Early Employees Sacrifice Everything

A story about how Betterment's early employees showed dedication through financial sacrifices and shared responsibilities.

"My cofounder Eli and I didn't pay ourselves salaries for at least a year and a half in the early days. We went through all our savings and put a lot of it into the company. We hired a couple of friends - my colleague Anthony from FMCG joined us, and then we hired a CTO Kieran through the Columbia network.

We paid them not enough - it was well below market, like a quarter of what they'd been making, and we paid them in equity. After they worked for us for about 9 months, we said 'We're going to run out of money, and it would be great if you guys could put in some money so we can continue to pay you.' Fortunately, they did.

In those early days, we had no customer service - just a room of 4 to 10 people with a phone tree that would ring at one person's desk and then ring at the next person's desk. We would see how long we could wait with the phones ringing before somebody picked it up. We were all talking to customers back then, and when someone was on the phone with a customer having a problem, you knew because you were in the same room with them."