Brad Hickey: Insights From the Founder of CU Build

Josh DeTar: [00:00:00] All right. You still there?
Brad Hickey: I am here. Can you hear me?
Josh DeTar: the win.
Brad Hickey: Android for the win. All right. Awesome.
Josh DeTar: for the win. cool. We'll just, uh, I'll have the team edit out this conversation right here and we can just go and start whenever you're ready and just pick it up from here. So
Brad Hickey: Okay. Let me get my charger in. I don't want this thing to die on me will.
Josh DeTar: yeah, that'd be exactly our luck at this point,
Brad Hickey: Right, right, right.
Josh DeTar: Uh, I'm just waiting for like a freak thunderstorm to
Brad Hickey: I know.
Josh DeTar: wreak power
Brad Hickey: Such bad luck. I'm gonna have to get onto my, I'm sure it's, I'm sure it's just our security with the credit our, our amazing InfoSec security.
Josh DeTar: I would not shock me one bit.
Brad Hickey: All right. I should be all good.
Josh DeTar: Cool. Uh, all right, Brad, welcome to the show.
Brad Hickey: Thanks Josh. So happy to be here and thank you for that intro. Uh, just hope to do it justice and, and give your [00:01:00] listeners something cool to listen to. And I think we're gonna dig into some really deep topics.
Josh DeTar: Yeah, I'm really excited about a couple of different things that we want to talk about. You know, the first thing that I really want to talk about is, uh, is CU Build. Right? And the reason I want to talk about this is, I think not only is what you are doing really interesting, but I also think what's more fascinating to me and what I really want to dive into and understand is why does CU Build even have to exist in the first place?
Right? Um, so I think for starters, do me a favor and just for our listeners, um, you know, give us the lay of the land. Like what is CU Build? How'd it start? What is it? What are you doing? What are you trying to accomplish? What's the format? So tell us a little bit about CU Build.
Brad Hickey: Yeah, sure. So CU Build is, uh, first of its kind, um, multi credit union buildathon on the Jack Henry ecosystem. Uh, we over a weekend [00:02:00] from a, from a Friday at noon to around Sunday, at about the same time we get a bunch of credit union participants together. Uh, people sign up, they register, we put them on teams, we give them a theme.
We have prizes. They compete against each other, and it's a codeathon, or hackathon, like many people call it. We chose to call ours a buildathon, uh, just because we felt like it fit, it fit the credit union mold better. Uh, but the teams get together over a weekend and it's lots of Red Bull and pizza and having fun and, and really digging into interesting solutions and, and trying to think about things in a new way.
And on Sunday they get up, they do their pitches. We have a judging rubric and we award prizes at, at the end of the day on Sunday, and everybody goes home. And we, it's a year round process for us because we hope to cultivate a, um, a ecosystem where not only are people able to build interesting solutions, but they're also able to [00:03:00] somewhat incubate that.
So we are very interested in making sure that we're always building people up, uh, because when we brought this buildathon concept to the credit union movement, we wanted to make sure to interlace those cooperative principles throughout the process. And sort of where it started, uh, I worked for American Airlines Credit Union, which is under the American Airlines umbrella, and I had the unique opportunity to go to, uh, what they call their hack wars, AA hack wars, which pre pandemic, um, looked very amazing.
I mean, they. Rented out a huge ballroom at the Hyatt in downtown Dallas, and it's about a hundred teams. Uh, we do about 10. Uh, the AA hack wars was just huge. And, um, a coworker had put me onto it and she was like, Hey, you need to go to this. You, you like to do crazy stuff like this? So I signed up, I went, I got put on a team, was just blown away by the passion [00:04:00] that existed there.
Um, kudos to American Airlines for putting on probably one of the best internal hackathons that there is, at least that I've heard of. Uh, because, and I really think the fervor of, of that event was, a lot of it was, uh, originated by the concept that the winning team, the winning solution, AA leadership, had agreed that that solution is going to production.
So if you've ever downloaded, uh, the AA app, uh, they've got something in there, I think, I think it's still in there. Uh, they've got something called augmented reality baggage tracking. That was an AA hack war solution that won. And yeah, and so what's interesting about that whole process was that you've got all of these builders and innovators, they're just juiced about finding a solution that's gonna wind up in production for American Airlines.
And I, I really wanted to capture that fervor and bring that into the credit union movement. And like I said, [00:05:00] interlace those cooperative principles that we all believe in. And so that's another really, uh, big component of CU Build our winning team. We give them project resources. We give them, um, any sort of networking or connections that they need to help bring their solution to a product production ready state within our, our GitHub.
So that's sort of what CU Bill's all about. There's a lot in there. There's a lot of, uh, pillars that we believe in, um, from, you know, teaching and learning and innovating. And it's, it's always about the people. Um, and I often say that the secret sauce of CU Build is not that we're building solutions, it's that we're building people.
Um, and I really, I really believe in that. And, uh, yeah, just love being a part of it. We've got a great team. We're excited for this year's Buildathon, uh, really can't wait to see what all the teams come up with.
Josh DeTar: You know, I think that's, um, that's one of the things I think is really cool about what you guys are doing too, is it, it it [00:06:00] really is a, a true extension of kind of the credit union movement in cooperation, right? And how collaboration is kind of our superpower. Um, because if you look at CU build, right? I mean, you get credit unions from all across the country.
Um, so in theory, could you think about each other as direct competitors? Sure. Although we can go down the whole rabbit hole of arguing why credit unions should knock it off and not go after each other for members. Go, there's plenty of other fish in the sea. But, uh, you know, so the story for another day.
But, um, you know, you could in theory be seen as competitors in your market, but you're sitting here collaborating. And then not only that, but you're even getting vendors who are supplying environments to do building on that are direct competitors that are offering up some of their quote unquote secret sauce and giving people the ability to actually get into sandboxes and play around with it.
So, I, I think it is a, a really cool example of that direct extension of that cooperation Plus collaboration really [00:07:00] equals an opportunity to make some impacts.
Brad Hickey: Absolutely. Um, I, I couldn't have said it better myself, Josh. And, you know, one of the really interesting anecdotes from last year's Buildathon, um, speaking of vendors, we had some vendors, uh, that had sponsored, that weren't really part of the credit union landscape, had never really, uh, had any exposure to, um, you know, the credit union mindset.
We, a lot of times joke that, you know, they hadn't quite drank the Kool-Aid on this, on the credit union movement yet. Um, we had, uh, AWS there last year, and one of the gentlemen from the AWS team pulled me aside. And, um, you know, he was sort of asking about how CU Build started and where this all came from.
And, you know, I just shared with him, it was totally grassroots. Like it was literally, I literally sent out an email to like, you know, a user forum was just like, Hey guys, you know, we all know each
Josh DeTar: guys wanna drink Red Bull till
Brad Hickey: Right.
Josh DeTar: in the morning coding together? Sure.
Brad Hickey: yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, we built a [00:08:00] volunteer committee and I kind of walked him through how it all happened, and he said that he's been at a number of buildathons throughout different industries, and he said our buildathon had some of the most passion and fervor he's ever seen just in that one weekend.
And I, I've heard that story even from other folks who are so somewhat, uh, credit union adjacent, um, people that have been on, teams that are from a vendor, they, they were just dumbstruck about how much people are willing to give in this industry. And that's something that I learned very early in my career.
And when I decided that I was going to try to tap into this, um, I've realized that the sky's the limit. And that's the beauty of our industry is that literally, quite literally. Virtually every single employee that you have working at your credit union is passionate about the industry. They don't always talk about it.
They're not always [00:09:00] vocal about it. And sure there are pockets, especially within IT, which I get, I believe me, this is one of my, this is one of my soap boxes within it. We do struggle with it, but even within your IT department, there are people who are incredibly passionate about this movement, and if you just figure out how to tap into it, you can do anything.
Josh DeTar: Yeah, I think that's a really important, um, like tapping into it. Right? Um, you know, we talk a lot about just in, you know, kind of overall company culture, thought process, credit unions included, excluded, you know, a lot about a company's just why statement. Like, why do you exist? Why, why should anybody care?
And, you know, for credit unions, that's a, that's a pretty obvious one. Granted. I think it's important for each institution to get down to the minutiae of why do they specifically [00:10:00] exist, right? I think the credit union movement and mission, and you know, I always throw community banks in there to the right mindset the community bank is very similar to a credit union, but you know, the community financial institution, that cooperative model you talk so much about, right?
Like that why is pretty obvious. It's really important though to drill it down at each institution, identify, you know, what's your why, what are you actually accomplishing? What are you setting out to do? What is your mission? And then finding people within your organization that really aligned to that intrinsically, and then using them to help spread that culture, you know, within the organization.
Because to your point, I think, you know, the vast majority of your employees in this industry, you know, they chose this industry over something else. Sometimes it is, like you said here, it's just like, Hey, I needed first job outta college. But once you've been there for at least a week or two, like you start to see this is something a little bit different.
Um, I think it's [00:11:00] hilarious. You used a Kool-Aid example too, because I'm not even kidding. On last night's typhoons all hands call. I literally had a slide with the Kool-Aid man, like bursting a wall and I was
Brad Hickey: Right.
Josh DeTar: it's so important that we understand as an organization that services credit unions, like what the credit union Kool-Aid is and why you guys are so drunk on the Kool-Aid and why we should also be a part of that Kool-Aid.
Right. Um, so going back to um, you know, kind of how and why you started see you build and what it turned into. Uh, first off I have to laugh and say I think it's hilarious that you guys are like the first and only quote unquote, like conference. That actually just straight up calls it out on the agenda and you're like, yeah, no, no, you're not sleeping.
So just fyi, we're going through the night, we're getting after it. So, you know, bring your Red Bull and let's get ready to go. Um, but you know, that [00:12:00] again, I think speaks volumes to just kind of the style of the event. Like you're really looking for people who are, I, I don't know if we're necessarily trying to advocate that people not sleep, but, or that this is necessarily like what you should be looking for in an interview.
Like, hey, do you, you know, 24 7 and never sleep, but like the person who's willing to stay up all night to do this thing for fun. I think that says a lot. Um, and I think it says a lot about what you're trying to accomplish in a short time period. Um, so maybe talk me through, just like, what was the thought process of just how you structured the event in the first place?
Brad Hickey: Yeah, for sure. So a lot of it, a lot of it is what you said. Um, we, we certainly are looking for, uh, certain types of individuals, but you know, a lot of it just came from the AA Hack Wars event. Uh, a lot of it was modeled after what they were doing, uh, next door. And, uh, I was lucky enough to get into the touch, get in touch with the person who was organizing that event and running it.
His name was, uh, gentleman by the name of Phillip Easter. I know [00:13:00] he's still out there. Um, and he, you know, he really helped me understand. How a, a good hackathon can be run and, and sort of the important tenets of what you need to be looking for. And of course, it's like you said, it's a, it's a hands-on event and people need to understand that we're gonna get our hands dirty.
It's gonna, it's gonna be challenging, it's gonna be tough, but you're gonna have a blast. You're gonna have just one of the best times you'll ever have at a, at a conference, like you said. And when we decided to put it out there, we, we, there was some sort of, uh, bargaining back and forth when we were actually building out this schedule because we did have, you know, can, can the credit union industry live up to this?
Can, can credit union employees do this? And it is a resounding yes because, and it, it's not even so much that people are willing to code all night. That's sort of tongue in cheek because truth be told, last year, I think we only had one person truly stay up through the night and he slept the next day like, You, you need your sleep, right?
Like [00:14:00] people are going to sleep. We get that. But I think, I think really what it is, is we're looking for people who are willing to give up a weekend in their summer who are this passionate about, this movement, about coming up with innovative solutions and having an environment where you're networking, it's cooperation, it's it's fun, it's engaging.
These are passionate people. No one's coming to see you build, who is just casually like, well, I guess I'll just give up a weekend for this event. No, these are, these are people who are, are super dedicated to the movement and that's what we're looking for.
Josh DeTar: Um, man, that really kind of hit home for me what you were just saying. Thinking back to when you and I were talking about just your introduction, this comes back to grit. Right. Like we were talking about how grit is one of those things. You can't, like, you can't teach into people, you don't teach into school.
I mean, you do. This is a [00:15:00] learned behavior, right? But you have to kind of experience adversity to grow and to build that grit. Yeah. And you know, that's a, a very true statement across a lot of things we do in life. Um, you know, and I've talked about this on the podcast before of just we, as human beings, we actually need some adversity.
It's good for us. Um, we need some challenges because it gives us that opportunity to rise above the challenge. And it makes us a lot of times reach for something that we may not have reached for or tried as hard for if it was too easy. Um, and I think that's kind of what you're talking about too with CU Build, right?
Do you have to make people stay up all night? No. Are people actually going to, uh, maybe, maybe not, you know, but they're gonna, yeah. Like you said, they're gonna crash hard the next day and sleep all day, like we need our sleep. But it's just, it's that mindset of like, we want people to come to this event.
Um, not because [00:16:00] it's easy. We want people to come to this event because they're gonna have an opportunity to put their grit on stage. They're gonna have an opportunity to show when they're challenged, what they can come up with. Um, and again, I think that comes back to what's really cool about kind of the, the credit union mission of, of just really challenging ourselves to actually make an impact.
Brad Hickey: Absolutely. That's what it's all about. And you know, when we kind of came up with our framework, um, innovate, learn, develop, that was my girlfriend helped me with that. Uh, we were brainstorming ideas. Um, I, I also workshopped the concept of CU Build with a good friend of mine named Mike Blumenthal in Memphis.
And we, we came up with these tenants. And then once I started getting the likes of, uh, Adele Glenn, she's another, uh, very prominent person in our industry. Uh, I got her. Involved. It just, it took off from there. And, um, the important thing was that we had [00:17:00] those, those initial tenets about, of what we're about, yes, we're innovating, but we're learning and we're developing people.
And so that's kind of where that acronym, the originally Build was an acronym. It was Brains Unite to Innovate, learn and Develop. We kind of dropped that bit of it because CU Build just kind of, people started to understand the mission and the mantra. And so it's, you know, you, you kind of grow, outgrow your, your acronym if you will.
And CU Build has become its own ethos and its own ecosystem. And I'm just super proud to see everyone joining our Discord and they're just pumped. And we did our kickoff, uh, meeting actually, uh, last week. And um, it was amazing to see how excited past participants were, that that's what really spoke to my heart because they came back and they want more.
Not only did they put themselves out there and. Dedicate a week into this, but they came back for more. And that's incredible.
Josh DeTar: Um, what kinds of things have been [00:18:00] built outta CU Build? Like what kinds of projects, uh, stand out to you?
Brad Hickey: Well, I mean, obviously we've had our two best in shows so far. So we, this will be our third year going into 2023. Our first Best In Show was a, uh, platform, uh, built by a team called Control Alt Elite. Shout out to them. Uh, they built a, they built a program. Yeah, yeah. They built, you always get fun names, you get fun team names and hackathons.
Um, they built a program called Promotable, uh, which is an online banking integrated platform that allows, uh, back office users to create all sorts of promotions that are, that are gamified, uh, by nature. Uh, and they integrated a gamified experience to each of these promotions out of the box. For the members.
So if you're a credit union member and you go into your online banking experience, you basically can choose these promotions to be a part of, and it's a gamified experience [00:19:00] as you traverse through the promotion. Um, there, there are similar things like this. Um, we've seen other things out there, um, and even, even some of the, the big fintechs out there in the world will do this even just to a fine degree.
Um, chase will do this with certain things. You know, you, you attach a thing to your card and it tells you whether you hit the reward or not. Uh, the cool thing about promotable, I think that makes it unique is that they built it in a way that allowed any back office user to create these without any code.
That was really cool, really fascinating. Um, thanks to our friends at Qtech, which I said Adele Glenn. She's, um, she's CEO of QTech. She's on my committee. She's my vice president. And this is why we have folks like her on the committee because when we take that winning team, I mean, Adele has been incredibly generous with helping them, you know, helping them get their solution to production.
Uh, I believe they're, they're launching with a credit union [00:20:00] soon. I, I don't know the name of the credit union because that's not being disclosed just yet, but that's just an example of one solution that's already being launched with a credit union. Our best in show from last year is being launched with a credit union as, as well, it's called Save More.
Uh, it's a, it's a way to get members, uh, saving who maybe typically won't. Uh, they, they basically turned around the traditional algorithm for how we address, um, savings. And sort of front loaded it for people who maybe aren't saving as much so that they can kind of climb their way into savings. So it's a way to sort of flatten the curve a bit, because one thing I'm very passionate about, if you know me, I work on lots of innovative ideas.
I'm, I'm involved in lots of think tanks around the credit union industry in general and just always trying to ideal lab stuff. Uh, one of the things I'm very passionate about is we've gotta get our hands around this notion of percentages because percentages aren't the same to [00:21:00] everyone. And it's, it's another topic that we can dive into, but just suffice to say, save more tackled that head on.
And it's a really cool platform to help, uh, get members more interested in saving. And, um, there's, there's just been a number of solutions. Josh. Uh, if I go down the list from all the different solutions that have won prizes, which is the great thing about CU Build a lot, a lot of times almost, almost every team is winning something just because there's a lot of prizes to give away.
Uh, but we've had really cool stuff. Uh, we had a team basically rewrite a, uh, data warehouse engine. That runs in real time. It's called Qber. Uh, just really cool stuff out there. So yeah, every solution has, its, has its own, uh, really benefits to the industry. Uh, it's just a matter of us kind of helping them along and hopefully we build an ecosystem where someone's interested and goes out there, gets on the GitHub, maybe contributes, maybe works with the team.
Hey, great. [00:22:00] I love that idea you had in 2021. Are you interested in helping us incubate it at our credit union? Oh, heck yeah. I would love to help bring that back up. So that's kind of what we're going for, is hopefully just to be a source of great ideas, great solutions for credit unions that everybody can share in.
Josh DeTar: Uh, can you kinda walk me through like what, so what is the technical process that's actually happening here? So, you know, you mentioned earlier that this is, um, kind of within the Jack Henry ecosystem of, hopefully this is not like secret sauce or anything, but, you know, Airlines Credit Union, you guys are on, uh, Scimitar right?
For your core. So, um, maybe walk me through a little bit of like, what are they building, how are they building it? What's the framework around that?
Brad Hickey: Yeah, so we, we give them all the tools they need to succeed. So as a committee, I've got, uh, several people working in the background on spinning up these systems. So thankfully we have, uh, someone on, on the committee from Jack Henry, uh, his name's Alex. He, he helps us [00:23:00] build up that infrastructure that Jack Henry gives us.
They, they put a lot of resources and time into making sure that we have a really solid, uh, cloud infrastructure. And anecdotally, uh, really interesting thing about that, uh, CU Build 2021, which was our, our first buildathon. It was held virtually, uh, that was the first time Jack Henry's running Scimitar fully in the cloud.
Uh, that was a, a big lift for them, but it also helped them learn a lot of things. And, and that's, that's the beauty of building out these tech stacks is you get vendors that come in and they're like, oh, we didn't think about that. Like, we don't even, we're not even offering this type of provisioning or we're not even offering this type of sandbox.
And so you get, you get vendors coming in and, and when they see people wanting to tinker with their tech, it's man, the lights are going off. And that's why I always say, CU Build is a win-win, win because our participants are winning prizes. We're growing the ecosystem with solutions and we're helping vendors in the space as well.
And so [00:24:00] when they come together and they spin up those tech stacks, the idea is that participants go on Friday and they're ready to rock and roll. They know the systems. We have workshops going into the weekend, uh, that they participate in. We've got a couple coming up that I just sent out today for some of the tech that's going into CU Build 2023.
And, uh, the participants sit in, they make sure they've got the necessary software installed. They've got access to whatever sandboxes or APIs they need. And then once they go to the event on Friday at noon, when we say kickoff code starts. They're ready to go. They've fleshed out their idea, they know what they're kind of tackling, they know the solutions they're gonna build on, and from there they're just coding.
That's the idea. Um, obviously there's sometimes there's some logistical, um, things that you have to kind of jump through, but the idea being that the run-up to the actual event is we're building all that stuff and putting all that tech in place and preparing the team so that they can just hit the ground running.
Josh DeTar: So Jack Henry gives you guys a sandbox that you can actually play in, and then so does some of the other vendors that [00:25:00] participate, and then folks are just building within those sandbox environments.
Brad Hickey: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep. That's exactly what it is.
Josh DeTar: Nice. Um, okay, so I want to, I wanna pivot a little bit because I want to talk to you about, and this is a really loaded question, and I'm gonna shoot myself, and by myself, I mean my company. So hopefully when this podcast airs, I still have a job, um, in the foot. But, um, my question is, and yeah, I'm prefacing this, this is a very loaded question.
Um, Is, why does something like CU Build even need to exist, right? You guys pay vendors a metric crap ton of money every year to build stuff for you. So why do you need to build it yourself? And I think I'd be curious to get an answer from you on at least these two perspectives, but I'd like to get just your kind of free flowing thought on it too.
But, um, is it one because the [00:26:00] industry has failed credit unions and just vendors have failed to be able to innovate and evolve quick enough or to a niche level enough that you guys feel like you have to build it yourselves and or is it just even if you had a perfect solution, a perfect partner that delivered everything you could ever ask for as fast as you want, you still kind of want to tinker on your own.
Um, so why does something like CU Build exist from that perspective?
Brad Hickey: Well, I think the, the notion of innovation is always about finding gaps and finding ways to bridge those gaps. Could a vendor do all of this on their own? Could a solution bridge those gaps themselves? Sure, it could, but we've got incredibly innovative thinkers, incredibly passionate individuals who, like I said before, [00:27:00] understand the credit union mission at in their soul, and we're, we're bringing them to a weekend of innovative thinking, breaking things outside the box.
And I think the reason it needs to exist is because you need to have these very unique thinkers, very creative minds on the bleeding edge of your technology. Digging into those gaps, knowledge is like fractals. It's, there's gaps if you get down deep enough. And that's what we're after. We're after these highly creative, highly technical individuals.
That's what we're looking for, who are also passionate about the credit union movement. I mean, what a, what a super set of powers. We're bringing them in for a weekend and we're saying, go, go deep on this tech. Find the gaps, find the fractals, think about the problems that are out there and solve for it.
And we believe that the hackathon/buildathon spirit is unique enough in its perspective that [00:28:00] it needs to exist in our industry. And the fact that it hasn't in the past is probably more a failure of just the industry itself, of not latching onto that cooperatives helping cooperatives. 'Cause I do think, like you alluded to before, we sometimes fail in that arena.
We're so focused on competing with each other that we forget. We need to be cooperating with each other at that next layer up. And so that's where I think this really kind of fits in. I don't think it's, I don't think it's an, you know, admonition against any vendor. It's, it's just these are phenomenal people we have in this industry, working in our credit unions.
Let's, let's leverage what they bring to the table too.
Josh DeTar: Yeah, that's a really cool perspective on that. Um, uh, you know, I, I guess I almost didn't even really think about it that way. See, this is why I love this podcast. Um, so you're almost saying it's like, uh, without something like this, the people actually, you even made this exact comment when you were telling me a little bit about yourself before we [00:29:00] started recording, and you were talking about like, you want to watch Brad quit a job, don't challenge him.
Like, I have to be challenged or I'm just not gonna be engaged. And so you're, you're kind of alluding to, you know, see, you build needs to exist because there's people like you that need to be challenged, that need to be engaged. Otherwise you're gonna be bored and you're just not gonna be who you are and you're not gonna be like, excelling at the level that you could if you were being challenged.
So it's. Also it, it seems like it's even tertiary to, um, you know, yes, you're building things and you kind of talked about you're building people earlier by connecting them, giving them resources, but you're also giving them a way to, to be challenged, to be stimulated in their environments and also get the other benefits out of it that you were talking about.
Brad Hickey: Absolutely. It's, it's all of it in a nutshell, Josh. And, you know, I, I'll say it, Tom Blue in the face. We really believe [00:30:00] that CU Build's a win-win-win for everyone. And, um, you know, we're a little biased because we're passionate about it, but, um, we, we truly believe that the people who come to see you build will, will have a, uh, a lifelong experience that they will always cherish.
And, and I, I really believe you'll make some friends that you'll want to take with you as well.
Josh DeTar: Um, kind of shifting it just a little bit. So that same thought process or I guess that same, um, Like almost dilemma is, is one of the things that also interests me a lot about this industry is, so take cu build out of the equation and just think about, you know, the technological products that you consume as a credit union as a whole.
And there's also that same, um, you know, obviously you guys have a dev shop, right? So you're building things on top of things that you're already consuming or you're building things that you're not able to consume from others. Um, why do you think that exists? What are your thoughts [00:31:00] around like, should every credit union have a dev shop?
Should everybody have at least one person who has some knowledge in dev? Do you think no credit union should touch dev at all and they should just buy everything from vendors? Do you think vendors can even support that? What's kinda your thought processes there?
Brad Hickey: Yeah, I mean, obviously this is a, this is a highly indivisualized question. Um, I think every credit union ultimately needs to determine this for themselves. We dig into this quite a bit. Um, when we are trying to discover our core competency at American Airlines Credit Union, um, it's something I talk about a lot with my team.
Um, we obviously we're developers, we're creative. We like to be challenged. We want to build everything, but we can't build everything. And I have a relatively small shop for the size of our credit union. Um, I like, I like to brag that I have one of the most efficient dev teams in, in, in the Jack Henry space, but part of that efficiency comes from knowing what to build and what not to build, what to go and [00:32:00] buy off the shelf.
What to ask a vendor of. Now, to your larger question, if you're a credit union and you're wondering, you know, should I have a dev shop? And I don't. I would, my only cautionary tale would be don't, don't build a dev team unless you understand how programmers think, how developers think. Um, because they are unique people.
Uh, they are highly creative, highly technical. These are, these are unique individuals that you will run into. Um, you, you see them in it. There's other, there's other folks like this all around it and maybe marketing and, and, and different areas. You probably have them running around all over your credit union, to be frank.
Um, they're not just in those groups, but those, those individuals, those highly creative, highly intelligent people, highly technical people, they're, they're going to be a little quirky sometimes and they're going to demand things of you that may not be typical. You will have to think outside the box to properly lead them.
Uh, so I would just say anecdotally, That's something you [00:33:00] need to consider, that you've got a, uh, framework that you can bring them in and make sure that you've got a good, strong dev culture because, um, it can, it can go, it can go bad if you don't know what you're doing.
Josh DeTar: I am so glad you brought this up. This is a conversation I like to have, usually in smaller, more private groups, but get a little, I'll get a little frisky
Brad Hickey: all, we're all friends here.
Josh DeTar: Um, you know, I've, uh, I've seen both sides of this, right? So even just, you know, prior to my time at Typhoon, like I've been in, um, tech companies and, uh, it's actually really funny, my, uh, did you ever watch the TV show Silicon Valley?
Brad Hickey: You know, I, I've seen bits and pieces. I'm not a, not a dedicated person.
Josh DeTar: dude, you gotta watch it through. Just from the of like, those of us that have worked in tech, Um, like my wife has not, and so watching it [00:34:00] together, she was like, there's no way that happens. And I was babe, literally lived that exact moment. Um, but you know, to, to your point like that, that group of people is, is very interesting.
And, you know, the conversation that I've had is, okay, so you've, you've got these people who work in a very interesting field and they're a very unique breed. Are you really setting them up for success in your credit union? And are you really attracting top tier talent? Look, I Typhoon, we're a digital banking company.
We're a technology company. We do all the techie things that all the other big techie companies do that attract techie people. And we still struggle to hire top tier development. Right. Um, resources. So I think this was, um, just at kind of the height of like the hiring craze [00:35:00] in the pandemic from some of the tech companies, you know, right before the giant layoffs.
Um, but I remember at one point Google was straight up offering brand new, fresh outta college, zero real world experience, junior developers close to 300 grand salary, right? So you're a reasonably seasoned, accomplished developer. Google's probably offering you half a mil plus some crazy benefits and all these perks, like you can work from home or work from Ecuador if you want.
And then you've got this other job offer and it's a. Credit union in the Midwest who wants to offer you, uh, $75,000 a year, a week of paid vacation, halfway decent benefits. And, uh, oh, by the way, uh, pretty much any really crazy cool idea you want to do, we will probably kill that [00:36:00] with regulation and just our fear of moving quickly.
So are you really gonna attract top tier development talent in that environment? That's a challenge, right? So you made a comment to me that stuck with me and I haven't touched on it yet, because I wanted to wait for your, like, genuine reaction. You made a really cool comment at the very beginning of this whole thing, and you talked about, you said, I want to build a destination dev shop.
That stuck with me because that stands out. That tells me that's somebody who understands the type of people that you're trying to recruit to your organization. And what you are up against in hiring really top tier talent. And then you have the like double-edged sword of you're trying to not only get top tier development resources, people that really know their stuff are gonna build some really cool stuff in some really intelligent ways.
But oh, by the way, I also want people who are really intrinsically motivated by things like the credit union mission. That's a tall order my friend.[00:37:00] 
Brad Hickey: Yes, it very much is. And you know, throughout, throughout the Annals of Credit Union study, we, we see that this is an issue. The war for talent is always, always an issue in credit union space. Um, my, I would say that my chief sort of operating principle with this is that you as a leader, when you're bringing people into your organization, whether you're in it or otherwise, you're hiring human beings.
You're bringing human beings into an organization. And if your people feel like you are listening to them as human beings and you understand their story, and they truly feel that you care about their needs, their wants, their desires, their goals, their ambitions, and you hear that and you spend time with them and you listen to them, there is this.
Spark of, I'm not gonna call it loyalty, because we're only as loyal as our next paycheck. [00:38:00] I, I liken it to hitching your wagon. It's, it's sometimes something where you have employees who say, whatever you're doing, I wanna be a part of it because I believe in your pillars. I believe in what you are after.
And I think if you can get that through to certain employees during that hiring process, you can, um, sort of quote unquote win that war for talent. Obviously it's always something we, we battle with. I would say. Um, it's something that I, I try to work on, on a daily basis, but at the end of the day, I've always felt that if my employees feel like they can trust me, They know that I have their best interests at heart, then they will stick with me through thick and thin, and we can have the best type of dev shop that we [00:39:00] want.
Um, I, I always tell my employees, you know, I'm hiring, I'm hiring human beings. And so my first, my first thing is I'm, I'm looking for conscientious people who are over themselves. If I can find conscientious people that are over themselves, I don't really care what tech you have. I don't care what your skills are.
And sometimes that speaks to certain people that are sort of diamonds in the rough that are out there on the fringes and they see the same things that you and I do. They see, they see the big salaries from Google and, but they also know there's a lot of cracking the whip and there's a lot of. Deadlines and a lot of high pressure managers and people that don't get them, and people that don't listen and you're treated like a number.
There's a lot of that and there's a lot of toxic cultures throughout it and throughout dev shops and gaming shops and what have you. And so there's a lot of very intelligent, highly creative, highly technical people that are seeing the same things that you and I are. And they're looking for a home.
They're looking for something where they [00:40:00] know that their skills, their passions, their desires are all gonna be cultivated and nurtured, and they're also paid competitively. And so that's sort of what I try to build, bring them in. Once you've got conscientious people who are over themselves, I give 'em the tools they need to succeed and just get outta the way.
We just have fun. 'Cause once you've got table stakes, let's just have fun. What do you wanna build? Oh, you wanna do that cool new thing in Python and oh, you wanna build that new app on whatever? Okay, let's do it. Let's have some fun. That's what it's about. And so that's what I try to have with my dev team.
And I, I really believe that we have built that. Um, I've had, I actually had a developer join my team who used to be a qa, and he, he sort of got a taste of it and was like, it's my career mission to be on this team. He left the company to get a job as a programmer because we weren't hiring at the time, and he waited his opportunity and, and he's now on my team.
Josh DeTar: That's so cool.[00:41:00] 
Brad Hickey: yeah, so that's again, just like CU Build, that's what I'm looking for when I build that dev team. I'm looking for people who are, or just passionate about life and like I said, conscientious over themselves. If you've got some passion, I can work with it. I don't care what kind of skills you have. And those are, those are, those are phenomenal people to bring onto your team because they will, they will deliver in spades and they will bend over backwards for the organization and you will just.
You will reap the benefits of everything that they do, and it will, it will have sort of an infectious, uh, uh, sprawl into your organization because they're just good people.
Josh DeTar: Um, just so you know, when this podcast is, um, like finished being produced and everything, I'm gonna probably just like subtly not so subtly, drop this to American Airlines Credit Union's HR and hiring team and say, you should cut out this section. Just write it up, throw it on your website, and put it as your hiring motto [00:42:00] are, you're gonna have more applicants than you've ever wanted.
I mean,
Brad Hickey: I sure hope so.
Josh DeTar: I love that so much. I think, um, you know, we, we kind of have a similar mindset, uh, internally for ourselves, and it's like happy people make happy software, right? And people want to interact with Happy software. And especially when we're talking about something like digital banking, um, it's all about the relationship.
The credit unions differentiate themselves on the relationship they have with their members. And the way to, even what you were talking about are employees, right? Like, I'm not a number, you know me, you understand me, you think about my uniqueness and who I am as an individual, and you provide, you know, individualized insights into how to better my, you know, financial position and give me that comfort and confidence and safety and freedom of, you know, financial security.
And trying to take that, all of that and distill it down into [00:43:00] something that people can feel like an emotion when they're interacting with software. That's really hard when you don't have people who are passionate about the software they're building, right? So if you're just hiring a team to get a paycheck versus a team that, um, you know, Hey, whatever you're doing, I, I want to do that too.
Like, that's gonna be a very different piece of software if you ask me.
Brad Hickey: Agreed, a hundred percent.
Josh DeTar: I, I think, you know, you also made the comment too that, I mean, you also have to be competitive about it. And I think that's a really important thing that unfortunately sometimes gets missed too, is that, um, you know, I think that's maybe a, I don't know, you should probably speak to this more than, than I can, but at least from the technology company standpoint.
Um, like you, you kind of do have to have that in mind when you're saying like, Hey, we wanna start doing our own internal dev. Um, you cannot go out there with, [00:44:00] you know, a subpar salary, no tools, and then, you know, shoot down the ideas that these creative people that you brought in, uh, bring to the table. So you like, you have to kind of go into that with that mindset of, Hey, if we're gonna go down this path, like we gotta go down this path.
We gotta budget for it, we gotta prepare for it, we've gotta set this team up for success. Um, so they actually do what, why did we start this in the first place?
Brad Hickey: Yeah, completely agreed. And, and the other thing is don't pander people know what the market is like. This is, it's 2023. I, I, I can go to indeed.com/salaries and I know what everybody makes, right? So don't pander to people. Um, if you're a credit union, be upfront about it. Look, we're a not-for-profit financial institution.
We are not going to be able to pay what Chase and Bank of America pay. And, and in fact, if you look at the data, credit unions are, you know, roughly 10 to 15% below market in most, in most areas, uh, in most, uh, [00:45:00] metroplexes. So don't pander. They know this stuff. They're, they're, they're interviewing with your credit union because they're already interested in the job.
So give them what it really means to be a credit union employee. What are the actual benefits? We're in a unique position because we also work for American Airlines and we get flight benefits. That's awesome. So I, I tell them that, I'm like, where else can you work for a credit union and get flight benefits?
That's freaking awesome. And oh, by the way, we have an awesome culture here and we're gonna treat you like a human being and treat you like one of the, one of the family. So I think that's really where the secret sauce is for credit unions when they're hiring. You've gotta be able to speak to what is your actual, you know, advantage in, in this space.
Because if you can't speak to that, then you're gonna lose every time. And, um, but yeah, competitive pay, it's gotta be, there has to be. That's table stakes.
Josh DeTar: Uh, isn't it literally called American Airlines Advantage? Isn't that like the
Brad Hickey: Yeah. That's advantage. Yeah. [00:46:00] Yeah. plug,
Josh DeTar: Solid. Shout out. Nicely done. Yeah.
Brad Hickey: Right.
Josh DeTar: Um. You know, Brad, I mean, it's really obvious between, you know, what you've put together with CU build the way you're trying to, you know, uh, do dev within a credit union in this space.
Um, that, you know, you're really obviously passionate about building cool things for credit unions. So as you look at this, you know, changing landscape of, um, things becoming more centered around digital, like what kind of stuff has you excited, what kind of things have you been looking at?
Brad Hickey: Well, you know, one of the things I'm really interested in is, um, I've been kind of going down this rabbit hole of, of designing for the purpose, um, when it comes to software. You mentioned how, you know, software should feel personal. It should feel like someone gave a rip when they wrote it. And I think a lot of that comes down to, you know, Not, not building software.
The way we understand it, this stuff, products and services, it just [00:47:00] needs to be intuitive to the average user. We shouldn't be, you know, trying to say, oh, well this is how this type of checking works and you need this type of L o C for that checking. And oh, if you have an overdraft, it does this and it fees like, make it make sense for people.
This is not, it's not supposed to be rocket science. And I think a lot of times we get so trapped into this world of we know the financial products and so we have to deliver on financial literacy. That's why our members are struggling. That's why our customers aren't coming back. No, it's because you're not designing products that they natively understand.
That's the problem. You're not giving them. Something that they get. And I think that's really the future of where we're going with a lot of digital finance. I think a lot of these sort of micro banks and fintechs that are out there, they're capitalizing on things that just make sense to people natively.
Like the concept of no overdraft, that's like a video game concept. Do I get [00:48:00] to overdraft my coins and Zelda, no, I have zero. I have zero. That's all there is. I need more coins. Like that makes sense. The, the notion of overdrafting is like almost kind of asinine when you think about it. So there's just things like that that we have to sort of unwrap and untangle because we've got a new generation that's coming up and they, they grew up fully digital.
They're not millennials, they're Gen Z Millennials, remember checks and rotary phones and crap. Gen Z doesn't, so we gotta make it make sense. That's what I'm really excited about. Um, the other thing I'm excited about too is I've, I've been actually in one of our think tanks that we did, um, we presented an idea called a champion account.
And what's funny about this is, um, and it was a similar thing as it wasn't a buildathon, it was more like a Filene i3 if you're familiar with that program, it's, it's kind of an innovation lab and you, you get together for a few weeks and build a solution and then pitch. Uh, we didn't, we didn't really build it, we [00:49:00] prototyped it.
But the idea of a champion account is funny because the more we dug into it, the more we realized we basically just built a conservatorship. Like we basically created a product where the credit union just does the things for you. Because the notion came from actually some interviews we were doing. I, and, um, you know, I, I know you can relate to this, Josh, uh, because we, we kind of shared some stuff, but, um, I, I was, one of the things we do in the credit union space, if you're innovating, if you're just out and about at a mall, what have you ask questions, how's it going?
You get to know people. You learn about their financial situation. It's amazing the stories you'll hear. And um, I was out one night just. Out at a bar with, with, uh, my friends and, uh, happened to talk to a young gentleman. We were kind of just there. He was having the same whiskey as me. So we started talking about whiskey and getting to know him was really interesting.
His story was that he was in foster care since he was about 10 years old. And when he turned [00:50:00] 18, his parents, his foster parents said, okay, bye. See ya. You don't live here anymore. And he's like, what do you mean, I'm your kid? And they're like, no, you're our foster kid and there's no more paychecks,
Josh DeTar: Oh,
Brad Hickey: go ahead and get your stuff.
You don't live here anymore.
Josh DeTar: took about
Brad Hickey: And you, you, you talk about devastation. And this, this kid, he was from Chicago, he said he just could not even remain in the same city. He, he started hitchhiking and he just wanted to get as far away from Chicago as he could. He wound up in Dallas. When I ran into him, he is 22, you know, and he's just hanging out and just start talking about his financial situation.
And one of the things he said to me, which, um, you know, was, was very powerful, I thought was we were going through his, his finances and he's kind of a gig worker. And he said it's a struggle because he doesn't always know when he is getting paid. He doesn't always know when his bills are due. He doesn't always know how much money he [00:51:00] actually has to get him through the month.
And the thing he said to me was, I don't understand why my bank, and I forget where he banked. He was like, I don't understand why my bank doesn't just do it for me. They know everything about me, figure it out. Like, and it just was like a, one of those things that hit me and I was just like, oh my God, this is such a good inspiration for a product.
And so that's what we bundled into the champion account. We wanted something where the member does not care, they're getting paid. They have a job, they have bills, the credit union has all that data. Look, I do all my business with you. Here it is. And so that's kind of what we did. And, and it wound up being very similar to like a conservatorship.
And it's really, it was really powerful. We kind of built it on like a pay model. You pay like, you know, 10, 15 bucks a month or whatever it is. And the credit union just does everything for you. You put in your bills, you put in your pay. We kind of do some analysis in the [00:52:00] background. Obviously you could trick it up with some machine learning and different things.
But the idea being that it's hands off. You have a spending account and that's your spending account. You don't have to worry about your bills, your savings goals. And um, you know, we implemented some of the, you know, time-tested, uh, savings patterns, you know, from the envelope method and escrowing money to yourself and just things like that to try to build out that product.
And it went over really well. Uh, we had, we had a lot of good feedback from different credit unions that we were like, Hey, we wanna do this. You know, we don't have it built. It's just a prototype, but. It's one of those things that I'm always thinking about in the digital space. Why can't we have something like this?
And so that's another area that I'm very interested in, is almost like, I'm not gonna call it like anti finance, but it kind of is. I, I think there's this growing sort of, uh, niche of, of financial services where you have a lot of Gen Zs and even millennials. I talk to millennials that are the same way.
They're just kind of checked out like, I don't wanna deal with my [00:53:00] finances. It sucks. I hate it. You do it.
Josh DeTar: Yeah, it's funny. Um, I recently had someone who I do, I will admit, he's one of the 50% I know really well. Um, and I've known for a long time. I had Mason Stone from Paymentus on the podcast recently. And Mason and I were talking a lot about, he and I are both total junkies for like, uh, smart home automation stuff.
And, and we were joking about like, it's not that I'm lazy, like it's not that I'm too lazy to get up from my couch and go turn on a light, right? Like part of it is kind of exciting and fun and being able to play with it. And this goes back to just that personality style of liking the tinker. But what we talked about was that ultimately one of the big things it came back to was just operational efficiency.
I'm a huge nerd for just operational efficiency. Like the one thing I can't buy [00:54:00] is time. Like I have finite time on this planet. And you know, I know this is gonna sound like a ridiculous example, but like, if I save 10 seconds a day, turning on and off, light switches. And I multiply that out over the 18 years that my son's gonna spend at home.
Like, that might be another couple of hours that I get to spend playing with my kid instead of turning on a light switch. Right. So that's a silly example, but to your exact point, like at my fully capable of doing my own finances, absolutely. But if you guys offered a way to just automate it, I'd probably be pretty into that.
So, you know, you're, you're even appealing to, you know, multiple different types of demographics in, you know, some people are physically incapable of doing that. Like they just struggle with, I have money, I'm gonna spend it. Or you know, there's also a huge bucket that just has missed that financial literacy and education component 'cause they just didn't get it in their upbringing.
They don't teach it in schools [00:55:00] anymore. And um, so they just don't have that skillset, need to be taught it. And they need somebody to help come in and just automate this process for 'em. And then maybe you just get somebody like me who's like, Hey, you know what? Not saying I'm not lazy, but uh, Hey, you wanna take this off my hands?
Go for it. What I'm really curious about, so this is one of the things that, um, I feel like comes up every once in a while when we start talking about AI coming in and starting to do things for us, right? Is like what happens when it screws up. Um, you know, I had, uh, uh, Dan Black from Boost AI on, and we were kind of talking about AI and um, you know, being able to like, have conversations with members and I was like, you know, if, if an employee loses their ish and starts screaming at a member in the lobby and it's like, you're an idiot, get outta here.
You know, like, all right, what's the recourse for that? Like, we kind of have some policies around that. But what happens if the AI goes off the rails, right? What if Brad comes onto [00:56:00] American Airlines credit union's, AI chat bot, and starts asking it questions, and finally it just gives up and it's like, Brad, dude, you're annoying me.
Like, go away. You know, how do you handle that situation? But in your case, I think that's also really interesting is so if all of a sudden we're starting to make decisions on, okay, you know, Brad gets paid a thousand bucks, uh, a month. I hope he gets paid more than a thousand bucks a month, but Brad gets paid a thousand bucks a month.
His bills are $637 a month, so we're gonna automatically take that out of his paycheck. We're gonna pay his bills. What happens if you miss a bill? What happens if you pay a bill incorrectly? Like, how did you guys think through those types of elements as you were building that out? I'm just curious.
Brad Hickey: Yeah, we, we did think through some of those scenarios and it, you know, similar to how you might see like a, a mint transaction history, um, that's, we kind of had a screen for that where you could sort of go through the transactions that were coming through. And so if you as a member noticed that a bill wasn't [00:57:00] picked up, you could add it to, you know, whether it be an escrow or automated, um, you know, bill pay or what have you.
Um, there's obviously some configuration that you would need to do. The cool thing is though, we also came up with this, and you know, whether, whether or not it's feasible, We don't really truly know until someone were to try it out, but we did kind of model it out. We also had an option where, as part of that quote unquote conservatorship or champion account, you also had the ability to tap the shoulder of an actual credit union employee who could come and do some of those configurations for you.
So you'd sort of have, um, automation experts that are on the account. That can come and, you know, either it could be like a shadowed thing or, you know, maybe there's something in the disclosures where you authorize this type of activity on, on, on the behalf of the member. But you have an automation specialist that would come in and fix the wrongs and fix the, you know, oh, this bill paid didn't go because of this and here's why.
Um, we didn't [00:58:00] really loop a whole lot of AI into, into the, into the product, but we certainly considered how that might look. And really, we thought of it more from the, the perspective of just analyzing transaction data. But certainly, you know, as AI grows, there's gonna be even more ways to leverage automation and that type of arena.
Josh DeTar: Yeah, I mean it's, you know, man, it's only getting better wicked fast. you know, I know it's, it's a broken record. Everybody's talking about it, but watch the evolution of chat G P T and it is freaky good. it is pretty impressive. Um, you know, it was funny. I was talking to Jason from my team the other day about it, and Jason and I are both big car nerds.
Um, and we were just talking about like some of the skills that we've gained over the years being, um, you know, gearheads. And it was like, and I was talking about how I remember in high school, I, one of my high school classes was literally to take a Chevy three 50 out of a [00:59:00] pickup truck, put it on an engine stand, disassemble the whole thing to no two bolts attached, make any repairs to it, put it back together, put it back in the truck, and make the truck run.
Right? And so when, you know, we were talking about things like just, uh, you know, do people check their own oil? And I was like, well, not only do I check my own oil, but I like, I understand the whole concept of oil and like how it works in the engine and like what are the systems that are in place to support lubrication and properly getting oil to different areas of the motor.
And all of those things came from me disassembling an engine. And I was like, you know, Uh, oh. That's what, that's what got this whole conversation started was we were driving together and um, this car passed us and had the spared donut on the front. And I made a comment. I was like, Hey, dummy, you're supposed to put it on the back, like all your steering, all your braking happens in the front.
You [01:00:00] don't want your donut upfront. And then we were talking about, well, you know, that's pretty rude to say, Hey, dummy, like probably, obviously was just never taught that and, and didn't have an opportunity to learn that, um, you know, importance of, of putting this spare tire on the back and takes extra work if you have to rotate a tire forward.
But like, from a safety standpoint, that's important. So they, they obviously never learned that lesson. And so that got us down to like, well, I took a class in shop and they taught us how to do this and these things. And so, you know, then I made the, the, I'm aging comment of like, ah, these kids today, they're just not gonna learn that.
And Jason looked at me and he goes, yeah, dude, but. If all of a sudden they have to pull a Chevy three 50 out of a truck, make it, you know, torn down and put it back together and put it back in, they're just gonna ask chat g p t for a step-by-step set of instructions on how to do it. And I was like, you know what?
You're not wrong. So like, this stuff is getting really, really good. And it's, what I find fascinating [01:01:00] about all of it is it does really blur that line between like, what do you have to learn and how much do we have to learn? Just how to go get information, right? Like I, I think that's also gonna be a really big shift in just how we learn and how we tackle problems.
Um, and obviously that's gonna very much so make its way into our finances.
Brad Hickey: absolutely. How many times have you been on chat G p T, and it gives you a long-winded answer and you say, summarize that for me.
Josh DeTar: Have you the, um, have you seen there's, uh, so Siva, our CEO is a hardcore chat, G p t junkie, and um, and it was really funny. He posted a meme in, uh, in our general Slack channel a couple of weeks ago, and it was, um, this guy like telling his fellow employee, um, like, check this out. I'm gonna [01:02:00] give chat G p t these five bullet points and tell it to write this really elaborate, wonderful email for me.
And he puts five bullet points in, sends it out, and then it, the other side of the meme was the person receiving it. And they look at their coworker and they go check this out. I'm gonna take this really long-winded email, I'm gonna put it into ChatGPT and tell it to summarize it to five bullet points.
Brad Hickey: exactly. Exactly, and I think, I think it, I think it speaks to, you know, there's gonna be another sort of reckoning that humanity has to have where we have to figure out how to consume this stuff. You know, if, if AI is going to accelerate education and learning and growing, you've gotta accelerate reading, in my opinion.
You know, a lot of people have kind of said, oh, you know, AI's gonna automate writing. I don't think it will. I think, I think actually the need is going to grow. I think, I think our minds are going to need to evolve with AI in a way, because we, we need to figure out ways to consume this information. Just like, you know, in the Matrix, he [01:03:00] plugs it in and he knows how to drive a helicopter.
We don't have that ability. We have to be able to read this stuff and consume it. So that's another challenge for sure.
Josh DeTar: Well, I think what, um, you know, Apple's latest release also makes things pretty interesting, right? With um, uh, the Apple Vision Pro. Uh, and you start to layer in things like chat, G P T technology into that. And yeah, I think radically change how we learn, how we consume. Content and information.
Um, yeah, I don't know. It's just, I think it is, it's so funny. It's so fascinating about how I'm a total technology junkie. I love technology, and then some of this stuff scares me and then some of it excites me. And, um, to your point, it's like at some point we still have to do remember how to like, just be human though.
Um, I don't know.
Brad Hickey: Yeah. One of the things you, you kind of made me think about when you were talking about disassembling the engine. [01:04:00] Um, and, and, and maybe this speaks to the human component, but maybe it also just speaks to how we need to leverage AI to learn about our systems that are out there. Have you ever heard of muncing?
Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.
Brad Hickey: you familiar with this concept? So it's, uh, you'll have to pull it up on Wikipedia. It's M u n t z i n g, but basically it's a named after a guy named Earl Muntz. Um, and he had a design practice where he would take apart electronics and reduce them to their minimally viable required components until he no longer had a working appliance.
And then he would slowly add the necessary components that were needed so that he could come down to what is the most minimum thing needed. And the really fascinating part about this design pattern, I feel, is that when you start to dig into some of this stuff, you, again, getting into those fractals, you have to understand what a vacuum tube does in order to [01:05:00] reduce it to its irreducible components.
You are learning along the way, and so you're digging into those fractals. And I, I'm really excited about where AI can take us in that realm, because I'm a minimalist by nature, and I would love to see a world where we're able to take AI and take a, you know, what we used to think of the complex problem and dissolve it down to its bare minimum minimally requirement components, and have AI sort of guide that process.
I'm very fascinated by where that could take us, because I've always, I've always felt that there is numerous systems. F the, the financial system chief among them that is way too complicated, overly complicated for the average human. And, um, I think AI could help us really kind of reduce that stuff down to, to be way, way more easy and way more approachable.
Josh DeTar: Uh, you know, I was just at a conference last week and, uh, one of the speakers was talking about that concept and he, um, he showed an example of an AI model that's [01:06:00] being deployed for, um, urban planning. So actually putting together like how do we build a city? Yeah. And he was talking about how, you know, the, the previous process was, you know, you hire this very expensive design firm.
They come in their very nice, expensive suits. They tell you the one way that this should be designed. They give you maybe an editor too, and then they go out and take a bunch of money to build this city based on how they believe it should be done. And he said, now they're able to basically put in a bunch of parameters into, um, you know, this model and have, uh, AI run against it and come up with hundreds of thousands of different scenarios for how to build out the city, how to maximize efficiency, how to maximize walking paths, how to maximize, you know, light exposure into offices so that they don't have to do, uh, you know, electrical lighting, how they can just, every single facet of it goes into it.
And yeah, now [01:07:00] all of a sudden you have this like, phenomenally efficient city that we actually live in and are, you know, Being humans in, but it was created by AI to be a really intelligent system. I don't, it's pretty cool.
Brad Hickey: Fascinating.
Josh DeTar: Yeah. Um, what other kinds of things do you see on the horizon for, uh, digital, for credit unions?
Brad Hickey: Well, um, apart from those areas, you know, I think a lot of, a lot of the stuff, like you said, you know, AI people obviously are excited about that and the cryptocurrency movement continues to kind of grow and, and wax and wane and what have you. I think there's definitely some interesting parts of that. Um, I'm obviously very fascinated by cooperative finance.
Um, I think. There's an area where we can tap into that for our credit unions. Um, I know a lot of credit unions struggle with, uh, businesses and, and financing businesses. Um, I think there's areas where we can kind of [01:08:00] get more like a hedge fund where we're actually putting money into local businesses. Um, I would like to see some of that.
Um, one of the, one of the ideas that I had about just kind of bringing in deposits was, you know, why can't we, why can't we expose members to some of this sort of quote unquote risk that's out there? There are ways to kind of offload some of that risk. Again, getting into the power of percentages, um, because like I alluded to before, it's not, it's not the same for everyone.
Uh, 10% of $100 is not the same as 10% of a billion. And I think if you really can master that in your fi and in your approach to your digital, I think you tap into something that, uh, very few fis are doing today, understanding truly the plight of middle America underserved and trying to kind of bring a [01:09:00] more equitable approach to how your systems are designed.
Because today, I think we're, I think just as a society and the financial system as a whole, and, you know, mathematically we, we just view percentages as the same for everyone. And I don't think, I don't think that that's the right way to look at it. And there are ways to kind of turn that around.
Josh DeTar: When, Hmm. When you talk about like percentages being the wrong way of looking at. Um, at the problem, like what do you see as alternative ways that credit unions should be thinking about? Um, how to continue to go and, and serve people who are different? Um, I don't know. I'm trying to think through my thought process here a little bit.
Sorry. Um, because I, I, I agree. Like if [01:10:00] we just apply flat percentages across everybody, like our scenarios are so incredibly different, right? And, um, but also applying like a flat fee, or not a fee, sorry, but just like a flat number is also not gonna solve the problem. So how have you been thinking through the mathematics of, you know, how do we create something that's more equitable?
Brad Hickey: Yeah, I mean, I really believe in, I, I really believe that the, the power comes in quadratics when you start digging into quadratic equations and understanding that a curve doesn't have to look like a traditional curve. Um, the quadratic equation gives us the ability to offset some of those risks. So, for instance, you know, you could imagine a model where, um, I, let's say for instance, this is something that I kind of came up with.
If anybody wants to incubate with this with me, get in touch with me because I've, I've worked on a white paper for a couple years, but it kind of fell flat during covid. Um, but [01:11:00] it's really just an idea that I had about a quadratic fund where basically you would have, um, a, a, a funding round with your members.
And you, you kind of figure out, okay, what can everyone give? And then the sort of, um, investment return for that member is based on a percentage of what they are. So it's more a percentage of their net worth. And then that gets assigned in a quadratic fashion. You'll see this, uh, there's something called quadratic voting that's out there right now.
That's kind of what the inspiration for this is. Um, and quadratic, what quadratic voting does is it basically you, you're assigned points. So let's say, let's say there's four items on a ballot, and I tell you, you have five points, but every time you vote on, uh, and you can vote on a ballot any number of times you want, except each time you vote, it takes more points to do so.
So I start penalizing you for the more points that you put into that ballot item. So the quadratic fund does something similar where we basically [01:12:00] decide on what the seed amount is. And then for every additional amount that you seed, you now are basically in a way being penalized in your potential return, but you're being rewarded in the lack of potential risk because the quadratic equation works in the reverse as well.
It's a really fascinating concept. Um, I've sort of mapped it out through a bunch of Excel documents and different, um, data algorithms that I've done, but effectively what we want to do is try and 'cause with a flat, a flat concept, right? If you said, everyone who puts money into this fund is gonna earn a $100.
Okay, if I only put in 10 bucks, that's great, but if I put in a million, that sucks. If I say everybody in this fund is gonna earn 10%, if I only put in, if I only put in $10, I'm only gonna get a dollar. But if I put in a million, that's, I'm, that's killer. Put me into that fund. So this is where that, there's a flaw in the design where we need to sort of flatten the curve, but not too much.
[01:13:00] It really dives into that notion of what it means to be equitable. I'm sure you've seen some of the studies where they go around and they interview what people think the world looks like in terms of wealth distribution and what it really is. And it's fascinating to see that 90% of humans agree that not only is the world less equitable than they thought it was, but they also agree that it should be way more equitable than it is.
And so that's kind of where a lot of this, this inspiration came from, the quadratic curve. We'll model what we believe as humans to be an equitable distribution of wealth, income returns, what have you. And so I really believe that there's something in mathematics that we're not capitalizing on because we, we are hung up on the notion of percentage.
And a lot of this inspiration came from my mother as well. My mother, um, she works a part-time job and you know, she, she's [01:14:00] still trying to make ends meet and she's proud, you know, um, I've done fairly well for myself and try to help her as much as I can, but she doesn't want her son, you know, paying her way.
And I talk with about finance with her quite a bit, and she mentioned to something, to me in this way was that if she invests, you know, she could, she could probably work, work her tail off to put in a hundred dollars this month. Well, what is, is that gonna return $8 in a year? Like, she's not interested.
She'd rather go buy a lottery ticket because at least there's a chance. Right. And so I think that's where we're, we're, that's where we're sort of missing the boat on some of this. We're we're telling people that they should save. They need to invest, but the, the risk reward isn't there. And I also believe that for folks who do have a lot of money, who are, are of, of, you know, a strong wealth position, I also think we put too much risk on them.
They want instruments that are less risky. And [01:15:00] that's the beauty of the quadratic equation, is it offloads that risk.
Josh DeTar: Huh. You're definitely getting outta my depth of understanding here on that. That's, but I, I, what I really appreciate is, I, I think you're onto something in that, um, you know, also what's happening with, uh, you know, some advancements in technologies. Our computing power is getting significantly better and more powerful, and more people are having access to significant compute power.
And I agree. I don't think everything in life is linear. Right? Uh, actually, probably nothing in life is perfectly linear. So, you know, being able to model it with a lot more variables than just a percentage, um, does lead us to a lot more equitable outcomes. And I, and I appreciate that you used the word equitable, right?
Because, um, I think especially for folks like you and I, like the world's not fair. It's just not, it, it life is not fair. Um, you know, in so [01:16:00] many different ways, but we can make it equitable. And I think that's a big difference. Um, so I appreciate that. You know, you're kind of thinking about how can we use mathematics to actually make it a more equitable solution for even just, you know, one specific niche thought process.
It's cool. Um, well, Brad, I could probably keep you here all day, man, but, uh, I think. We've probably overextended our welcome at this point. You're like, dude, it's dinner time here in Texas. Um, so, uh, before I let you go though, I got two final questions for you. So first up, just, uh, where do you go to get information about what's happening?
Obviously you are, are really into some of the like more edgy niche things that are happening. So where are you getting that information?
Brad Hickey: Well, um, like you, I listen to a lot of podcasts for sure. Um, I also love to do a lot of reading, so, uh, I'm a big Paul Graham, uh, [01:17:00] acolyte, if you will. I love, I love his writings. Um, uh, he's, he's the founder of Y Combinator, which is one of the, you know, biggest startup funds that we've ever had. Um, and also, uh, really love listening, like I said, to a lot of podcasts.
Usually around FinTech. I listen to a lot of stuff around cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, anything in the decentralized finance, uh, finance perspective, that's where you get a lot of, um, interesting concepts. Even though, you know, a lot of this stuff is never gonna see the light of day and it's, it's not feasible.
But, um, just hearing, hearing about how some of the things in DeFi are being tackled, I think, uh, brings a lot of inspiration to our industry. And I think, I think as banks and credit unions, we really need to keep an eye on DeFi because if you're not, uh, it's, it's gonna bite us. It's gonna bite us in the butt really fast if we're not watching out for it.
Um, so that's kind of the areas I go to. And, you know, like most people, LinkedIn, blogs, different things that I kind of follow. Um, I, I'm, I [01:18:00] consume just any and everything of whether, like we talked about, whether it be philosophy, history, uh, my podcast playlist is immense and, uh, definitely varied.
Josh DeTar: Um, you know, one thing I was gonna mention earlier too, when you were talking about design principles and things, uh, a recommendation, uh, actually from one of our product managers, um, that I found fascinating. I think you would too, if you haven't already read it, is, uh, Steve Krug's Don't make me Think, um, lot along the lines of what you were talking about earlier of like, people don't want to have to think about it.
It should just be intuitive, right?
Brad Hickey: Right. I am putting that on my list.
Josh DeTar: And then, uh, final question for you, sir. So if people wanna learn a little bit more about American Airlines Credit Union, uh, and if they wanna learn a little bit more about, or participate in see you build, uh, or if they just want to connect with you, how do they do that?
Brad Hickey: Yeah, sure. It's, uh, CUBuild.org is, uh, the website for our buildathon, uh, aa credit union.org is our, our credit union. Um, and [01:19:00] if you wanna get ahold of me. LinkedIn is the best. Um, I'm Brad Hickey, um, at LinkedIn, so yeah, feel free to shoot me a message, um, especially if you're interested in, in incubating any of these things we've talked about today.
I, I love working with credit unions and community fis. Um, I, I would love to get any of these ideas off the ground or, or just help your team brainstorm different solutions. Um, I love getting my dev team on the phone with another dev team at another credit union. We, we always learn so much from each other, and, and that's the beauty of our, our industry is, is people helping people, but it's also cooperatives helping cooperatives.
Josh DeTar: That's about as good of a way as I could have ever asked for somebody to end a podcast. Um, thank you so much for taking the time and being a guest here on the Digital Banking Podcast. Brad, in all seriousness, uh, at the end of this thing, I do feel like we've known each other for years after this. So thank you for just an awesome conversation.
Brad Hickey: Likewise, Josh. I appreciate it.