Following Ant Group's failed IPO last year, Simon Hu Xiaoming has stepped down from his position as CEO of the company. Ant chairman Eric Jing Xiandong will replace him.
Hu helped establish AliFinance, which eventually became Ant Group, in 2009, and has been CEO of the company since 2019.
Shakeel Hashim ( @shakeelhashim) is a growth manager at Protocol, based in London. He was previously an analyst at Finimize covering business and economics, and a digital journalist at News UK. His writing has appeared in The Economist and its book, Uncommon Knowledge.
"There's a lot more scrutiny being placed on fintech. We are definitely mindful of it."
In an interview with Protocol, Stephanie Balint, N26's U.S. general manager, discussed the company's approach to regulations in the U.S.
Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Signal at (510)731-8429.
N26's monster $900 million funding round announced Monday underlined the German startup's momentum in the digital banking market.
Stephanie Balint, N26's U.S. general manager, said the funding will be used for expansion and also to improve "our core offering to make this the most reliable bank that our customers can trust," she told Protocol.
That second goal is partly based on how the Berlin-based company, like other fintechs, has recently grappled with what has become a typical challenge: regulations.
N26 also disclosed that it has agreed to essentially slow down its growth by temporarily onboarding only 50,000 to 70,000 customers per month. This was part of an agreement with BaFin, the German regulatory agency, which recently fined N26 about $5 million for delayed reports of suspicious activity related to anti-money laundering.
Regulations are also a key concern in the U.S., where N26 launched in 2019. The company, whose banking services are provided by Axos Bank, has half a million of its 7 million users in the U.S. and competes with bigger, more established neobanks like Chime and Current.
In an interview with Protocol, Balint discussed N26's approach to regulations in the U.S., where she said "the regulatory environment is different" and requires "a slightly different approach."
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
How do you plan to expand with this funding?
We plan to grow our team overall by about 1,000 employees globally, especially focused on product technology and security. There's a lot of elements that we want to build on to improve our core offering to make this the most reliable bank that our customers can trust for the years to come.
Can you explain the announcement that N26 has agreed to temporarily onboard only 50,000 to 70,000 onboarded customers per month?
That's specific to our European operations. It is tied to some of the previous disclosure we've had on the work we've been doing over the past year or so to improve a lot of our core operations, especially in compliance. That is basically a key area that we're continuing to invest in in the near term. Some of the funding and the hiring that I was talking about before is actually going to be going towards that as well.
Can you talk a bit about the weaknesses or gaps that got flagged by the German regulators?
There were a few findings that were discussed I think back in May based on a few findings from BaFin [on] the way that we were doing some transaction monitoring. Specifically, I believe that it was around document verification.
What are the key lessons from that experience that are top of mind for you as head of N26 in the U.S., where there has been heightened focus on regulations and where the regulatory environment is different?
That's a great question and a great point. I think one element of our U.S. operation has always been that because the regulatory environment is different, we have had a slightly different approach. We work with a sponsor bank here in the U.S. [Axos Bank] who provides that needed oversight and auditing. They are monitoring our own compliance practices here in the U.S. We have been able to see that it is very important to invest in some of these compliance topics early on so we have the benefit of, while we're maybe a bit smaller than our European counterparts, being able to implement things maybe a bit sooner than they were able to do in Europe, which has definitely been beneficial for our business.
Can you give me an example?
For example, transaction monitoring. We're using a pretty preeminent system here in the U.S. for that. It is one that we work closely with our sponsor bank on, and it's pretty much the gold standard of transaction monitoring for AML [anti-money laundering]. We've invested a lot in making sure that it's functioning properly, that we can automate it where possible. That's paid a lot of dividends for us in terms of making sure that we don't run afoul of any transaction monitoring issues and the like.
How would you describe the competitive landscape in the U.S. where you're up against bigger players and more established players?
We can see that there's plenty of opportunity in the U.S. market. There's a lot of different neobanks that have either entered the space recently or are a bit more established and have taken significant share. We also see that a lot of the traditional banks are investing heavily in their mobile banking solutions because they can see that the appetite is really clearly there among the consumer base.
There is a lot of space for many players and so there isn't a clear winner yet. And so we're pretty optimistic that there is room for N26 here in the U.S.
What has been the biggest hurdle for you?
Hmmm. I don't have a good answer for that. Maybe come back to you. [Laughs.]
How are you looking at the way the Biden administration is approaching regulation in financial services?
There's definitely a lot more scrutiny being placed by national regulators on fintech [companies] such as ourselves. We definitely are staying on top of that trend, being mindful of it. We work very closely with Axos, our partner bank, to ensure that we are staying abreast of the changes in the regulation and making sure that we're positioned correctly so we aren't running afoul of any of those issues. We have a very close working relationship with them on those topics and consult each other on things and how to best market ourselves, how to best communicate with customers so that we aren't tripping on any of those issues. Certainly we can see that the scrutiny has heightened in the past few months.
What regulatory proposal that has already been out there is most troubling for you?
I wouldn't say it's the most troubling. But one that we've been keeping an eye on is the "Truth in Lending Act," because that obviously has implications as we maybe start to think further afield from our current product, which is just currently a debit product. As you start to think about things like credit overdraft, how do you make sure that as a fintech that doesn't necessarily immediately want to have a bank license that you are demonstrating who the true lenders are in these situations and aren't running into any hurdles from the regulators on that.
That's a good segue to my next question. Some of the fintech companies are moving toward getting a charter or buying a chartered bank. Would you consider that in the U.S.?
I wouldn't rule anything out. We entered the market purposely through a sponsor bank partnership because we viewed it as a bit more flexible in the short term, [have] faster speed to market and would allow us to get to proof of concept and a bit of product market fit. I think the U.S. environment is a little bit more onerous than the European one is in terms of licensing and chartering. It's a lengthier process. It's quite an investment of time, money, resources, and can also be distracting to your growth ambitions right in the short term. There's a tradeoff. The sponsor bank model is working well for us right now. Would I rule out that in the future we might pursue a license? No, but we would evaluate it amongst a number of different options when the time was right.
Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Signal at (510)731-8429.
Kate Silver is an award-winning reporter and editor with 15-plus years of journalism experience. Based in Chicago, she specializes in feature and business reporting. Kate's reporting has appeared in the Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Atlantic's CityLab, Atlas Obscura, The Telegraph and many other outlets.
The way we work has fundamentally changed. COVID-19 upended business dealings and office work processes, putting into hyperdrive a move towards digital collaboration platforms that allow teams to streamline processes and communicate from anywhere. According to the International Data Corporation, the revenue for worldwide collaboration applications increased 32.9 percent from 2019 to 2020, reaching $22.6 billion; it's expected to become a $50.7 billion industry by 2025.
"While consumers and early adopter businesses had widely embraced collaborative applications prior to the pandemic, the market saw five years' worth of new users in the first six months of 2020," said Wayne Kurtzman, research director of social and collaboration at IDC. "This has cemented collaboration, at least to some extent, for every business, large and small."
Businesses using these applications before the pandemic may have had a smoother transition to remote work. That was the case for British footwear brand Dr. Martens, which had been using the Asana platform to streamline work and communications for its global marketing team. Asana allows businesses of all sizes to organize strategic initiatives; monitor timelines, status and workloads across team projects; provide feedback on documents; request approvals on work; automate work processes and more. When COVID-19 caused offices to close, Stacey Kemp, who is the creative services manager at Dr. Martens, says Asana helped them adapt. "With 2020 forcing us to drastically change our way of working, our 'facetime' initially went up and productivity within work hours plummeted. To combat this, we had to get much better at giving clear instructions, feedback, and having discussions via written word. Asana helped us bring everyone's thought process into one centralized place," she says.
This fall, as enterprises everywhere decide whether to return to the office, continue working remotely or establish a hybrid working model, collaborative technology platforms will be more important than ever, says Anne Raimondi, chief operating officer of Asana. "As we continue in uncertain times, a platform that allows for well coordinated and distributed work is a must-have for any nimble organization. It allows work to continue in-person or remotely, with consistency, reliability and maximum flexibility."
"When organizations are able to forge ahead with the core tenets of teamwork — clarity, transparency and accountability — then they're able to continue their mission with passion and empowerment, whether their team is at the office or at home," says Anne Raimondi, chief operating officer of Asana
Raimondi shared the following advice with business leaders as they overcome COVID-19 survival mode and move into the next productive work phase, whatever shape that may take.
1. Reduce "work about work." Some call it busy work, some call it a threat to productivity. The Asana team calls it "work about work," and says it applies to communicating about work, searching for information, switching between apps, managing changing priorities, following up on the status of projects and other tasks involving work coordination rather than making headway on the skilled work itself. According to Asana's "Anatomy of Work Index 2021: Overcoming Disruption in a Distributed World," 60% of workers' time is spent on this kind of work, while 40% of time is spent on the skilled job a person was hired to do. In order to increase productivity and create room for meaningful work, businesses must first identify the areas that are detracting from that work. "When work about work happens, skilled work doesn't. To solve for this, consider reducing the number of unnecessary meetings, blocking time for focused work and streamlining workflows across teams using a collaborative platform," says Raimondi. "When you empower your team to do the work they were literally hired to do, you'll see your employees — and your organization — flourish."
2. Banish burnout. The pandemic has tested us all physically, mentally and emotionally. Businesses everywhere are starting to see that toll on their teams in the form of burnout, which the World Health Organization defines as "a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed." According to Asana 71% of workers experienced burnout in the last year. Almost half (46%) of respondents said they were overworked, while 32% said they were unable to switch off or disconnect and 29% cited a lack of clarity on tasks and roles. "Employees have spoken, and they're not ok," says Raimondi. "Leaders must take the reins here and work to understand, address and eliminate the root causes of burnout." Across the country, corporations are finding ways to tackle burnout, such as camera-free days, or time off for mental health purposes. Asana has had a long-standing "No Meeting Wednesday" policy, which will evolve as employees return to the office and allow for the hybrid options of "Work from Home Wednesdays" and "Flexible Fridays" to allow for options and time to focus on creative or strategic work.
3. Be ready to adapt. According to Asana's research, 65% of employees believe that the skills needed for their job will evolve. Raimondi says that flexibility, today, can best be supported by technology, like Asana, that helps workers carry out their jobs, regardless of what is happening in the world around them. "When organizations are able to forge ahead with the core tenets of teamwork — clarity, transparency and accountability — then they're able to continue their mission with passion and empowerment, whether their team is at the office or at home," she says.
That's been the case at GoodRx, says Tori Marsh, who is the company's director of research. "Before COVID-19, Asana was our bible for the team. Now, it's even more so. Rather than talking to my coworkers on the other side of the table, we're communicating in Asana comments. We're still able to track everything that's going on without being there in person."
As business leaders set their expectations and goals for the new office environment — hybrid or otherwise — it's certain that flexibility and adaptability will be key. Organizations of all sizes may benefit from a reliable work management system that allows for order, consistency and clarity, so that employees working from anywhere can focus on the work they were hired to do, and not the extraneous tasks that can detract from their goals and their organization's purpose.
To learn more about Asana, visit Asana.com
Kate Silver is an award-winning reporter and editor with 15-plus years of journalism experience. Based in Chicago, she specializes in feature and business reporting. Kate's reporting has appeared in the Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Atlantic's CityLab, Atlas Obscura, The Telegraph and many other outlets.
After years of reinventing the wheel, Apple's back to just building really good ones.
Apple brought back the ports.
David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editorial director. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.
The 2015 Pro was, by most accounts, one of the best laptops Apple ever made. It was fast and functional, and it had a great screen, a MagSafe charger, plenty of ports, a great keyboard and solid battery life. If you walked around practically any office in Silicon Valley, you'd see Pros everywhere.
Many of those users have been holding on to their increasingly old and dusty 2015 Pros, too, because right about when that computer came out was when Apple seemed to lose its way in the laptop market. It released the 12-inch MacBook, an incredibly thin and light computer that made a bunch of changes — a new keyboard and trackpad design chief among them — that eventually made their way around the rest of the MacBook lineup. Then came the Touch Bar, Apple's attempt to build an entirely new user interface into a laptop.
But on Monday, Apple gave users something neither altogether new nor altogether different: a new MacBook Pro in the spirit of that 2015 model. The new Pro comes with either a 14- or 16-inch screen. It's fast and functional, has a great screen, a MagSafe charger, plenty of ports, a great keyboard and solid battery life. Executives praised an all-new design, but the new MacBook Pro even looks quite a bit like the old model. Except for the notch in the display, where Apple put a better webcam, which is one of the few distinctly 2021-era choices the company made.
Most of Apple's launch video was dedicated to the chip inside the new laptops: the M1 Pro and M1 Max, which at least by Apple's measurements, practically lap the field of other laptop processors. A day after Intel's Pat Gelsinger announced his intentions to win back Apple's business by building "a better chip than they can build themselves," Apple made plain exactly how difficult that's going to be. In addition to the chips, Apple touted the new webcam, the ditching of the Touch Bar and the Pro's apparently excellent new battery life.
The whole thing felt like the kind of love letter to power users that Apple only offers once every few years or so. (The most recent instance came when Apple ditched the trash can Mac Pro for a better-looking machine that could actually fit on racks again.) It also made clear that Apple increasingly sees whiz-bang innovation as beside the point on devices like these.
The pandemic has brought new life to the PC market, with millions of people needing a way to work from the couch, the bedroom or the garage. Tim Cook said that the past year has been the Mac's "best year ever." While Microsoft continues to try to build multi-hyphenate devices out of its Surface lineup — Chief Product Officer Panos Panay often refers to supporting "the five senses of input," including touch, voice, keyboard, mouse and pen — Apple is content to let the iPad be its shapeshifter. The Mac line, if anything, is going back to basics: They're meant to be central hubs for other devices to connect to and borrow from. They are devices for pros to work on, and those pros don't want wacky new ideas about input or new keyboard designs. They want computers that work.
Thanks to the M1 chip, Apple also doesn't need to build devices that do everything. The M1 is a unifying factor, one that could over time break down many of the barriers between iPad and Mac. Already, Craig Federighi said, there are 10,000 universal apps that run on both operating systems. Going forward, users might choose their device based on personal preference and work style instead of feature list. Those who like touch and portability will choose iPads; those who want power will choose Macs. (Even in the MacBook line, the Air is the portable one and the Pro the powerful one, and that line is much clearer than before.) And if you want it all? Apple's happy to sell you two devices that work together.
The new devices were heavily leaked, and going into Monday's event there was more anticipation around the tech industry than typical for a laptop refresh. After Apple finished announcing the new devices, the response seemed to be nearly unanimous: finally. After years of trying things, Apple had gone back to giving the people what they want.
Except for the notch. The people aren't sure if they wanted that yet.
David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editorial director. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.
Hello, deep work. Goodbye, meetings.
Protocol spoke to founders and tech execs who've embraced async and have tips on how to get started.
Imagine a company where there are no meetings — just time for deep, focused work punctuated by short conversations on Slack and project updates on Trello.
Now imagine a company where the no-meeting ethos is so ingrained that it's possible to work there for 10 years without ever speaking face-to-face with a single coworker, and for your boss to not even recognize the sound of your voice.
Welcome to the "async-first" startup, where town halls are pre-recorded and watch-at-your-own-time, documentation is paramount and even company retreats are on your own.
Skeptics are quick to point out the downsides to this way of working. One, human connection — already hard to come by in a remote pandemic world — is hard to foster when you're not seeing and talking to people. Two, many managers just can't shake the anxiety of not having regular facetime with their direct reports — the age-old question of "Are they hard at work or hardly working?"
But for companies that have been working async-first even before the pandemic, working any other way is unimaginable. They point to sky-high retention rates, happier employees and previously-unattainable goals reached, like achieving the same output with a four-day workweek. They've spawned a whole collective to promote this unconventional way of working.
Protocol spoke to founders and tech execs who've embraced async and have tips on how to get started.
"You can't micromanage across time zones," said Amir Salihefendić, founder and CEO of Doist, an async and remote-first company. That's why it's important for him to hire people who are "self-motivated" and can be "self-managed."
"Independent minds" are required for successful async work, said Vincent Le Moign, CEO and founder of Streamline, a UI asset library company that works primarily async. He looks for candidates who have side hobbies, an open GitHub project or maybe even a failed startup in their resume.
Async-first employees also have to be strong writers, able to communicate articulately and concisely in the absence of in-person or video meetings, according to Le Moign.
Isolation is a risk in a meeting-less world.
Retreats are one way to combat that risk, according to Tammy Bjelland, founder and CEO of Workplaceless, a startup focused on remote work training. That's difficult in COVID-19 times, but there are also ways to make the Zoom office party less cringey and more engaging.
At Workplaceless, team retreats are a blend of async and sync activities aimed at having fun and building connection. One example was an async scavenger hunt in which participants were provided a list of items to collect: a picture of them on a swing, a picture at age 8, etc., which were then shared over Zoom at the end of the retreat.
Being in the office 9 to 5 is a "vanity metric" and doesn't actually reflect an employee's output, according to Salihefendić. He urged managers to shift from thinking in terms of "butts in seats" and "arrive early, leave late" to evaluating people on their results.
Slack. Twist. Notion. Asana. Trello. With the rise of remote and async work came a rise in tools to support collaboration and communication within this framework.
Loom is one platform oft-cited by async enthusiasts. It allows users to record and send video messages and present their work for later viewing, circumventing the synchronous meeting. Even veteran tech companies like Dropbox are releasing similar tools to support async work.
For some, even Slack is too synchronous. There's an unspoken expectation that your message demands an immediate response. That's why more async-first companies are turning to tools like Doist's Twist messaging platform, whose motto is "Stop the distraction."
If you're stuck on Slack, there are some ways to make it less distracting: Create an #urgent channel with notifications turned on, for example, said Le Moign. Or, do as Calendly does and choose an agreed-upon emoji to signal that that a message isn't urgent. The company also urges employees to set a notification schedule for their working hours, according to Julia Betts, Calendly's head of employee engagement, communications and DEI.
GitLab has an extensive employee handbook that is publicly available on its website. Doist has one too, internally. This type of extensive, searchable knowledge base is critical, because at an async-first company, "You can't just ping somebody. Maybe they'll respond to you tomorrow." Instead, you have to create processes and tools that allow people to onboard themselves, said Salihefendić.
At Streamline, employees start and end their day by writing what they plan on doing and what they've done that day in their team's Slack channel. That way, everyone knows what everyone else is working on. Managers can use that note to give feedback: "That's not a priority, maybe work on this instead," said Le Moign.
With more documentation, more tools have popped up to make it easier to search and sort through company data, like Glean, whose $55 million in funding highlighted the rise of remote-friendly software.
When you see 10 or more exchanges back and forth in Slack, that's maybe when it's time to jump on a five-minute Zoom instead, said Le Moign.
The No. 1 thing that meetings shouldn't be used for is status updates, according to nearly everyone in the productivity space. "If you're listening to someone talk the whole time, you don't need a meeting," said Bjelland.
On the other end, developing trust and "building social capital" requires face-to-face meetings, she added. That social capital can be difficult to develop async.
Take notes in your meetings. Make a list of action items for after the meeting, and make sure you're sticking to the meeting topic. Send around a pre-read when appropriate, so people can process information ahead of time, recommended Betts.
Even presentations can be given asynchronously: Consider using a tool like Loom to record yourself explaining something or walking through a workflow, recommended Meryl Johnston, CEO and founder of Bean Ninjas, an ecommerce accounting startup. She even recorded her companywide town hall on Loom and had employees watch it on their own time, reserving the actual meeting for questions and discussion.
Twitter CMO Leslie Berland recently tweeted that her team had taken a "Focus Week," and that the feedback was "incredible." They plan on doing it again.
Calendly, which shifted to remote-first during the pandemic, also dipped its toes into more asynchronous work. One move that helped, according to Betts, was setting companywide core meeting hours between noon and 5 p.m. Eastern time. They've also experimented with "no internal meeting days," which were "a huge hit," leading to some departments adopting no-meeting Wednesday afternoons.
If it feels overwhelming, start by focusing on "tiny actions," said Bjelland. Take a look at your schedule and see if there's one meeting that can be transitioned to an asynchronous process instead. Then go ahead and nix it.
Janneke Parrish says she was dismissed after deleting Robinhood, Pokemon Go and Google Drive from her work devices during an investigation inside the company.
Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
Unlike most other companies, Apple asks that its employees use their work phones like personal ones — and for five years, Apple program manager Janneke Parrish did as she was told. But last week, when Apple asked Parrish for her devices in an internal investigation, she was afraid Apple would see her personal and private information. She disobeyed orders and deleted apps like Robinhood, Pokemon Go and Google Drive. Then Apple fired her.
Parrish has been an activist and organizer for the #AppleToo movement that's sharing unpleasant stories from workers inside the company, and one of its few public-facing leaders. The Apple investigation that led to her firing was intended to find the person who, as part of that movement, leaked the contents of a meeting with CEO Tim Cook in real time to the Verge. Parrish was obviously a suspect.
"Sept. 30, I was reached out to and told that I was under investigation as potentially violating Apple policies. There were concerns that I had been the one who had leaked the town hall. I was not," she told Protocol. "They didn't find anything, because I didn't do anything." She handed over her devices after deleting some apps — which she said held personal information and information about political campaigns she's involved in — and then Apple told her they were firing her for doing so. Parrish insists that she has not leaked anything to the press.
The deletion and immediate firing reveal a tension that has become a serious problem for some workers inside Apple with the way the company asks workers to use company-provided devices. Apple needs employees to test its software by using it in real-world scenarios, but it still retains the right to confiscate and examine the devices, meaning that workers are encouraged to do personal things on devices, while also facing the prospect that their employer can look at those personal things whenever it wants. "We are heavily encouraged to include personal stuff. I am a program manager with internal tools, I need to use my work device to be able to test that our internal tools are working the way they are supposed to. Doing that lived experience with the device is a really good way of stress-testing the work that we do," Parrish said.
"The goal of #AppleToo was essentially to ask Apple to do better, to better protect its employees, to provide a more inclusive and safe environment for everyone. The recent retaliatory action against me, it says that's not what we're doing right now. I want to do what I can, within the scope of what's legally protected, to continue asking Apple to do better for its employees," she said.
"We are and have always been deeply committed to creating and maintaining a positive and inclusive workplace. We take all concerns seriously and we thoroughly investigate whenever a concern is raised and, out of respect for the privacy of any individuals involved, we do not discuss specific employee matters," an Apple spokesperson wrote in an email to Protocol.
Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
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