Challenging the Incumbent Banking Ethos with Aspiration
Andrei Cherny is the Co-Founder and CEO of Aspiration, a socially conscious bank challenging the traditional banking industry ethos.
Prior to founding Aspiration, Andrei worked as a speechwriter for Bill Clinton, authored books on public policy and war history, served as Assistant Arizona State Attorney General, held Senior Positions at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Center for American Progress, and more.
In 2013, Andrei co-founded Aspiration, a socially conscious banking and investments provider that lets users set their own fees. Aspiration has raised $200 million in funding and attracted over 1.5 million users.
In this conversation, Andrei and Rebank host Will Beeson discuss the factors that have contributed to Aspiration’s success, the takeaways for the industry, the company’s future plans, and more.
To subscribe to the Rebank newsletter, please visit www.rebank.cc.
Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Andrei Cherny.
Full transcript:
Will Beeson:
Andrei Cherny, welcome to Rebank.
Andrei Cherny:
Thanks for having me.
Will Beeson:
I'm so excited to speak with you. I've really been looking forward to this conversation. And I think the reason for that is because firstly, you bring a fascinating backstory and experience set pre-fintech, which potentially we can get into a little bit. And secondly, because you bring a fundamentally new way of thinking about the role of banking. So I would love to discuss all of that with you. I know we only have a limited amount of time, as always. I'm sure this could be a multi-hour conversation, but we'll do our best to keep it focused. And with that in mind, maybe to kick off, Andrei, if you could just introduce yourself, and maybe tell us a little bit about Aspiration.
Andrei Cherny:
Well, excited to be part of this conversation. My name is Andrei Cherny, and I am the co-founder and CEO of Aspiration. Aspiration is really trying to build a completely new category, which is socially conscious, sustainable, retail banking, and other financial products for everyday people, something that really hasn't existed before. And I think part of the promise of fintech is that we can move away from what we used to get from banks and still get from the incumbents, which is, by necessity, one size fits all products. And be able to start creating different kinds of financial products, more innovative financial products that really speak to the needs of different kinds of customers.
Andrei Cherny:
And for Aspiration that's really the conscious consumers that are out there, the third or so of the population that is maybe not your traditional financial optimizers but people who are really thinking about values and ethics and environmental sustainability as they're making daily purchasing decisions in the grocery store, buying coffee or cars or clothes or anything else, and yet haven't had financial products, services, features, and businesses really built for them. And that's what we're doing at Aspiration.
Will Beeson:
All right, so I love that and I want to dig into all the various facets of it. Anything associated, Andrei, with your name or your role at Aspiration references the fascinating experience that you had before Aspiration. And so you're described as either a former Bill Clinton speechwriter or one of your number of other fascinating roles. Can you just talk a little bit about your backstory and how you got to the idea of starting a bank?
Andrei Cherny:
Definitely never set out to start a bank and frankly, wouldn't have started one other than what we're doing at Aspiration. The goal wasn't to start a bank. The goal was to really find a way to make a positive impact on our customers and to allow them to make a positive impact on the world around us. And over the course of my career before Aspiration had tried to do that in a number of different capacities, as you mentioned, worked for Bill Clinton and for Al Gore in the White House now, more than 20 years ago, almost 25 years ago. So it dates me a little bit, spent more time working in public policy realm, started working with then law professor Elizabeth Warren on the idea for what eventually became the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 15 or so years ago.
Andrei Cherny:
Went and did something completely different, and became a financial fraud prosecutor, and saw a lot of those very same kinds of issues, but not from the kind of heights of public policy, but from the very much the ground floor of being in court every day and dealing with financial fraud and scams and the daily challenges that people were facing, and then made another pivot and spent most of the decade before we start Aspiration doing strategic consulting, and working with a whole bunch of different kinds of companies, some big technology companies, but mostly large financial institutions.
Andrei Cherny:
And I think obviously, with that mix of experiences, but especially those last of experiences that made me start thinking that there was really a different kind of path and a different kind of financial institution that was needed. On the inside of these institutions as no doubt all of your listeners probably know, there's challenges that translate into business challenges. But if you actually pull back on the core causes of them are really about mistrust and mistrust built on a misalignment of incentives, people understanding that the bank does better when they're doing worse in life. Overdraft fees, late fees, ATM fees, service fees, and so on. But also a misalignment of values.
Andrei Cherny:
And this is now almost 10 years ago, seven or eight years ago, but it was already clear that across different industries, there was businesses that were starting that had a strong social mission and cause embedded within them, embedded within their DNA of what they were doing. And I really thought there was an opportunity to do the same in financial services and partnered with a friend of mine, this point has been a friend for over 20 years, a guy named Joe Sandberg, and he had had a career in Wall Street, and then was doing a lot of early stage investing.
Andrei Cherny:
And we just started talking about the set of issues and concerns and brainstorming and having long conversations around what a different approach could be, what would it look like if you started a financial institution in the 21st century with a blank sheet of paper. And from that decided to start Aspiration and he was our first investor and has been a major investor along the way.
Will Beeson:
Talk about the premise being validated and resoundingly so I think, the time of recording, we're just a few months on from the announcement of $135 million round that you guys raised right, I think, in the middle of the Coronavirus crisis now, whether the funding had actually happened before, and it was the announcement that came later, you'll have to tell us, but wow, talk about having clearly kind of hit a vein in terms of what consumers are looking for in the banking and financial services space.
Andrei Cherny:
Well, thank you. And we did announce, most of it had been raised before COVID hit though the last piece did come when the crisis is already happening. And so absolutely, I think it is a validation of our progress, a validation of the vision that we're putting forward, and I think a validation of the enormous amount of work that our team has done to build Aspiration. We became in 2018, and then into 2019, the first neobank in the US to go independent in the sense that we broke off of a third party bank sponsorship model and created our own independent structure around rebuilding our accounts on a cash management account with a broker dealer license through FINRA.
Andrei Cherny:
And that was a huge undertaking, but gave us the ability to really build the kind of business that we thought our customers really deserved. And I think that's what the investors who've put their capital behind Aspiration are seeing, which is the same thing that our customers are seeing which is really a opportunity to do something fundamentally different than what they're getting from ventures to anybody else in the financial industry and speak to a set of concerns that people have that are centered around their money, but are different than the kind of concerns that you're seeing from a lot of the other fintechs that are out there to say nothing of the big incumbent players.
Will Beeson:
All right, so tell us about the attraction you guys have built over the past number of years now since launch. It sounds like over a million-and-a-half customers, you just talked a little bit about the core user base, where they really derive value from Aspiration and how you expect to grow that niche going forward. Whether it's a niche, or whether it's increasingly mainstream.
Andrei Cherny:
Yeah, I think, it's more than a niche but it's also a special group of people. And we think of it in some ways as serving a psychographic more than a demographic. And by all the research that's out there, including ours, something that represents more than a third of the US population, which are these people who are very much conscious consumers. And so our customer base is obviously growing really fast. Most of our customers at this point are 35 and younger but of course, that means half are over 35 as well.
Andrei Cherny:
And I think what's interesting about those customers is that other than that somewhat younger skewing age group, they really look like the population at large from any traditional demographic measurement, about 50-50, male and female. A little bit more female than male income distribution that looks like the income distribution of the country, geographic distribution where 94% of our customers live outside of Los Angeles, New York City, and the Bay Area combined.
Andrei Cherny:
And so these people are coming to Aspiration because they're drawn to our mission, drawn to the chance to really put their money and their morals in line with one another. And so they're coming to Aspiration because when you deposit with Aspiration, all of your deposits are going to be fossil fuel free and firearm free. They're not going to lent to oil and gas companies or gun manufacturers. We have something called Aspiration Impact Measurement, that lets you see your own personal sustainability score and see how the places you're shopping and other businesses like them line up when it comes to people and planet dimensions.
Andrei Cherny:
We have a feature called Planet Protection that allows you to make all your driving carbon neutral. And so anytime, for a monthly subscription fee, part of our Aspiration plus, offering for that monthly subscription fee will make available to you and purchase on your behalf, carbon offsets for every gallon of gasoline that you're buying on your Aspiration debit card. Something called Plant Your Change that lets you round up each one of your purchases to the nearest dollar. And we plant a tree every time you make a purchase when you do that. And then a whole series of other offerings, sustainable investing, and more, that all come together around this idea of doing well and doing good at the same time. And the idea that you really shouldn't have to choose between your money, but that your money should enable you to do both.
Will Beeson:
So in an increasingly ... I don't want to say increasingly crowded digital banking world, or even banking world. I mean there's been thousands of banks in the US, I think, it may be the number peaked. You, with your CFPB background, might know better than me, but I don't know, not in the past few years, maybe I don't know, like '90s or early 2000s or something. And it's kind of been in decline so it's not as if either more banks or offerings and there had been before I guess, the internet and bank on a phone means that maybe in the '80s or '90s the only branch you had access to was the local branch. Whereas now you can pick between anyone who offers a mobile app in the App Store so that's different
Will Beeson:
But in a world that nonetheless, feels kind of saturated and competitive from a digital banking standpoint, it does feel like it's going to be increasingly important, if it hasn't been already, to basically offer users a real valid reason to use your product over anyone else's, and the technology is increasingly less of a differentiator. There are lots of free brokerage platforms now. There are lots of free banking platforms now. There are lots of ways to get paid two days early now.
Will Beeson:
But a very clear message like why would you bank with Aspiration because you care about sustainability. That's very clear and people can I do identify with that. As you think forward about, firstly, the current dynamic of the industry, and secondly, where we're likely to go in future years, do you think that alone is kind of a strong enough customer acquisition tool? Or do you expect to do significant work on the core proposition or the placement to reinforce that position?
Andrei Cherny:
I think the dynamic you describe is absolutely right. There's about 5,500 or so banks in the United States and 20, 30 years ago, there was well over 10,000. But what's different is, as you described, the average person didn't have access to 10,000 banks. They had access to that branch that was nearest to them, and almost everybody who is over the age of 35 or 40 years old opened that first account that maybe they're still with, because at that point in their life, that branch was the closest or one of the closest branches to them. And again, that meant that that branch had to serve everybody in that community and have to respond to what everybody in that community was looking for.
Andrei Cherny:
What's different now is that you have thousands and thousands of options, but each person has thousands of options because of the ability to access those options right on their phone or on their computer. And I mean, the way that people choose is going to be really different. It means that a financial institution or bank is still going to have to respond to a community, but a different kind of community. Maybe not a physical community, but a community of people who have a set of concerns or a set of shared interests or shared values, or a way of looking at the world.
Andrei Cherny:
And that's how people are going to pick, and for some people that means yes, they're going to be looking for one of the many options that are out there to let you get paid two days early or other features like that. But we're entering a world where everybody is going to have those kinds of features, and that's increasingly becoming true. What is important is, is what makes you special and what makes you stand out and the authenticity behind that. And so for us at Aspiration, we're creating the financial inclusion that we believe in really, the financial inclusion that we would want to bank with, that we would want to be part of, and what makes us excited by getting up every day and working on something like what we're doing. And there's a lot of people out there who are looking for exactly that same kind of thing.
Will Beeson:
Can you just help me think about it? Help me understand kind of journey for a new Aspiration customer? Where are they likely to first hear about you? What about your offering is likely to kind of resonate with them? First, you mentioned a whole series of interesting and unique in the market type components or functionalities. Is it one of those things? Is it a collection of all of them? Is it just the philosophical alignment? And then what's the journey from, "Okay, this sounds really good, and it sounds like something that one I'd be interested in, and two is aligned with how I aspire to live the rest of my life." But then from there to, "Okay, now I'm going to switch all my direct deposits into a new account." That's almost a different leap, which is no longer emotional, but it's very rational and very practical. Can you talk a little bit about that process?
Andrei Cherny:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's, in some ways, similar to what you see in many of our other neobank peers, where there is a feature or a product that might intrigue the customer first, and then they are going through a process of deciding to switch all or some of their financial life over to institution, it's really no different with ours. Except that while we think we offer very competitive products on the financial side, people are mostly coming to Aspiration because of those other kinds of products and features that I mentioned. They want to have their deposits fossil fuel free, they want to be able to plant a tree with every purchase, make their driving carbon neutral, wee what their aim score is, decide whether they want to go to a CVS or Walgreens based on what those businesses' aim scores.
Andrei Cherny:
What we find is it's not any one of these elements that is the deciding factor for people but how they all add up. Obviously, anybody can come out there and say, "Oh, we're the Green Bank," "We're the good bank," or anything like that. But people have a pretty refined sense of when somebody is feeding them a line or when somebody's really measuring up to and authentically who they say they're going to be. And I think when people look at Aspiration, and they see everything we do around the elements I mentioned around our giving 10% of our profit and earnings towards charity, around what is our pay fair fee structure, they say, "Okay, these guys are the real deal." And that's what really leads to take people from that initial interest into really making a leap in changing the way they're going to be spending on a daily basis, change the way they're going to be putting their paycheck into their bank, and so on.
Will Beeson:
Yeah. All right. So I'm sure that you get asked about this all the time around the fee structure, but I think it's just so relevant especially in at least in kind of the hardcore fintech community where a lot of the conversation now is around unit economics and profitability, and what's the path to sustainability. Is it checking account and debit card at scale? Or is it lending? Or is it some other product? You guys have a very nicely, philosophically aligned revenue model built right in. Can you talk a little bit about it? Maybe just describe it to start?
Andrei Cherny:
Yeah, absolutely. So our core way that we interact with our customers is around what we call our pay what is fair fee. It's the only fee that our customer, all our customers pay, and the fee is up to them. Pay what is fair means that the customer chooses the fee. If they choose to pay us zero, then they choose to pay us zero. And that means we need to be doing a lot better job. But it's really going back to where we started this conversation around building trust and alignment. So often, whether it's in new Fin-Tax or in big banks, people are paying fees in ways that are, at best, not aligned and have worse misaligned with what they're getting.
Andrei Cherny:
And we wanted to do the opposite, and to say, "Look, we're going to make our customers so happy, so delighted with what we're doing that they will choose to pay even though they don't have to." And that's a high bar, but we see most of our customers choosing to pay. Now, we make money in other ways, too. We make money as other companies like ours do in terms of interchange our debit card and net interest margin, and our monthly subscription for Aspiration plus, and other elements like that. But at its core that pay what is fair fee structure is really about putting ourselves on the same side of the table with our customers.
Will Beeson:
Do you have stats about the percentage of users that opt to pay versus not?
Andrei Cherny:
Yeah, most customers choose to pay. The great majority of customers choose to pay. The way it works is you sign up at the time you're signing up for the account, and you pick your fee. And again, you can pick zero if you so choose. And then you can change it whenever you want, as often as you want. And not only does that put the customer in the driver's seat, but it's also an important cue and tool for us to see how we're doing with that customer, and really to understand where we can be doing better and to see the customers that are really excited about what they're getting.
Will Beeson:
I want to go back to this point that you kind of mentioned the beginning around moving away from reliance on a third party bank partner. So it sounds like kind of through a combination of what's technically a cash management account, i.e. an investment product as opposed to an FDIC insured checking product that you're running yourselves. Plus maybe some FDIC insured deposit network that allows you to provide pass through FDIC insurance. You basically replicated the traditional bank products, but with much less reliance and presumably much less cost overhead to work with a specific bank. Is that right? Am I missing something?
Andrei Cherny:
That's basically right. Yeah, it looks from the customer's perspective. The experience is very much what they've come to expect elsewhere. They have paper checks and a debit card and a mobile app and mobile check deposit and payments they can schedule, and FDIC insurance, as you mentioned, in fact, up to almost $2.5 million in FDIC insurance because we've created this sweep network of community banks around the country that we've certified as being fossil fuel free, firearm free in their lending. And that enables us to really give our customers the kind of experience that they expect, and the one that we really want to deliver to them.
Will Beeson:
Back to just the brand communication and how you get the word out, you guys have been at it for a while now. You've built up a sizable customer base, what have you found over time has been the most successful way of getting the Aspiration name to the world?
Andrei Cherny:
Without a doubt, the most successful, and in some ways the primary engine, has been our current customers. And the word of mouth they generate, and you can see that on social media. They're sharing and posting pictures of their Aspiration bumper sticker on their car that says, "This car drives in neutral," or, "Planet protector onboard," or something else like that. We're referring other customers to come join us as well. Our customers see us as what we think we are as well, which is a community and a movement, and not just a place to park your money and get some interest and maybe some cash back, but something that really speaks to them on a fundamentally deeper level. And that excitement not only shines through in how they talk about Aspiration, but it shines through as they're talking to their friend or neighbor or family member, and bringing them along in this movement as well.
Will Beeson:
All right, so we've probably spent enough time me guiding you through relatively technical and detail oriented questions that, at the end of the day, despite the fact that we've done over 200 episodes of Rebank, banking is not really the most interesting part of most conversations and certainly not this one. As you think forward about the kind of grand vision of Aspiration and either where you want to go or the impact that you want to have on the world, can you just talk a little bit more about that? I mean this all clearly comes from a place of desire for change, and it's linked to it sounds like to me earlier career experience. I feel there's a lot there.
Andrei Cherny:
We started Aspiration with a very clear mission. And the idea that at its heart, a financial institution should be a force for good. A force for good in its customers lives, a force for good in the larger challenges facing us as a community, country, and the world. We really believe that if you are serious about moving the needle on a challenge like climate change, on a challenge like the inequality of wealth in our country, there needed to be a financial institution, at least one financial institution, and hopefully many financial institutions that have those kinds of concerns at their core.
Andrei Cherny:
And our measure of success is less about what we do and more about the kind of impact that we can have. You look at the amount that our customers are saving and spending with Aspiration, it's the equivalent of by moving their money out of fossil fuel lending, it's the equivalent of literally billions of dollars less in miles driven by the average car in terms of the impact on the environment. A huge impact in the many, many millions on the amount of fees that our customers save.
Andrei Cherny:
But ultimately, I think the way to measure our success is less about what we can do directly but ultimately, we'll see ourselves as a success when we look around at what everybody else in this industry is doing. And have we grown to such a size and scale that we've, in some ways, exactly the gravitational pull on the way that others in the financial industry do business and the expectations that customers have of their bank, of their financial institution. When that starts changing in a real and substantial way, that's when we know we're going to have started to do what we've really set out to do.
Will Beeson:
How much do you feel like your role at Aspiration is almost like a conduit to help people live more closely in line with their values, and build tools that allow them to do so? Versus playing a proactive role in setting an agenda or driving an agenda? You talked about climate change before. You talked about money saved on fees, for instance. You talked about ways that traditional incumbent banks working, perhaps not being ... I was going to say not being optimal, that's a woeful understatement. Just fundamentally harming large segments of the population and perhaps restricting opportunities that we, as a society, would otherwise have. Those quickly become political issues. How political are you willing to be?
Andrei Cherny:
Yeah, we're not we're not a political organization, we're a financial institution, and we don't take sides on every political issue. We're not out there campaigning on everything under the sun. For us, it really comes back to the customer and the customer at the center of this. Our job is to empower that customer to do what they want to do, to give them the tools for making these kinds of decisions, give them the tools to be planting a tree with every purchase, and to be deciding where they're going to get that hamburger for lunch based on how those businesses treat their employees and treat the environment.
Andrei Cherny:
That doesn't mean we don't have a point of view. Look, if you're somebody who thinks there's not enough climate change going on, and we need to speed that up, and we're probably not going to be the financial institution for you. If you feel that there's not enough money being lent to gun manufacturers by the big banks, again, we may not be the place for you. But it's not about us. It's not about how we're looking at ourselves internally, it's about us in service of our customers and empowering them to do what they already want to do. There's so many people out there who are thinking about an issue like sustainability and the environment when they're deciding what kind of coffee to drink, and what kind of cup to drink it in, and what kind of straw to use, and what kind of car to drive and what kind of clothes to buy.
Andrei Cherny:
And yet, at this point, still, are willing to pay for all of that with a Wells Fargo debit card. And most often, not even realize that the negative impact they're making on all those kinds of concerns from their money sitting in any of these big bank checking accounts completely outweighs the positive change they're making. But more and more people are waking up to that every single day, and they're realizing that the choice of how they save, the choice of where they choose to spend, the choice of what financial institutions card they choose to spend that on, has as much of a gigantic impact on moving the needle on these kinds of issues as whether they recycle their can or drink out of a paper straw.
Will Beeson:
Are you able, through any research that you've done to, I don't know, quantify the impact of using an incumbent bank as opposed to something like Aspiration on the types of issues that you guys are focused on?
Andrei Cherny:
Yeah, absolutely. By our calculations, every $100 that you transfer out of your big bank into Aspiration has the climate impact of 600 fewer miles being driven by the average car, or 300 fewer pounds of coal being burnt. And so that adds up, that adds up dollar by dollar $100 by $100. And of course, at our scale into the billions of dollars total that have been deposited, and that means that on a community level at Aspiration but again, on that individual level, we're having an enormous impact. I mentioned our Plant Your Change initiative, which again, rounds up your transactions to the nearest dollar, and then with that we plant a tree with every purchase.
Andrei Cherny:
We launched that in in mid-April, obviously, right in the midst of COVID with some trepidation and some really vigorous internal debate about whether that was the right thing to do to ask people to pay a few cents more on each time they swipe that card or made a debit card purchase in order to make a positive impact on the planet. And ultimately decided this was the time to move forward and lean into this because we are in this mess because we, as a society, did not react boldly enough when we could have to stop the spread. And if we had, our lives would be very different right now and tens and tens of thousands of people would still be would still be alive.
Andrei Cherny:
And there's a very clear analogy to what's going on in climate change. We're well past the point of reacting quickly, we still have a chance to react boldly. And our customers responded to that kind of call. As I said, we launched that in mid-April, within a matter of weeks, we planted over a million trees, our customers did one by one by one. That million trees, and we're obviously well past that now, is the carbon impact of taking off of the road one car for every person that lives in Atlanta, Georgia, or Kansas City or Tucson, Arizona. And so we're able to point to that day after day and show customers how that individual decision they're making is having an impact itself, and how together those individual decisions ladder up into an enormously powerful force for change.
Will Beeson:
I'd be fascinated to hear a little bit about what fundraising has been like over time. I mean not so much in the simple context of what do investors say, do they get the vision, but there are a lot of sources of capital who have appeared to have a view on investing for impact and for sustainability. There are even a number of companies in the fintech space that view providing credit to the unbanked or underbanked as social impact. I think there are definitely ways to do that. Well, there are definitely ways to do that badly. I'd be interested to know in terms of the investor conversations that you've had over the years, people you've raised money from and haven't, what your feeling is in terms of the investment community, who gets it? Who doesn't? Who's talking the right talk, but perhaps not then following through with a check?
Andrei Cherny:
Yeah, that's a great question. I'd say it's somewhat changed over the years. We again, we started out there starting having these first conversations in 2013, 2014 with investors, and there has been some change. When we first started, as you might imagine, it was a difficult environment to try to raise money for what we were doing. We were going to investors and saying, "Look, we're starting this from scratch, and here's what we're going to do. We're going to have products that are built not just on financial progress, but making a positive difference in the world. We're going to take 10% of our customers choose to pay and apply it towards charitable giving. And most of all, we're going to let our customers choose to pay. And if they want to pay us zero, they can pay us zero."
Andrei Cherny:
And it made for some pretty short conversations sometimes. I remember one of the first major investors who really believed in it was Jeff Skoll, founding president of eBay, and I remember sitting down with him and some of my colleagues early on and describing all of this to him. And he said, "I think this is going to work." Maybe you didn't hear me, and he said, "No, I really think it's going to work." And he said, "Look, every 10 years or so there's a business that comes along that takes what you call a big bet on trust." And he said, "That's what made eBay successful in the mid-90s, early days of the internet when nobody trusted anybody on the internet," which maybe still a good lesson.
Andrei Cherny:
But back then the idea of saying I'm going to send money to somebody that I've never met before, or never seen before, never spoken to before only communicated with online and believe that they're actually going to send me that Beanie Baby or baseball card that I bought was crazy and a lot of their competitors auction.com and others had these complicated escrow system. But it worked, and similarly, you go back a decade plus at this point, and if you had told people that there was going to be big businesses based on getting into a stranger's car, or staying in a stranger's bedroom in a foreign country, exactly the things your mom told you never to do, they would have said, "That's crazy as well but we're living in a world of Uber and Lyft, and Airbnb, and many others."
Andrei Cherny:
And he believed that what we were going to do was going to work as well. And it has worked, and we have seen customers respond, we have seen them embrace what we're doing, and choose to pay us even though they don't have to, and tell their friends, and bring them along to open Aspiration accounts, and make a positive impact, and sign up for things like Plant Your Change or Aspiration Plus or any of these other services, spend more and more on their Aspiration debit card. So that made some of these conversations easier. But at the end of the day, while many of the investors who have come with us are very much people who are mission aligned.
Andrei Cherny:
I don't think a single investor has come, who has not had expectations that we were going to have the kind of return on their investment that they would get from the best possible place they could invest their money elsewhere. And then, in fact, our commitment to mission and our commitment to sustainability and our commitment to offering products with a conscience to our customers, was going to make us a more successful company as opposed to something that held us back. That's what we promise to our customers. We say, "This is about do well and do good, not do good instead of do well or anything else like that. And you should have as good of a product from us as you'd get from from anybody else plus the ability to do good." And that's what we tell our investors as well.
Will Beeson:
Is that playing out?
Andrei Cherny:
I'd say we're well on our way for that. I think we've proven that there is a really large market for exactly what we're offering. And we're seeing the kind of customer behavior and the kind of growth that is leading us towards being the kind of company we want to be, a profitable company that's able to be sustainable not just from a environmental standpoint, but from an economic standpoint as well.
Will Beeson:
Fascinating. Well, look, Andrei, as I said at the top, I'd love to extend this conversation over a number of hours. I think you guys are at the relative beginning. I know you've been at it for a number of years, but the relative beginning of something huge. It must be exciting to be sitting where you are, flushed with cash that you'll no doubt put to amazing use.
Andrei Cherny:
Well, thank you. It's an exciting journey. Anytime you're building something has all kinds of twists and turns and I think what makes it exciting is, in some ways, it feels like that we have peers in this space. We are doing something different, and that means that we don't know what's coming up ahead of us. And every step forward is really, in some ways, creating a path where there wasn't one before, and so that can be daunting at times, but we're really rewarded by our belief in what we're doing and what we're building towards.
Will Beeson:
Excellent. Well, best of luck. Amazing work. Andrei Cherny, thank you very much for joining us today.
Andrei Cherny:
Thank you.
