24-Hour Coding Sessions

A story about Jon Stein's early days building Betterment and his intense dedication to coding the platform.

"I was doing everything by myself. I would get into these 24-hour almost trance-like states of just trying to perfect a certain part of the site. I loved that time - that flow that you get into when you're really working on something that you're passionate about.

I was doing the engineering, I bought like 40 legal books about securities regulation and derivatives and all of the things I had to know to set up a regulated financial entity. It was too much - I took on everything. Over time I realized that I wasn't going to be able to do everything by myself. I started talking to friends and those friends started wanting to join up and help me.

What I learned early on was the role of a founder is to try to have nothing to do. You've got to build a team, you've got to find other people who can take all that work off of you."