Ryan Nelsen is the Executive Vice President of Marketing for the Building the Open Finance Economy company MX. He shares how MX got started Building the Open Finance Economy and a preview of MX Summit 2022 where wiil.I.am will be performing with the Black Eyed Peas.

Three things in this episode that we dive into.

1️⃣ How MX reduces the Divorce rate

2️⃣ Helping Fintech companies Big and Small

3️⃣ Where the next Fintech Leaders come together

Also, watch the entire episode on youtube. https://youtu.be/MW4tTwY3XjA  

Register for MX Summit 2022

www.mx.com/summit

Socials:

Website: www.Mx.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mxenabled

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MXenabled

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifeatmx/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mX

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Mxenabled

01:55 Meet Ryan

04:18 MX where it all began

06:59 Looking to the future with the vision of MX

08:09 Who MX helps

10:24 How Fintech is using MX to accelerate growth.

12:14 Delivering better Fintech solutions through partnerships

13:18 Maintaining the MX culture through explosive growth

15:13 What is MXS 2022?

16:42 Expect to get your mind BLOWN from MXS 2022!!

19:44 Who is attending MXS and Why

23:30 Closing thoughts

our study recently that 72% of consumers would actually switch

their primary financial institution.

if it didn't connect to the FinTech app that they liked and preferred.

Ryan welcome to the show.

I am so happy to be sitting down with you.

The executive vice president of marketing, just as everyone is preparing

for the 20, 22 money experience, summit in snowbird there in Utah.

And that's going on from September 20th to the 22nd.

But before I dive into what that is all about, who it's for and why

anybody should attend, I'm gonna do like, this 100,000 foot view of,

what MX is just to set the stage.

Now, from my perspective, I look at MX today as being a powerhouse in FinTech

that is leading the way for open finance.

That is raised over $450 million in funding has hundreds, if not thousands

of employees and it's providing services across the entire FinTech ecosphere for

fin financial wellness, digital banking, payments, lending, crypto, you name

it, it feels like MX has figured out a way to make it a little bit better.

Now I'm not gonna dive into MX straight away.

Your journey has been quite an adventure prior to joining MX You

were at Qualtrics just, up the 15.

And you contributed as a marketing leader that helped them scale for an eventual

sale to SAP for about $8 billion.

And then the IPO of an astonishing $27 billion.

What are a few things that you've learned from that experience that you

use today to build the iconic brand and accelerate the growth of MX.

Awesome, Tedd.

It's super nice to be here.

Thank you so much.

That was very kind of you and very grateful and fortunate to be at

MX and with this incredible team.

At Qualtrics I started as the first product marketer there.

And so had an opportunity back in 2013, to help with the messaging

and positioning and kind of the category creation of what became

experience management and that really.

Help me understand the power of experiences and it's the

money experience summit.

Experiences throughout that journey has been part of my career where

experiences matter, whether it's, your, digital experiences or the

in-person experiences that you have.

certainly excited to pull that and bring it to life here in September.

What are the types of things that, that you found was

a really quick migration over when you started MX from that experience,

how are you leveraging those things?

To really build up the brand for MX and really provide that experience.

How are you bridging the gap and, bringing those learnings from that

customer experience side over to the financial FinTech side of the house.

As you think about your financial journey as a consumer,

you have lots of financial apps.

You probably have several bank accounts, several loans in different places.

And that, can, that experience a lot of friction in that.

And so MX we are sitting at the center of that, of connecting

the financial ecosystem through secure APIs and infrastructure

that allows you as a consumer.

To be able to have a connected financial experience.

That's a powerful thing.

When, the number one cause of stress in America, is finances.

A leading cause of divorce is finances.

MX is The most mission driven company I've ever been a part of, really

empowering the world to be financially strong is what we're all about.

And we are a B2B company, so we serve banks and credit unions and FinTech.

But, , we think about things from a B2C standpoint where we really

are trying to empower that consumer

It's so funny, you mentioned about the, the,

divorce rate around finances.

And really,

if you look at, MX it started with humble beginnings with a marriage of two

ideas from two different guys together to deliver what MX is doing today.

Tell me about what the catalyst was for Ryan and Brandon to

even start MX back in 2010.

Awesome story.

Two founders, back in the day one in Utah, one in Illinois, and they were working on

the same problem, to really democratize financial data and make it usable through

personal financial management tools.

As we were working on those things realized that they were both

working on something similar.

They met up and crazy story, Brandon Dewitt.

who's my favorite person I've ever met on this earth flew out to, Utah and

met with Ryan Caldwell and they started brainstorming whiteboarding and crazy

story, but they had a flight that evening They were eight hours, 10 hours in.

And Brandon looked it over at his co-founder and said I

think I'm just gonna stay here.

And so that his friend and buddy who started the company with him was

like, what, what do you mean Like you'll fly out back tomorrow or like,

do you want me to move the flights?

What do you wanna do?

And he is like, no, I think I'm just gonna stay here and build with Ryan Caldwell.

And so he didn't actually go back.

He, we had somebody at the time they had somebody go out and get his things at his

apartment and bring them back to Utah.

And he stayed and built with Ryan and stayed in Ryan's basement.

And from there, it was this incredible journey of building

incredible company, but, and yeah, and just amazing amazing founders.

So with that amazing founder's story.

How would you describe where MX is at today in the marketplace place?

As you think about the evolution of personal financial

management to do that well, you have to have really good quality data.

And so if you go upstream from doing that really well, it's the quality of data and

ultimately getting access to that data.

And so if you think about the journey of MX, uh, we do three things.

We, there's three pillars, if you will, connectivity data and experiences.

And so as you go upstream Data up into connectivity.

We're helping connect that financial ecosystem through secure

APIs and tokenized connections.

And as we're able to do that, we're able to go drive better experiences

for our customers, the bank's credit union, or fintechs with their data,

which then enables them to go deliver the experiences they wanna go do.

And so it's been an evolution from sort of PFM back in the, you

know, several years ago up into sort of connecting the Ecosystem.

Personal financial management software has

taken such a journey, from back in the day to where it is today.

Now I'm gonna ask you to put on.

Put on your future lenses on your, you know, on you don't have glasses,

but if you did have glasses, I'd ask you to to put those glasses on,

but where do you see the MX mission and vision take us to in the future?

So our mission is to empower the

world to be financially strong.

And our vision is very, very clear at MX that we want to go and make data

accessible and actionable for all.

And as we think about these different horizons that we're gonna go and

build, we feel like embedded banking is really on that horizon that we're

building into with a path of API banking and everything running through APIs.

And so as we think about this journey of a connected ecosystem and getting

the infrastructure in place to make sure that this financial world flows

like we all want it to do All the way down to the journey of several years

out where everything's embedded and everything is that experience that

you really expect similar to what you have with Netflix or Amazon or

Spotify and all those things embedded.

You mentioned a bunch of really big names and you've talked

about a number of different ways that you're bringing that to life around.

Not only the personal financial management side of the house, but

just the overarching data management layer, whether it be through APIs

or through the user experience, or just connecting things together.

so that people don't have to work through that.

Now, the company's list of customers and partners.

I started doing the research a little bit deeper.

I knew a little bit about MX, but I started to really dive in.

The list is impressive and extremely broad, like lots of household

names like H&R Block MetLife.

I think I found USAA somewhere in there.

Like I could be making that one up on my own, but also some not

so well known companies like everywhere, Fiserv and, even Moov.io.

Tell me about what the perfect customer looks like for MX.

MX was founded in 2010 and started with banks and credit unions

and building those relationships I think of the the mid-size bank or the credit

union that really needed a tech player.

To help them compete with some of the big players.

And that's the sweet spot of where MX started over the last four or five years.

MX has really moved into the FinTech space as well to go connect banks

and credit unions with fintechs.

We did our study recently that 72% of consumers would actually switch

their primary financial institution.

if it didn't connect, if it didn't connect to the FinTech app

that they liked and preferred.

So think about this, if you're using a betterment or, and it's your favorite app?

Yeah.

If US Bank didn't connect to betterment, they'd be

switching that to a different provider or whatever bank that you're using locally.

And so it's super, super critical for consumers to be able to

have that connected experience.

We've seen that over the last several years where we've started to, build

relationships and serve hundreds of fintechs, which has been great.

You touched on banks, you touched on generically,

some FinTech stuff in there, and I I'm blown away by, by the percentage

of people who are willing to switch their financial institution.

If their current one doesn't offer the functionality that they're looking for.

Can you give us some ideas to the types of financial apps that you've

worked in or MX is connected with?

I should say, not worked in, but connected with, that would be something that we

may may not think of off the top of our

head.

If you heard of a company called FormFree they're a great

partner, and great friends of MX and one of the challenges actually in 2020,

they're exp users were experiencing really long connection times, and really dealing

with some multi-factor authentication issues and it resulted in kind of a

higher number of users canceling the connection and it made it really, really

difficult for them to complete the loan origination process form free processes a

ton a ton of loans in the mortgage space.

And so by using our modern aggregation connections, they were able to take

the average time to aggregate their accounts from two minutes and 30 seconds

down to 22 seconds, which basically

as an 80 89% decrease in aggregation time.

And what it did for form free is it increased their revenue by 15%.

It's not about having the sexy interface all the time.

it really does come down to actually generating additional

revenues through all these synergies

absolutely.

I love being at a company that is so mission driven, but it also

really a need to have product.

There's only a handful of companies that can do what we do.

And so being in a space that uh, impacting businesses, bottom line

and In many ways, not being able to operate without a service like we have

has been rewarding, to be a part of.

And also there's a lot of pressure to make sure that we deliver and make sure these,

our customers are happy in having a good.

experience.

One of the really interesting things that I noticed

when I was reading through all of the new news is that you launched a

partner program that has just exploded.

What do you attribute to it being so successful so quickly?

We're excited about our partner program.

We're excited about all of our partners and the ability

for us to go and help them.

with the use cases that they're building.

We have a great partnership team.

They've been building relationships for years and it takes it takes

time to build partnerships and build relationships the right way.

And so we're excited to do that at scale in a bigger way.

if interested please reach out to our team.

there's new SDKs and APIs that are able to be connected into as you're

building, if you're working with builders or just simply relationships

that we can open up doors for you, as you're building your business, we'd

love to be a part of that discussion.

And certainly would love to put you in touch with our team.

So you've mentioned mission, you've mentioned in a in

kind of a roundabout way, the overall culture of the company, and just

how everything is the way I guess I would describe it as like the builder

mentality, figuring out how to build bigger, better products that serve the

market being a product geek myself.

I understand that quite well.

So I'm curious from your perspective, What do you think it is?

or what have you heard from those within the organization?

Because cultures, when you get this big, so fast, and obviously we're

looking at 12 years now, but still that's pretty fast overarching.

When you get this big, how do you maintain the culture?

and like, how do you see that, that really working to keep that drive going.

going.

Absolutely It starts with our hiring bar

and hiring the right people.

We hire for, we don't hire jerks and we hire people that truly care about people.

And one, the talent bar's crazy, crazy high and it's one of the premier

employers in Utah, and we've been able to go expand our with remote hires.

Really all over north America, which has been an awesome addition to be

able to bring in some amazing people.

but we have our mission and our values all over the walls at MX and we live it

we, every single question that you get when you go to interview at MX is you're

probably gonna get asked six or seven times, throughout the panel process.

You know what you think about our mission and our values and

which ones are your favorite?

Why do they resonate?

and so we're hiring really good people that care deeply about other people

and that's, it starts there great executive leadership team, great north

star and vision of where we're going, a roadmap of where we're going and

making sure that we are dedicated.

I think companies do really well when they're able to say no to

things as well And there's a million things that you could be doing

and we're not gonna be everything to everybody, but how do we get

focused to serve our sweet spot?

and I think we've done a much better job with that, than, many companies

have, and they sometimes struggle with

All right, man.

I've stalled.

As long as I possibly.

Can I please share with the audience what the money experience

summit 2022 is all about.

and then we've touched on it, but let's just dive ahead.

strong right into

it.

Yeah.

So money experience summit, or if we call it MXs for short is,

Ultimately an industry event.

I'm not a big believer in user conferences.

And so I'll call it what it is.

It's an industry event open and available for everybody.

There's something for everybody in the industry.

It's where the very best of the best are gathering in the mountains of Utah.

To talk about the most important challenges ahead of them.

We do it in the fall and September the mountain and the leaves are

changing from green to yellow and red.

the vibe, fresh air it's away from sort of New York and other places

where it can feel a little bit stuffy.

And the people I think is what make the difference it's a really senior

group that comes out founders, CEOs, VPs in banking, FinTech builders.

We have three tracks for builders and doers and dreamers that are.

working on different things.

So we're really excited to bring it to life this year this last year we

had some amazing feedback and going even bigger and better this year.

Yeah When I looked at the agenda, my first reaction

immediately was like, wow, this is not your average FinTech event.

There are hackathons, which is pretty common.

Now it didn't used to be, but it is now, concerts, sunrise, hikes

a film screening, and last but not least a ton of educational sessions

that are all over the place.

You mentioned the three tracks.

and that is really cool to see.

It got me thinking, what was the thought behind the agenda,

the speakers and the activities.

absolutely if you recall last year for anybody, that got to come

last year, we had Peyton Manning come out.

We had Mario Andrei come out.

We had Apollo Ono and Allison, Felix, and, some incredible speakers that, really,

I think got a lot of excitement and.

I think.

We tied in a lot of relevance to the industry this year, we leaned in a

little bit harder on industry and some of the icons and luminaries within the

industry, to make sure that everybody left with a really solid game plan and

action plan inspired to go take on.

the world ahead of them.

So we do have, will I am coming out to do a keynote he's gonna bring the

black Eyed Peas and do some awesome stuff, in the evening time for a

evening performance we got a really cool opening performance from Philip Bowen.

If you haven't checked him out on Instagram or TikTok he like.

Just blowing that up where he does fiddle over top of really popular

songs and it just kind of blows your mind So, entertainment's gonna

be awesome and amazing, in the mountain and fresh air of Utah.

But as I think about the agenda one.

We wanna bring people together to solve problems.

We wanna bring people together to help them accelerate their roadmap, accelerate,

the opportunities in front of them.

And so if you can take two days, two and a half days, leave renewed, ready

to go conquer the world, but also.

have a sounding board of your peers that can just answer questions that maybe

things that they've already been through.

And if you can leave two and a half days later with a playbook on a roadmap, and

I think we've done a really good job.

And so that's our game plan, coffee, mountainside, coffee

chats, fireside chats.

We actually have something called riff on a lift that we're actually gonna put.

individuals a little bit of a sign up and they'll be able to get on a

ski lift ride to the top of the ski lift talk and shop on what's going

on in their world at their companies.

And they'll get on the Alpine slide and take the Alpine

slide down and make it fun.

That arrives right at the base of the mountain where the opening reception is

gonna be, with food and music And we're doing sort of an October Fest style, for,

snowbird which is famous for that It'll be, it's a huge celebration and party,

but there's so much learning and so much, wisdom being shared that it's something

I just really hope people don't miss.

You're speaking to my German heritage by calling it Octoberfest.

So even more excited than before.

Your attendee list.

I, I dove into it, looked at it.

There's, it's a who's who's names of companies, but I don't feel

like that tells the whole story.

It doesn't really, to me, it doesn't really tell the whole story to who's

attending and why they're attending.

Could you expand on who and why they're attend?

Yeah, absolutely.

So you have everybody from founders and CEOs of FinTech companies.

that are coming to meet in founder forums and discussions, talking peer

to peer in what's working for them.

What's not market trends, market dynamics.

What's slowing, what's accelerating what are they missing?

Where are their blind spots?

So there's all those discussions happening on.

the mountain.

You then have those that are VPs or chief digital experience officers who

are thinking about the entire customer journey within that financial ecosystem,

where are the friction points in that journey and what can they do to

co-create more seamless experience.

You also have chief data officers that are here, uh, talking about data

and the value of data and the be the ability to go make data actionable.

Um, we have chief CMOs that are talking marketing strategy and taking insights,

to, go deliver better campaigns and more relevant offers to their.

members and users, and, ultimately you have a lot of builders whether

it's developers and, or chief product officers or product managers, engineers

that are building product connecting code and building new experiences

through APIs and our experience tools.

And so it's a, it's an ecosystem.

everybody leaves with new connections, but also, some new insights that.

Hopefully whether it's a founder talking to a founder or developer, talking to a

founder, leaving with, some awesome new

tools.

No, that's, that is fantastic.

in my mind is you're talking about this.

All I can do is I can see two guys coming together, white boarding a little

bit, or writing it down on notepads and eventually doing something similar

to what happened with MX, where two guys come together with similar ideas

and make something really big of it.

I can totally see that happening at one of these summits.

Now our time is just about up Ryan, but before we go, is there anything

that, that maybe I haven't asked about that you just gotta talk about?

Good question.

Yeah.

I think as we think about, being a part of MX MX truly what I loved about

coming to MX is it was a company that is truly looking out on behalf of the

ecosystem and truly wants to do good.

our co-founder Brandon Dewitt he passed away a year ago from a

five, five year battle of cancer.

And I think.

He left a lasting mark that at the end of the day, revenue doing things for the

taking shortcuts is not worth it it's what are you gonna go do to leave a legacy?

And how do we go leave a legacy in this industry of building for

10, 20, 30, 50 years out, that the infrastructure in place that we're

doing now is gonna be robust enough enterprise Great enough, secure enough.

To go have thousands and millions of developers build on top of our

platform and doing it right treating our customers the right way, making

sure that they, are having an experience that we would expect them to have is

really where we're really focused.

And proud to be a part of this company is what I'd say.

If they wanna learn more about you, the summit and MX, what

is the best way to connect with someone?

Absolutely.

mx.com is our website.

If you wanna go to the summit mx.com/summit, we'll have everything

you need for you there to get registered and feel free to connect

on LinkedIn, whatever we can do to, help make sure you have what you need.

Thanks, Ryan, I'm gonna go ahead and put all of that in

your show notes and the description.

So if you're reading or listening or watching this, you'll be able to click

on the link and take you straight to both mx.com as well as mx.com/.

Summit to learn more.

Ryan this has been a lot of fun and I am super excited to attend.

I can't wait to interview some of the speakers and be part

of the MX magic at snowbird.

Thank you, Tedd.

It's been a lot of fun.

I really get appreciate getting to know you as well.

Thanks for sitting down and sharing with us.

Your story is all