How I built Pearler, podcast with Pearler co-founder Hayden Smith

Hayden Smith is the co-founder of Pearler, one of Australia’s fastest-growing financial technology companies. Hayden recently sat down with Owen Raszkiewicz, founder of Rask, to talk to us about his vision and what it takes to make a great technology company in the modern era.

Hayden Smith podcast talking points

Ice breaker questions

• What’s one thing you learned about investing in the past year?
• Who’s the greatest software engineer Australia has produced (or that you have met)?

Hayden’s background

• Where did you go to school? Was computer science a focus for you?
• Early entrepreneurial streaks?
• Did you build anything early and learn to code?
• What did you study at uni?

Early days of Pearler

• When did you meet your co-founders Nick and Kurt? How did they find you or vice versa? When and where were you?
• Why did you decide to take on Pearler? What was it about Nick in particular that convinced you to give it a try?

Broker industry

What’s the number-one thing that’s wrong with brokerage today?

Where is the retail brokerage market going? I can see it merging and taking more share of what advisers have been using (e.g. as wraps or platforms).

Platform

What are the top 3 new tools and features you’re excited about?

• Bonus points if you can describe what’s involved in making things like these happen? From feature request to safely in production.

How do you ensure the platform is secure? I think many investors are cautious about “untested” apps or platforms? How do you decide what is partnered and what is built in-house?

If you were starting out today, what are 3 things you would do differently? (Even if you were building a stock market app or wealth platform, I guess just lessons learned about development)

What’s the one thing that you’re most proud of with Pearler?

When you hire people in your tech team, what are 2-3 ways you find great people?

Closing

Which companies or products do you look at and think, ‘woah, that’s a great platform!’ Or ‘how did they pull it off?’

Which companies or products are the opposite?