Acorns

The people are all so passionate and just amazing to work with. My team was full of smart people who were always so supportive and taught me a lot during my time there. If anything, this is probably the main reason I loved working here.

I also love the mission of the company, although the execution hasn't been great in some key products that have most of the funding.

In my experience, the CEO is a good guy and is truly passionate about helping people achieve financial wellness, but I don't believe he is fit to run the company at this stage as CEO. He is excellent at brand and marketing, and he knows a lot of people that give Acorns clout/resources. However, he can get tunnel vision when it comes to execution on some of our key products.

Usually, when a product is created, you want to make sure customers will want to use your product first. At Acorns, we were doing the opposite. We were trying to make a really nice-looking product that nobody wanted.

But now, we were stuck having to make it work because this was the product our CEO had pitched to investors as our secret sauce, our unique proposition. If the CEO had spent more time on market research and listened to some key employees who presented data showing our market just wasn't that interested, I believe we wouldn't have had to cut so many costs in the company after spending so much on unnecessary things.

Again, I really do like him as a person and he does have his strengths, but he hasn't been a customer-focused CEO. Instead, it seems like he is trying to be Steve Jobs, and it hasn't been working.

Listen to your employees and customers more, please! I know there must be immense pressure from investors, but you can't just look away from the data and pray that it works. I'm rooting for Acorns, but management has to be less afraid to pivot quickly for this company to truly achieve what it wants for its customers.