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Xavier Shay is the CEO of Up, the Australian digital bank that reached a million customers on word of mouth and has been standalone profitable for the last twelve months. He joined as employee 27, was CTO before taking the top job, and explains why Up refused buy now pay later and why it does not try to win on features.

About Xavier Shay

Xavier Shay is CEO of Up and chief digital officer at Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, having joined Up as a software engineer in 2019 and moved through CTO before taking over as CEO in 2021. Before returning to Melbourne he spent close to seven years at Square in San Francisco, joining at around 150 staff and leaving a listed company of three and a half thousand people.

Key talking points

1. Word of mouth does the marketing. About 70% of Up's new customers arrive because a friend told them to, which Xavier traces to features people want to talk about, Save Up $1000, 2Up, and a support team that answers like a mate.

2. The brand decides the roadmap. At the peak of buy now pay later Up said no and shipped Maybuy instead, a savings plan that asks whether you still want the thing. Half the customers walk away with the money.

3. Brand is the moat, not features. Australia has free instant payments and good incumbent apps, so Xavier says Up does not win a feature by feature comparison and never has. It reached standalone profitability on how it makes people feel about money.

Chapters

[00:00] Introduction

[02:50] Why word of mouth works

[07:06] Saying no to buy now pay later

[18:18] Employee 27 at Ferocia

[23:21] Competing in a functional market

Links

Up: https://up.com.au

Careers at Up: https://up.com.au/careers

Xavier Shay on LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/xaviershay

Tier One People: https://tieronepeople.com

This show is brought to you by Tier One People, where we work with CEO's and founders like Xavier to find the 1% who redefine what's possible. If you're scaling your leadership team, start at tieronepeople.com

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