jordan Wright: Thank you. are, super excited to go to Europe. We've never done it before. Matt: Nice, very cool. Well good. Well Jordan, this has been great man. Thanks for me. Really, really appreciate it. Jordan Wright: My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Matt: Alright, thanks everybody. We'll catch you on the next one.