Transcript: Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary | ONE ZERO | How Do You Build a Digital Bank?

Intro: what ONE ZERO is and how you set up a bank

Eyal David: [00:00] Hi, it's Eyal, welcome to Product Builder, the place for the most interesting product conversations. I'm the owner of Userflowzz and, among other things, the host of this podcast, and my goal here is for us to improve our product skills together. If this is your first time here, I hope you enjoy, and if you've already listened and gotten value, I'd really appreciate it if you share the podcast with a friend. So yalla, let's start. Hi Yaeli, how's it going? Good, what's up? Great, so glad you came. Amazing. We tried a few times, a very busy person, right? Right. So it's great that you're here with us. Yaeli, CPO at One Zero. I'd like you to tell us, really in a few sentences, about One Zero for those who don't know it.

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [00:47] Okay, so One Zero was founded, I've been there almost five years now, and we launched a year and a half ago. We're actually a bank in every sense, regulated by the Bank of Israel, and we have no branches, we're fully digital. What does the process of opening a bank look like? What does it look like? Wow, a lot of rows in monday. Everyone does everything. There really are no areas of responsibility. Anyone who can pick something up picks it up and runs forward, like some kind of elite commando unit. You look at what exists out there, you look at a vision you want to bring that's different. You talk with friends; in the end we're building a bank for ourselves and our friends here in Israel. We look at our dream, what we'd want to get from a bank and don't get today, and we run with it. And what did the initial cadre of people actually look like?

Eyal David: [01:39] It can't be only technology. What did that initial team you were in actually look like? So when I arrived we were, I think, 20,

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [01:48] Obviously a CISO, you know, important in a bank, the CEO, legal, you must have that, regulation and so on, a compliance officer. Product, tech, an architect, like, we were really a small team. When I arrived there were four developers, I think, and you start running, and little by little you understand what you need.

Eyal David: [02:12] How do you understand? Where are all those bank people, the traditional ones, or the people who know banking? Weren't they in the initial team?

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [02:19] They were. We had a VP of Banking who accompanied us from the start; actually, at the beginning product was under him too, because it was critical at the start of the build to really understand where we're going and what's needed.

Eyal David: [02:30] They're there; all the time there are bankers around us and in management. And it's also interesting, when I'm building a team here and there's such a precise and deep domain, how did he actually manage to instill all this knowledge in you so you'd start moving really fast, and not just say, I said so, so do it.

Bankers and product people: joint mini squads

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [02:48] Right, that's still an issue to this day. Not "I said so, so do it," but this hybrid creature we built, a bank and a fintech combined, we feel it day to day. First of all, of course there were growing pains. In traditional banks, for example, the product managers are actually bankers whose domain is, say, deposits. And on the other side comes a product manager who came from Wix or another company, and doesn't know banking. Now, a product manager knows how to adapt and learn their domain and move forward, but it's a huge amount of content to learn, and getting in and reaching that level of expertise is obviously impossible. So what we did was set up these mini squads of a business owner and a product manager who work closely together on every project, every feature, every domain, and run together all the time. So it's actually continuous learning: one learns about the tech, the other learns about the domain, so... Absolutely. I can tell you that our product managers have already learned what Banking Supervision directives are and their numbers, and the business owners have learned how long a sprint is, and what a big and small development is, and what's urgent and not urgent, and what matters more or less to them, by the size of...

Eyal David: [04:07] We really prioritize together, work together all the time. Stunning. Okay, so you'll tell us later how the launch at One Zero went, but let's go back to the nuts and bolts for a second.

Private banking for the masses and the subscription model

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [04:14] One Zero, actually, what differentiates One Zero from other banks today? So a few things. First of all, One Zero actually provides private banking for the masses. That was the goal, that was the vision. The vision was to put the customer at the center, and part of that was to break the conflict of interest between banks and the customer. And that's why we went with a subscription model. And there we actually wanted to take it and offer All You Can Bank, a package of... All You Can Bank. I like it, I like it a lot. Some amount you pay, like Netflix, like many other models, and you bank as much as you like. And we actually zeroed out all our fees and told customers, come try it, we have no interest, like, in... in the way we offer it. That's one. Two, we put the customer at the center not as a slogan, but for real. I can tell you there are meetings upon meetings about every product and everything that goes out. How does the customer feel? What matters to them? We need to tell them they're about to exceed their limit. Conversations like: wait, we developed open banking. We have to tell the customer if they're in overdraft at the other bank, even if they didn't tell them. We'll tell them to transfer money from here, they're in the black here. That's crazy. That's literally sending the bank's revenue out the door,

Eyal David: [05:34] To take care of the customer, take care of their well-being, take care of their finances. It sounds like a dream, it sounds like really only someone like your founder, or someone of that stature, could pull off something like that, decide I want to do something like this. Absolutely. And I can tell you everyone is connected to this DNA.

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [05:50] We think like this all the time. Some directive comes out, every time, or a new law. What's a Nabat? I don't know what the acronym stands for, but it's rules and regulation issued by the Bank of Israel. We're always looking to see: is this in the customer's favor, is it not in the customer's favor? What does it mean? How will they feel? But does it screw them or not screw them? We're always looking for where to give them a better experience, where to be transparent with them, how to update them, but so they actually see it, not because we're obligated to send them, you know, something to their inbox. So the conversation about this is constant, everywhere, and everyone speaks it, it's really like our charter.

Eyal David: [06:24] Proper Conduct of Banking Business, standards, I don't know, I'm just guessing the acronym. Anyway, so you've been working there for five years now. Can you tell us a bit what your day-to-day looks like? How many people do you have on the team? What does it look like? So in the product department there are 20 employees,

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [06:42] Product managers, project managers, and the whole Design Studio actually sits there too, which is the UX designers and also one person from the marketing team who sits with us, because we wanted everything to be in the same language, everything in the same studio, to feel the same, the product and the marketing outside and so on. What does the day-to-day look like? When I arrived they told me that when we finish building the bank, the madness will end. And then they told me, no, when we go out to customers the madness will end. And they told me, no, every year it's something else, so the madness never ends. It's a constant feeling of a startup and of growth and frenzy. So, and add COVID when we started, and a war now, so I'm completely hands-on. I write features for development myself too. I split my time between the employees, the stakeholders in the company, and constantly understanding what's new in the market, where competitors are going, which way the wind is blowing, what's interesting, what needs to be added, what needs to be fixed, what needs to change, what new protocols are coming out. Constantly living the environment and bringing it inside. And our customers are demanding, too. For example, every Tuesday we post a feedback post in our group, and they literally write, we want this and this and this.

Eyal David: [08:02] We summarize the feedback, we see what comes up a lot, and we feed development from there. It sounds a bit like you're actually the head of product but you're also really a team member, wearing both hats. I don't want to ask when you finish your day; I heard when you start it. Start it at 7:00, finish very late. And actually, in these five years you've been at the bank, what's the strongest insight you've learned about this world?

The big insight: customer trust is hard to earn

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [08:30] About the banking world? Yes, because we'll still talk a bit about your problem. So you came from fintech before that, like. I understood that it's very, very, very hard to earn customers' trust in this field. It's a mission that, in my opinion, we still haven't completed. We are on a very positive path and we're definitely getting there, but it's hard. Customers tut-tut, they don't believe it. What, why would you tell me I'm in overdraft at the other bank? Why would you recommend something that's really right for me? What's in it for you? It's very hard for them to trust, to believe. We're working on it, we're building it all the time, constantly thinking how; maybe we'll tell them why it's good for them, maybe we'll explain. We try very hard to strengthen transparency all the time, to get to that point where they already understand and say, okay, we get it,

Eyal David: [09:17] This is what they came to do. Like, you need to do market education, re-education after the bad market that existed before. So maybe let's take ourselves for a moment to competitors. The traditional competitors are actually the regular banks. There's Pepper, if it still exists, which is some kind of hybrid of Leumi,

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [09:33] They still send me SMSes. What other competitors do you have? Maybe abroad too, I don't know. Right, we look at the traditional banks, and obviously we're constantly looking at Revolut, for example, who are about to enter, at Esh, who'll enter soon, you know, there are not only traditional banks. And regardless, we take inspiration, you know, from all over the world, from the neobanks. We're constantly looking outward, N26, Monzo, constantly researching the market, seeing what they do, what's interesting, what's new. What do you think the banking world will look like in 20 years? Wow, I think AI will completely take over banking. I think that's where the whole world is going, yes, but there's no reason for bankers to provide a service an agent can provide, for example. Obviously there'll always be more complex things for which bankers will be needed, but you know, there's no reason,

Eyal David: [10:25] No, even product managers, you. Like, designers, we see it's going everywhere, after all.

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [10:32] All the more so in banking. I'm always looking at digital wealth management, that's where I'm most interested in getting to, yes? We talk about it all the time. Customers today who have spare money, 100,000 shekels, 200,000 shekels, and want to invest it, don't know in what. And then they start reading on Facebook and Instagram, and there's this group, and there's Micha Stocks, and there's Investing for the Lazy, lots of groups, and they try to cobble together a few lines of what to buy, what... And that's still our generation; I mean, one generation above us, they start looking for advisors. That's what I'm saying, so AI, in my opinion, will definitely take over; we're already seeing movement in that direction. And think about digital, autonomous advice that simply tells you and balances your portfolio, and you... I mean, that's where it will go for sure. Right, I'm trying to think about my experience with a bank.

Eyal David: [11:26] One, I don't know beyond that. There's a bank whose message is the banker here is available all the time, a human banker, blah blah. That still has, it still has a grip on reality, because there's a generation looking for that. Right. Still, my experience in most cases is as you describe, unless I want to call and talk to someone for a second because something happened and I need a person.

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [11:50] So this hybrid model will probably still remain, in your estimate, or will the generational shift simply... It will remain for a while. Look, even today we see, first of all, that we've moved a significant mass of customers to chat; like, over 80% of inquiries come through chat and not by phone. And in chat too we see that our autonomous banker, GPT basically, answers a considerable share of the questions that come in and doesn't hand them over to a banker. Meaning, the inquiry is closed there. And you can always reach out, and there's always a human banker who can answer you. Now, when she can also perform actions on her own, and she knows even more information and more details about you, then the gap will close.

Eyal David: [12:31] That's intriguing. Tell me, in your opinion, do banks today measure satisfaction? Like you probably measure after... We measure, we measure NPS, we measure surveys, we... You surely do. Because the user is at the center, but traditional banks. Nobody ever calls to ask me: hi, what do you think of us? Wow, it's really interesting whether they measure. We measure all the time, and I can tell you we have a group

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [12:54] Where every morning they update what yesterday's service survey was, and we're on it intensely, it's so important to us.

Eyal David: [13:01] I think maybe there they measure more the time they invest in me, and try to reduce it. At other banks. Yes. Right, I'm not your customer yet, and I also relate to this challenge you raised, soon we'll talk about more challenges, but really the... taking that action,

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [13:16] Moving from this bank I'm at, from whatever, is a hard thing to explain, right? It's a hard thing. Certainly when we target households, and they necessarily already have a bank account. They're not 16-year-olds opening a first account now. It's very hard to make the switch. No bank has been founded here in 43 years.

Eyal David: [13:34] It's hard, hard to understand. It's like you don't switch your health fund every day. Like, you're stuck there, it makes sense. What really is your sweet spot? Like, what type of customers, criteria that you...

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [13:46] That actually suits you best? Look, broadly anyone can be a customer, yes, but I think right now it's mainly customers who are households, who have spare money and are looking for what to do with it, because we have the best deposits on the market, and we have an excellent trading system, and we know how to manage your money. I think in those areas, and you know, we have the whole range of customer types and segments, but that's actually where our most effective point is. Which also, right, unlike traditional banks, you're a bit,

Eyal David: [14:25] They probably start competing around age 16, around soldiers, around and so on, to get you into the machine, and you come in later, so you're competing maybe where people are in a more affluent place, care more about the money or this budget, intriguing.

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [14:41] So what products do you actually offer? You started to touch on it, so let's put it in order. Yes, so obviously all the basic banking products: deposits, loans, transfers, securities, the whole banking offering. Mortgages we don't do; we also see that customers usually don't take a mortgage at their primary bank, so we didn't see a need to get into it now. You know, obviously you also need to prioritize when you're starting, when you have 15 months to set up a bank. Um... How long does it usually take to set up a bank, from references? Listen, no bank has been founded here in 43 years, so I can't compare to before, but 15 months, I can only imagine from what I see around, is pretty fast. We see other banks currently being built and it takes time.

Eyal David: [15:27] And of all, this is a question I like to ask here, of all the PM skills, the product skills you can think of,

Product manager skills: seriousness and creativity

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [15:35] What are the product skills you think are the most important in a product manager... Wow, I love this question. Or rather, it's a question I ask in interviews, you know. So first of all, for me it's also a value we have in the company: deep seriousness. Can you expand on that a bit more? Yes, of course. No room for jokes? No, not at all, that's not the direction at all. More like: how you do anything is how you do everything. You're doing something, invest, send it, read the material before the meeting, come prepared, end a meeting knowing what you want, like, don't drag it out to another meeting and another meeting. You're preparing a presentation, make it the best it can be. You're doing a feature, think, research the whole market around it, all the competitors; always strive to be the best you can at what you do, even in small things, even in some feature where you're trying to quickly stitch something together as a band-aid, the best you can. That's one. And two, creativity. In my opinion it's a very important skill for a product manager: not being rigid, not falling in love with your product, being creative, raising other ideas, finding creative solutions, thinking outside the box all the time. Because as product managers we often see some tangle forming, some legacy, something stuck, and you need a solution and you need a fast solution, so constantly finding the... being agile.

Eyal David: [16:59] That's probably also connected to the first thing you said. You have to be creative to really bring the best solution, or to think in a way that doesn't go with ego, let's say. And what really... So if you ask this in interviews, let me take it.

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [17:18] What answers do you hear most? In these areas, yes, first of all I hear about interpersonal skills, many say that, which is very true, because product usually, it always sits at the center with all the stakeholders around it, and it needs to work with tech and talk with them in a certain way, and with design, and with the stakeholders, and revolve around the customer experience, also pleasing a lot of people. Usually, I joke about this, I always say a product manager always walks around with a big target on their back, walks around the organization and people throw arrows at them; it's always their fault, no matter what it is. So interpersonal skills, definitely. It's very hard to find really good product managers that people are happy with who are also unpleasant. That's not something that can work.

Eyal David: [18:03] And creativity, I also hear a lot. Creativity up to a point, I think. Yes? I think so, because, no, I'm saying, you can be creative but up to a point. Meaning, as long as it serves the goal and really leads to the best solution, as you say. Just being creative for its own sake, that's...

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [18:21] It's usually in order to find those solutions that satisfy everyone, at least in my world, or also at Payoneer when I was there before. These are worlds, fintech worlds, with heavy regulation, no matter what country you're in, PSD2, GDPR, there's always something. And you find yourself needing to be creative a lot of the time: you want to show them the card number but you also need to protect it, it's also encrypted, it's also... Constantly creative in the sense that you need to come up with a brilliant, fast solution that answers many parties around you whose interests are sometimes conflicting.

Eyal David: [18:55] And do you find that GenAI products like ChatGPT can help? Do they actually help you find such creative solutions?

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [19:02] First of all, of course. And right now we're actually starting to implement all kinds of AI solutions across the company for all kinds of departments. We're actually building a dedicated team that will run and see where we can improve, where we can do better work. So in the product team, is that something that's also going to enjoy this goodness? First of all, all the product managers on my team have a tab permanently open with OpenAI. Each with what they prefer, whether it's Claude, whether it's ChatGPT, and so on. Of course product will enjoy all this goodness.

Eyal David: [19:38] Great, so maybe you'll expand on that later. I'm going back to interviews for a second, something that intrigued me. In your opinion, the candidates who come to you, again, really at eye level, where is the place where they'd most benefit from improving? Those who, of course, don't leave enough of an impression. I'm looking for fire.

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [19:58] I'm looking for passion for the profession. I usually see it in the answers. I see it on their faces, I see it when they talk. I really love people who love, love product, love the customer. They're crazy about their features, they love talking about them, they get excited when they tell me about a project they did, a feature that went live. And that's something you can't, you can't fake. When you're in love with your product, when you talk about it, you talk about what you did, you're so happy with how it turned out and which KPIs you hit. That's what I'm looking for, looking for that fire.

Eyal David: [20:35] Wow, so we've already managed to distill two challenges here: one is really finding good candidates with fire in their eyes who also meet all the skills you mentioned, and the second is really converting people to switch banks, or to actually accept the new banking message. What other challenges do you have, Yaeli? We also talked about the challenge of actually combining the banking world and the tech world into one company with one DNA.

Regulation and discovery at a bank that's also a fintech

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [21:01] That's also a challenge that we, again, we're already doing it and dealing with it, but it's still a challenge, it meets us all the time. When new regulation comes out, which sometimes burdens the product or hurts the customer experience, but you have to comply, then constantly finding the middle and finding what can be done and how to do it best. Um... And that also connects to the next challenge, regulation. You know, we want to give the customer the best service, and do it fast, and move fast with sprints and more features and more stuff, and suddenly some huge regulation that just came out falls on you, and you find yourself stuck for several good sprints and unable to give the customer real value, because first you have to get it out of the... clear it out of the way. So that's definitely a challenge. How do you do discovery? Like, it's quite an operation, right? It's an operation, yes, yes. Discovery in a bank that's also a fintech, that's also this, it's an operation. Usually there comes some, you know, there's the initiation: either someone in the organization comes and urgently needs something for their department, whether it's service, whether it's the CEO who suddenly, I don't know, the CFO, like, there's always some significant requirement that comes in, sometimes the product manager themselves, like, it varies. And then we start going through all of the bank's divisions. Division sounds like a word, really a bank word. We go through everyone: we go through Compliance and Risk and Cyber, and you know, I had that at Payoneer too, for example, yes? It's not something unusual, but here we're really meticulous and check what's allowed and what's not allowed to display. You want to give them a good experience, but you also of course want to comply with the Bank of Israel's rules, and you're a bank in every sense, you must comply with regulation. So we, you know, we swim between the raindrops. Swim between the raindrops. In the end we bring some distillation of what we want to do, present it to everyone in an orderly kickoff, and set out. Once everyone has approved and it looks good, we pretty much run like, you know, like any product manager anywhere. So basically, that's it,

Eyal David: [23:17] I also imagined it's impossible, it's really a saga, starting to look for all the different products and getting into them, and a bank account is probably complicated. I'm going back for a second; so really, you talked about the user being at the center. How much do you actually measure user satisfaction at the feature level? What does it look like?

Feature-level measurement: the Store, an AI feed and KPIs

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [23:35] First of all, we have analytics tools and so on; we're constantly looking at where they go, what they do. We have many features that aren't banking proper. For example, in securities we built a feature called the Store, which has a bit of food appeal, a bit like Wolt. You go in, you see the whole range of products, it's divided for you by sectors, it's super colorful, you see for many stocks what percentage of traders hold them, that's our popularity. Really an app store, yes. Really, really, really cool. And we gradually see that customers move from searching in search to searching in the Store, and from there they get to the purchase. Because it's friendlier? It's friendlier, it's also sometimes for dummies, if you've never traded before. It's nice, you see, we really brought all the discovery customers do outside about trading into the bank, into this Store. You have an AI feed there that gathers for you, about that stock, all the events and all the articles online, with a kind of score of how much it's expected to affect the stock. Like... So that's interesting; at the app level, just saying, do you also measure how long I spend in the app? Of course. Time spent, of course. We look at that, we look at feedback, for example in chat, we obviously look at whether they clicked, whether they entered, whether they read, how long until they took an action afterward, whether they took the action we recommended. We have a feedback loop there inside the LLM chat we just implemented, where you can like or dislike and write a comment; we analyze it and feed it back into the system. We're constantly looking at data. And every product manager, you know, has their KPI, for their product. We also recently ran a KPI workshop. What was that? Can you tell us about it, just so people know? Yes, it was great. All the product managers sat together, each talked about their product. We basically looked at the bank's top-level KPI, and each of us looked from their side at how they drive that KPI, but with a product KPI, with monthly active users. For example, in securities, it's probably their first purchase.

Eyal David: [25:42] I want to take you there for a second, and I'm opening parentheses within parentheses, but that's okay. I'll ask it like this: we said the user is at the center, okay? So I'm curious, what does the classic customer journey of a new customer inside the bank look like? How do you actually,

The Newborn customer journey and open banking

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [26:01] How do you divide it up? So a customer opens an account with us, it takes them 7 minutes on average, which is really nothing, like during a commute. It used to be with a call where they identify you, and obviously it's not like that anymore. There's no call; only in very exceptional cases do we also need to get a banker on the line, and that doesn't take more than a few minutes either. And then we actually have a user journey called Newborn, that's what we call it inside the bank, basically 60 days in which we accompany you. Think about entering a new bank account; like, also how often that happens to people, when it happened to them in the past. And there's nothing there, right? The balance is zero, the card hasn't reached you yet, what do you do? Like, what do you do with this app now, it's empty. A bit like the first person at the party. Yes, as long as I haven't put money in there, probably, right? Right. Probably in the first minutes you haven't put any in yet, you don't really know what to do. We, I said, the first person at the party, we always talk about Facebook, there was always the first person. Who turned on the questions. Exactly. And then we actually tell you, listen, come connect open banking. That's actually our first tool, first of all. What's open banking? Open banking is actually a standard that lets customers share their information from one bank with another bank. And then you understand for a second what their financial situation is; you didn't understand that yet at the account-opening stage. More than that, more interesting than that: I get 12 months of their history back. You can learn a lot about a customer from their credit over the last 12 months, from their checking account over the last 12 months. What they want, what interests them, where they spend most of their money, whether they're always in overdraft, always in the black, what they need from you?

Eyal David: [27:34] So already now you actually know how to show me, at this moment, a dashboard or some insights that already teach me something. Exactly. I'm already giving you value.

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [27:42] In the first minutes I can already give you value, something interesting you can look at, and we already start a conversation with you about what's actually happening in your finances, even if it's not here. And we give you a 360 view and an experience of your money.

Eyal David: [27:58] And is that something that was in the initial product too? Like, was that the big message when you launched, that, okay, we know that the moment I get this permission, I can suddenly create all this goodness, but you need to build some algorithm here that knows how to analyze this whole thing and give the meaningful insights. Absolutely. So was it from day one?

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [28:16] It wasn't from day one. Again, we needed to prioritize; we went out first with a bank, then the insights and all the proactivity and open banking. So I'll take you for a second to the initial event that took place,

Eyal David: [28:31] We'll come back to the customer journey, and we remember, we still need to close the parentheses from above. Both of us, I was a developer, so I know how to close parentheses. So you actually started with a thousand, a Founders Club you called it or something like that, a thousand first users who got

The 1,000 founders club and the launch

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [28:47] The thing for free, right? Right. When we opened the bank, we basically said, wait, how will we know that we're, you know, that we're in the right direction. And in the end I always say I came to build a bank for my family and my friends. And that's also the gut feeling all the time, it burns in me. So we brought in friends and family, we brought in... So you brought in a thousand people, which is stunning. Right. And now, what was the experience they got when, you built a bank, like, did the product work? We built a bank, we went out, we gave the app only to them. First of all it was very exciting. You worked on it for a year and a half and you tell them, so, how is it? Tell me. So they make a transfer and they give you feedback, and it's not like that. And here you need to be, you're constantly hearing feedback from friends and you're, you're on it. You want to fix, you want to do, you want to improve. And that was the experience with the first customers: focus groups, conversations, feedback, WhatsApp messages. We were constantly adding to the sprints on an ongoing basis, beyond the work plan, more and more and more features and improvements, until we actually reached a product we were proud enough of and went out with it in the launch.

Eyal David: [29:54] Do you remember that moment? What was that scope you were very, very proud of? Like, what was the thing that changed the...

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [30:01] First of all, we went out with a subscription fee; we waited to finish that too. That was very, very important to us, not to go out with some fee model: come pay a fee on every action, that's very much not, that's not what we do. So we waited to go out with that, and yes, I remember the product was already good enough and we went out, it was a very exciting moment. Suddenly customers are going through onboarding and the numbers are rising, and we're watching, and we want to know what this customer is going through, sometimes we call them, and how was the experience? And they're in shock: you're calling me to ask about the experience, you know. It was very exciting. I remember all of us sitting downstairs in service with the onboarding teams, in a frenzy, like, really.

Eyal David: [30:37] That's totally also from the ownership you mentioned earlier. Okay, so we're going back to the customer journey for a second. So really, I arrive, I don't have an empty state, I have the permission, I suddenly have insights, I can start communicating with the app. We're within the Newborn framework, we called it 60 days, right, right, right. So okay, what's the next thing?

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [30:54] So it's basically 60 days of, like, activating the account. Did you get the credit card? Let's do a first transaction. We tell you about the benefits, tell you about the account, about the plans, about what you can do. A bit of a welcome, you know. That's actually the first 60 days, and each time you're exposed to more and more of the products. Like, that's actually the customer journey the customer goes through at the start.

Eyal David: [31:19] I'll ask you a question, just, I'm imagining myself with my bank app, yes, I go in a few times a month, that's pretty much it.

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [31:28] So what do those 60 days look like with you? First of all, we see that it takes customers on average about 30 days before they start getting going. Getting going, by the way, it's interesting: we just went out with a promotion that hit our target audience even more. We went out, it actually ends in a few days, I don't know when, when we'll go out with this, but until January 31st, so we remember, and we actually gave our trading package, One Plus Trade, our premium plan, for free, only to those who join by January 31st. And that's actually because we talked about trading; it spoke to traders, and those are customers with spare money, and that's usually households, not kids. And then we hit our target audience even more, and we saw them activating the account within five days, within six days. We really saw the numbers rising, the percentages improving, the... Do you also know why? Because the incentive is very strong. Right. The goal is very big. The intent is specific to what...

Eyal David: [32:26] No, but also, I want to get going fast, I want to use my money, right? Right. So yes, that's probably most of the audience you... the audience you'd obviously most want to come onto the app, because they're the most engaged. So okay, within this Newborn process, what's actually my next stop? What's expected of me during the 60 days? To make a transaction?

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [32:44] Yes. Yes, you'll probably use the card, because it's really worthwhile and it has no foreign-currency fees. You fly abroad, you no longer need to take out cash, you just use the card; it's like a debit card, it has zero foreign-currency fees. Everything with us has zero fees. So you'll probably make a first transaction, and we'll probably offer you maybe a first trade. It depends, it depends on the promotions that month. Each time we make sure customers can easily make some first action to get started and draw them in. But mainly open banking is the engine, it's the engine. We show you what we can do with your data.

Eyal David: [33:23] And that's a place where obviously there's a drop-off, right, like in anything, in connecting open banking, yes, because like

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [33:29] From that moment, so it's a bummer. Look, this again connects to trust: why should I give you my information, what does it mean, what will you do with it now? Obviously we're a bank and there's regulation, and the information doesn't go anywhere, and whenever you decide to disconnect the information it's disconnected and deleted, like. But you know, people aren't used to it, and what does it mean. Also, not many in the market use this information today; we're pretty much pioneers in the field.

Eyal David: [33:53] It's a bit absurd, because say an insurance agent comes and asks for information from the insurance mountain, nobody hesitates, right? Exactly. But what, is it because there's no person in the process? In your opinion, is that the hypothesis?

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [34:03] I think people don't, don't always trust, even though we see that they do trust and connect, and the connection rate is very, very high. And it keeps going up and up and up, and in the end you also have word of mouth.

Eyal David: [34:19] Yes, which is probably the strongest, yes. And then do I actually become, like, a regular user, or is there a division into buckets? What does it look like from there?

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [34:28] So we work with segments, and our service is also divided that way. Customers are divided into tiers, by the way we worked that way at Payoneer too, and for each tier, and the tiers are also an algorithm, you know, that takes your plan into account and many, many parameters. Obviously customers who just opened an account and are still in an empty state also have their own tier, and there are bankers there who know how to talk to you in a slightly different language than to a customer who's already active, and the customer journeys are dedicated to your plan, to the tier you're in. And churn is probably also very low because it's a bank, right? On the other hand. Churn isn't high, but again, customers don't always understand why they need to switch banks, what it will give me. Many times people come in and open an account and don't necessarily want to activate it; they want to see what it is, they want to peek. And we give them, we give a trial at the start to try it out, to really let you activate the account as quickly as possible: come try it for free, take a two-month trial and start. Two months is a long time, there's no urgency here. We saw at the start that it takes a while to activate the account, and it's gradually decreasing, so that may change too. Right, unlike other products where I get a seven-day, 14-day trial in a place of urgency, and here too, in the end,

Eyal David: [35:45] There's a click separating me from the value. Right, right. Okay, so I want, for a second, we touched on it, we'll come back to the whole customer journey and the customer at the center. For a second I want, you mentioned Payoneer a few times, so let's understand for a second who we're talking to. So Yaeli, I'd love for you to talk for a second about where you started, how you got to product, in a few words, and then we'll also get to Payoneer and One Zero.

Yaeli's path: from the family business through Payoneer to ONE ZERO

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [36:12] Okay, so first of all, my first job was at my parents' company. We have a family business, manufacturers of plastic products, a relatively large company. And I started working for my dad the day after I was discharged from the army, together with the psychometric exam, it was in parallel: start studying right away, there's no time to waste. My dad strongly believes in hard work, so I started with sticking barcodes on products next to the machines and answering phones, and a phone call straight to the office first thing in the morning at seven to check that I'm already answering and already physically sitting there. Little by little I advanced more and more, until I ran marketing there too, and exports, the products; there were product designers there; little by little I grew in that field. How long did that take? Six years. Six years, okay. After six years I decided I wanted to succeed on my own merit and not be "the daughter of," which, although it sounds comfortable, is very, very, very challenging. And I wanted to succeed alone, on my own merit. The first job interview I went to was at Payoneer; I didn't know what high-tech was. Wait, what interview did you go to? For what? An operations interview in payments. Why there specifically? Why Payoneer specifically? Why that role? I sent my CV to a company that simply connects people with jobs. I had no idea what I was doing. I was 24-25, I don't know, it was the first job interview they set up for me. I had two degrees, a degree in economics from Bar-Ilan and another master's degree. I said, okay, fine, sounds interesting to me. Payments and stuff, okay. I went, and first of all I fell in love with the place, fell in love with the people, fell in love with the folks who interviewed me. I said, okay, it doesn't matter what I need to do here, I'll succeed. The people seem good to me. I started; Payoneer was then still 200 employees, 250. I was there 6.5 years in the end. I managed a team in operations relatively quickly, and one day a product manager was missing for the cards area, and they told me, okay, you're from operations, your team, that's you, you're a large part of the stakeholders, come on, what's the problem? Just say what you want, straight into the sprint. So I started, while also managing the team and doing my day job, and then I understood that this is what interests me. I really felt that this, this is my passion. What did you love, the connection to the business, to the users? What did you actually love? I loved the... first of all, the fast pace of the sprints, the fact that you have an idea in your head and you see it taking shape, it comes to life, and customers feel it; that simply pulled me in like crazy. And then I said, okay, so I decided to continue with it. So I kept doing both in parallel. And then I started studying: I went to the Technion and studied information systems management for two years, and after that I studied UX. Wait, wait, all this is happening while you're a product manager. While I'm a product manager and working in operations. And doing, splitting myself there across two roles. Exactly. If you do something, you do it properly. Absolutely. So the studies were at night and on Fridays, and I did the UX course there and also did the product management course. I learned a lot, but there's nothing like hands-on work, that's what gave me most of the... What did you learn from all those hours? What did you feel were the most significant things you learned there? First of all, the UX course was excellent. I studied with Ran Liron, I don't know if you know him, but he has a great UX course there at the Technion, I don't know if it still exists. In information systems management we learned a bit of programming, a bit, like, there was a touch of all kinds of topics. I can tell you that the actual work is much more significant than the academic studies, at least in this field. So after a few more months I eventually moved to product, and fell in love with it. Then at some point the VP of Technology there, the CTO, left to set up a bank and took with him the payments development team there, whose product person I was, and they said, wait, we have to move with our product manager. So I moved with them, and we were actually the first ones there at One Zero; we set up the bank, it didn't even have the name One Zero yet. And there were concerns: here I am working at an amazing company, Payoneer, right before an IPO. I'm super happy, I'm finally doing what I love, this is my field, it's amazing. And they tell me, listen, come to a place that has nothing, not a single line of code, 20 people. And they tell me, don't worry, Amnon Shashua, it's not, it'll be fine. And when I get to the interviews, they only talk to me about the vision, and about wanting to change the banking world here, and about how we're going to change the world and reach the moon, and honestly it swept me away. And I wanted, I wanted to change things here. I wanted, like, you know, when there was open skies and the revolution in the mobile world, I wanted to make a revolution, and I wanted to give it to my family and my friends and feel that I'm changing things. I'm making some impact in this world. So I left everything and came in the second month of COVID, it should be noted.

Eyal David: [41:17] Wow, half a hotboarding, yes. I'm taking you back for a second. That UX course you did, until then had you thought about users in the same, like, was that your turning point for moving to thinking about users? Right, because at Payoneer we dealt with B2B.

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [41:34] You touch the end user less, although I felt them relatively when I was on the cards area, because in the end you're constantly looking at what customers do with the cards. And in the UX course, yes, we touched more on customers, on what they see, on where it's more convenient for them to tap or not tap, what they experience, all kinds of heat maps and so on. So there, yes, I started dealing with it more. And obviously, when I moved to the bank, and it's B2C, you're constantly touching the customer, you're constantly looking at what they do, you're constantly really talking with them.

Eyal David: [42:03] Exactly. How was that transition? Because you mentioned that you actually went and, in the end, interviewed friends and family, and probably other people who were added to this exclusive club. How was that transition really from B2B, from Payoneer, which I was a customer of, I know what it's like to be a customer, so how was that transition to B2C?

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [42:23] Most people I talk to about it say B2C is the hardest field in the world, and it's a catastrophe, and B2B is better and it's peace of mind working with partners. But honestly, I fell in love with B2C, and fell in love with touching a real customer, the end customer in the end, and talking with them and reading their specific feedback. It's a different world, yes? It's a world where every comment on Facebook changes your day-to-day, and you want to fix, and you want to do, and you want to put it into the sprint, it's not something distant. Think that at Payoneer, in the end, I had some end customer who's an Amazon seller, when we work with Amazon, or that Airbnb host, and you, well, you don't have [contact] with Airbnb. There's also another thing here, I think, yes?

Eyal David: [43:07] Here we're talking about, as you said, family and friends, Israelis. At Payoneer it's all kinds of people from Brazil, from other countries, an Eyal who has a business in Brazil, that kind. Absolutely, exactly. So I think that's also a thing, right? Suddenly the users. Absolutely, right, exactly. That it wasn't just users, first of all I say only customers,

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [43:26] But suddenly it was customers, here, in Israel, Israelis, whom you're really providing service to, whose lives you're changing.

Eyal David: [43:34] That was very significant. And if we go back for a second to really talk about the users, your setting out, I'm coming back to it again because it's really interesting. Those first thousand users, did it ultimately serve your go-to-market, which you then actually moved on to? Yes, of course. What did you learn from it in terms of how to market the thing? We saw what bothers them, we saw what worries them.

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [43:58] They themselves, when they became founders and told their friends, and then their friends asked them: wait, but is it a bank? But it's, what is it? And we saw what they needed to answer, and feedback they gave us, or what stresses them, or what gives them peace of mind, or explain to me why it's like this, explain to me why it's like this. We really saw what they need. For example, we saw that the chat we started with at the beginning, which was very bot-like and gave everyone the same service, was irrelevant in our model, and we're going... We picked up on something very personal, that touches the specific customer, that understands their needs, proactivity. We really went and saw what our customers were missing. Today,

Eyal David: [44:38] Today, say, I get, I don't have the app, so do I actually get proactive notifications on how to save money, for example?

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [44:45] You get proactive notifications, and not only about how to save money, again, about all your accounts, which is amazing. You know, if you run out, we see that your card limit at the other bank is about to run out. With us, we'll see that you have another card, and we'll really help you use a different card or increase the limit. We'll tell you if you have a spare amount for saving or investing, if you're in overdraft at the other bank, if you have a double charge, whether you want us to handle it.

Eyal David: [45:15] You know what notifications I get from the bank today? No. Certainly I haven't gone in for a long time, or I get a message from the banker or some marketing message. So it's probably very, very different with you. I want to move on from here: if you have some piece of advice for people who want to get into product, or people who've been working in product for a few years but find it hard to tell the story, or to quantify what they did into something presentable, good enough to pass interviews like the ones you run. If you have some tip, we'd love it.

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [45:54] So I already talked about passion and about what I, at least, look for. I think motivation is a lot, it's a lot of the interview. When you come and you really want it and it interests you, and you read about the company beforehand and about their challenges or about what they need, and you check who you're sitting across from in the interview, first of all that already gives you a definite head start. What tips would I give? Be a people person. You can already feel it in the interview,

Eyal David: [46:27] You see it from the moment you step into the role. That's probably also what helped; I don't know if it helped, but probably that's also why the team pulled you with them to the bank.

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [46:36] Absolutely, I'm a people person. So probably yes. So on an optimistic note, it was, in my opinion, a very interesting episode. We're approaching the end, so I'll ask you: what do you wish for Yaeli in ten years? I wish myself to be at One Zero's IPO as part of the team, and not necessarily an IPO here, like a global IPO, something massive and big like that. And on a personal level? On a personal level, to be a mom, a family.

Eyal David: [47:06] Wow, lots and lots of luck with that. Thank you. I have to, before we finish, one question. Europe? Europe, of course. Is that one of the goals? Why Europe specifically?

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [47:16] I don't know if it'll be Europe. Europe is the tagline of this thing, but of course, we want to keep expanding and growing. First of all, we want to succeed in Israel. It has to succeed in Israel for us to move on; it's not something on the side. We're working very hard at it,

Eyal David: [47:32] But of course we want to grow and advance and develop, of course. I was just curious why Europe? Specifically there, the culture of digital banks is, like, there; I'm forcing the bank thing here, that's why I'm curious.

Yaeli Darschevitz Tamary: [47:45] It's easier. So you know what it is, you're familiar with it, you're not scared when there are no branches, you know what mobile-first is, you're maybe not looking for the web, you're already used to there being mobile apps, you're used to open banking services, they use them a lot there. Yes, when you say private banking there, at scale they know what private banking is; there are private banks there, there are family offices there, they know the experience of a personal banker, they want it, they understand what it is. They know what financial management is.

Eyal David: [48:16] Here it was harder to introduce that concept. Amen. I think we'd be glad for you to come back here in another year and tell us how you conquered Israel in 2025. Yalla. And Yaeli, it was really fun. Thank you, I had fun too. How do people get in touch with you, whoever wants to consult or get to know you? On LinkedIn. On LinkedIn? Yes. So we'll add a link. Yalla. Yalla, yalla, thank you very much. Thanks. Bye bye. Hi friends, thanks for listening. If you found this podcast valuable, you can subscribe, follow us, of course, for more episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other app. And of course if you couldn't find us on some app, I'd be happy if you write to us. We'd love five stars on every platform, and for you to follow us so more listeners can discover us and find the podcast. You can also find the previous episodes in any app or on the YouTube channel, we have links in the description. Until next time, yalla, be efficient, and bye bye.