Matt Wallaert Is on a 'Chief Behavioral Officer' Mission

not get to talk about how we met. I go to lots of conferences as a speaker, and so I'm always terribly reluctant to go as an attendee. It's sort of once you've seen behind the curtain, it's like, oh, now I know how the magic is done. It ruins the you know, it ruins the special effects. Once you know how the you mean, he's really not sawing a woman in half, it ruins the show for you what.

On occasion, I'll go to um some specific conference where there's a few people I want to see your specific individual And it was in the t I A. Kreft Building conference facility, which is on like third and fifty one.

It's on the thirtieth floor. It's a really interesting facility, having a conference center not in the basement, but in the sky, surrounded by buildings, and I was there to see somebody else, and Matt, Matt was right before, right after the person I had come to see, and he just takes the stage and you know, choose up the scenery destroys the place. And it was really a fascinating concept, a fascinating speech about here's what behavioral psychology is, and

why aren't we applying this in the real world. We know this works, We know we can affect people's behavior and have them either make better decisions or end up doing things that brings them more satisfaction, more happiness. At a corporate level, if you're selling widgets, you don't want people just to buy your widgets. You want them to buy your widgets and have a higher level of satisfaction

and become a repeat customer. And behavior and psychology can really lead companies to finding that right mix that really generates not just sales, but sales with happy customers, and happy customers become repeat buyers. And I thought it was so obvious and so ridiculously. Wait, we're not doing this, And you stop and think about it, and suddenly it's wow,

we're not doing this. You're you. You look at all the things in the news recently about some horribly embarrassing corporate behavior, and it's pretty clear that most of these companies could desperately use a chief behavioral officer and they don't have one. And so I thought his conversation was so interesting. I said, hey, let's get him into the studio and have a conversation. I think that was like eight months ago. It took us a long time to

find a date that worked. He's a busy guy. But I think you will find this to be a fascinating conversation. If you're all interested in startups, ventures, or behavioral psychology, you're going to really enjoy this conversation. So, with no further ado, my interview with Matt Wallert. My special guest today is Matt Wallert. He is a behavioral psychologist and entrepreneur. He has built a number and sold a number of startups.

He went to Microsoft to work on products that he could build at larger scale, eventually becoming a director at Microsoft Ventures. Matt Wallert, Welcome to Bloomberg Verry. Thanks for having me. Man. So let's talk a little bit about your background, which is very eclectic. You studied both science and psychology. You you work in the tech field, but you're also a behaviorist, which came first. I was definitely so Ion's kid and not a psychology kid. I'm from

very rural Oregon and had, if anything, I was anti psychology. Right. I'm a true like mill and Nowhere kid where well, And your impression of psychologist is like, these are people who tell you what to do right, like or tell you what you think right? You have this impression from television. I don't think there was a psychologist in sixty miles of where I was. Right, It's not like New York where you grew up. Everybody's got a therapist, everybody knows

what this is like. It was a totally unknown quantity. And so I actually it was really anti psych um. And then when I went to Swarthmore, I took uh intro Psychic and it was taught by a wonderful, wonderful professor who's a great research professor, rible teacher, like you couldn't even get up and leave the room kind of teacher because you would throw them off. But then I took another side class with arguably the best teaching professor.

It's worthmore and I had this amazing experience where they reviewed a study and I sort of said to him, you know, I don't I don't really agree with their interpretation of the results. Not that I disagree with the date, I just don't think they're interpreting right. And he said, well, this is the most the important thing any teacher could do. He said, Look, the rest of the field agrees with this interpretation, but this is science, and so there's an

orderly way for you to argue. You do an experiment that proves your side right, you provide countervailing and like you can like a scientific method that allows you to challenge the prevailing belief. And I was cooked at that moment. That was the moment where I went from you know, so turned off by well we just debate things and whoever is a better order or kind of wins, to like, no, we can go and you know you don't disagree with somebody,

you think they're interpreting it wrong. Great, go run a study. So you get your undergraduate degree it's uh Swarthmore UM in psychology and education, and then you apply to the PhD program at Cornell for psychology, Yeah, social psychology, So I um, it's actually funny. I was sort of getting recruited by Stanford, Cornell, and the University of Colorado, and a chose University of Colorado, and then my advisor calls

me says, hey, I'm moving to Cornell. So either you can come to Colorado but I won't be here, or you can go with me to Cornell. So I went to Cornell. And you're a startup guy, why not Stanford? You would think that's a natural fit. But I'm not a startup guy, right, I'm a first generation college kid. I've never The way I got into startups was was ab Carnanni's fault, right, like I'm I was in in the PC program at Cornell, and he uh sort of uh called me up and he said, look, we're running

the startup. We think you could give us some advice. And I said, literally, I don't know anything about startups. I don't know anything about tech. I don't know anything about finance. And his personal finance was min dot Com. So with his competitor called Thrive, we sold the landing tree and I said, I don't know anything about any this. He said, don't worry, We'll figure out how to get the value out of you and then a year later I was there head a product. His name what was

his name? So that's Av Carnanni. He was the CEO of Thrive and and he was the founder. He was the he was the co founder with with Orage Knaps. He was the tech guy. And he brought you in in what role? Uh as so as the lead scientists and sort of had a product. They had they had built some thing. It wasn't They had this inkling that it might not really be the right thing, and so I sort of came in and said, yep, not sort of behavior from able science perspective, this is probably not

You're a little bit like Mitt. You're probably not going to move the needle. How do we go and build something that cam? And then we built it? So let's back up a few steps. You're in the PhD program at Cornell. This is before Twitter, before Facebook, before social media. I'm not that old. Facebook existed sort of not broadly, not the way it did today. And by the way, when I say it's before all these things, I'm not talking about the nineteen twenties. This is a decade ago.

And how do they find you? I had bugglish on papers they actually called Dick Taylor. That's what I love about academics, right, like they listen there for now sailor is is Charlie at Chicago, but he was at one point in time, he was in California. He was at Chicago at the time. He still because it doesn't that long. He was a previous guest. I find his work fascinating and he's an endlessly entertaining guy. He is, and and look, Dick,

I mean, has in some really amazing work. And what I love about academics is like, you know, they just put their phone number and you know, and so they called him up and he answered the phone, and he gave him like an hour's worth of advice and then they yeah, for free. And then because this is before the days of startup mania, right, this is before everybody's going to be an advisor of something, right, they just he was just sort of like sure, And that's I

actually think. You know, one of the things I talked about often is, you know, if you need advice, go find a grad Students like that, you know, they don't charge very much, like they don't know, you know, they don't know the true value of their information, and they're so passionate and happy to talk to you about it. So they called it Taylor. They got to the end of the hour and they were sort of like, would be advisor, and he was like, no, you gotta be

kidding me. Man, like I'm too busy, but go find a grad student. And so I was the grad student. They sort of came up. So how do they approach you about this? I mean, so we just got on a call and they said, he sort of, here's what

we're building. This is after the dot com collapse, but you're sort of in the recovery before the financial before the before the financial collapse, which was which was key for us, right because here we are in this sort of personal finance space and we can acquire by lending to read just as the sort of financial collapses. What was that publicly announced? What the dollar amount was? No, it was it was a like so breaks and was

what was the Yeah? Good try Like once again you're talking to the science guy, right, Like I paid no attention to the cap table. As a matter of fact, I actually so when they sent me, I remember walking through the West Village and nobody should ever do this, by the way, like you should know what you're signing

before you sign it. But I had to talk to a V. Carnani about, like, what's a basis point You've written me this offica letter with these it's fantastic, but like one of these things we'll give you at least five of them. We're walking through the West Village and he's like explaining, like I knew nothing. He was a

hundred basis points fantastic lot, you know. So I actually remember running around when I got my offer letter from them, running around being so happy about the salary because again, first generation college kid, like even startup money seemed like

a lot of money to me. And so then they came to me then there was this equity part, and I literally was like, I have no idea what this means actually, And years later, um I went on to build a feminist tool called salary or equity dot com, because women are less likely to accept start up offers because they want salary, not because they want salary, or they don't know what equity means, or it seems riskier than it is, and so we actually built a little

calculator where you put in your offer letter and it basically says like that's kind of about so let's let's talk a little bit about behavioral science and how it fits into these various UM startup roles that you've had. What is the job of chief behavioral officer? So this is something I've actually written about and proposed sort of lately, and I'm trying really to resolve this um you know, this fundamental gap. If you go to any sort of C level exec, they'll say, oh, I love behavioral science.

You know, I love Dana RELI, I love you know, thinking fast and slow, I love nudging, I love all this stuff. And then I say, okay, well where's your team? And they're like, what team? Right is? So's implementing these ideas in your actual business? That's right? Whose job is this? And and because we know if it's not somebody's job, it doesn't get done right and so and there are a smattering people who have not taken that title but

are doing interesting things. So Steve went on morning side, Um, you know there are people who are doing sort of this. So what I sort of said was I actually don't think this is business is fault. I think this is psychology's fault. Right. This is something actually we were just talking about a minute ago. You know, in the break. I think we haven't done a good job of explaining how do you go put it into an organization, in part because we stayed in academia, right, we didn't come

out into business. And so I think a chep April officer really has three jobs. One of them is the application of behavioral science internally, right, So take it for meaning, how do we get our employees to do what we think is in their own best interests and invest in the country of people say they're disengaged at their jobs. Who's addressing that? Right? Like hr, yeah, good luck? Right? Like women massive attrition. We know that like companies that

have senior women much much better return profile. They do better on Wall Street, but women to treat a lot. HRS had fifty years to solve this problem and has done nothing. Like maybe we should let behavioral science take a crack, Like how do we go change those behavioral things? So internal stuff, motivation, retention, recruitment, all, you know, work life balance, all of these pieces external stuff. Um, you know,

actually revamping product and depends what your product is. One of the example who runs their behavioral science lab is you know, people spend you know, let's call it ninety minutes a session in a Walmart, they're in line for five minutes, but if you survey them afterwards, that five minutes loom super large. There six forever recent the effect. It's the last thing they experienced, one that has the biggest impact. That's right. You actually wrote about the checkout

experience in hotels. Why you giving me water when I exit? Give it when I arrive, give it to me when I leave, And I'm left with, oh, isn't that nice? As you as you head out? That's right. It's a peak end theory, right, I want those endpoints to really matter. And instead, you know, I actually was on the road this week. It feels like you're like a thief. You're like stealing out of your hotel. You don't even go to the desk anymore because you right out. You're just like,

you know, it's like dying and dash exactly. You're like a bag and run out. I feel like I'm doing something wrong when I like sneak out of my hotel to go to the airport. Um, so those sorts of things, so external stuff, and then now let me interrupt, do you say that this isn't all that well developed externally?

But when I read about the science behind supermarkets and what's eye level and and what is how the whole circumference of the store, of the fresh foods and the interior of the store all the package goods and what's here, and how they make you go to the far opposite corner of the store to get milk, which is the number one item people come in. And the it just works out. The longer you're in the supermarket, the more

stuff you're gonna buy. So if you're there for one item and you have to go as far as humanly possible from the entrance, you're gonna end up doing more than just buy milk. Yes, And there have been like that has become a whole science, right, There have been isolated pockets of sort of applied behavioral science, you know, in health, for example, they're starting to do some really good health decision making work. There are these pockets where

we've sort of seen stuff. And I think the problem is too often companies are like, well, that's great for them, and they don't see how it applies to their product, Right, it's great for those people over there. Right at this point, even I think you know, we talked earlier about you know, we're talking about behavior economics and people sort of paying attention on the stock market. Like, I think, actually finance

has done a better job. But the problem with finance doing a good job is like CpG has gone and said, well, that's great for finance, but it's a finance thing, right, Behavioral economics totally applies in finance, But what could they possibly be doing for us. It's basically figuring out how to have lead people to the right decision and then giving them all the tools and pathways to get there.

That's it doesn't matter what the field is. It's it's not about the widget, you know, the I think the the Hitchcock movie used to call it the McGuinty or the mcguffin. Whatever they were chasing was irrelevant. It was the chase that mattered. So if the mcguffin was a multese falcon or something completely different, it didn't matter. It was the chase that h well, and and I think that's actually a really good sort of summation of why

behavioral science matters. Right, It's a process be hero scientists are trained interventionists. Right. Let's take the Walmart line example. If you ask engineers, you say to the engineers while the lines are too long, they're like, well, let's rejigger the POS system so people move through faster. Right, And if you ask like the store ops people, they'll tell you, well, let's put in more checkout counter so they're shorter, and those kind of things work. But the raw truth is

people are in line for five minutes. It's not that they're in line for too long. It feels too long. So why don't you behavior some with ways to either entertain them or keep them otherwise, engage distracted involved so it doesn't feel like it's a long process. Exactly, Like let's do what we did in the New York subway system. So New York Subway, you know, we put in these signs that tell people when the subways are coming. People to think the subways are running way faster. That absolutely.

I just took a subway here, and the first thing you notice, the express is one minute, the local is three minutes. But I don't want to walk up that giant set of stairs, so I'll take the extra three minutes. And you can make a decision, right, and and it's three minutes and not like you know, let's say you were running late to this thing. You know, you're looking at your watch going is it now? Is it now? Is it now? Should I run up stairshow over the Yeah,

like the edge of the subway? When is that train coming and you're looking at a screen, O, it's two minutes away? That's right. And the nice thing about that is it removes ambiguity, and two minutes just doesn't sound very long, right, so it contextualizes it really isn't that long. So imagine doing that in line. What if we don't change the pos and add new lines, we just say, hey, you're gonna be out of here in two minutes. That's interesting.

You you call scientists train interventionists. Are these interventionists working companies or are they still in academic? I think they're largely still in academia. And I think that's because we haven't gone to two companies and helped explain why this happens. Right, So if you go to Walmart example, Right, if you go to the engineers, they'll have an engineering solution. If you go to the marketers, they'll have a marketing solution.

There's nobody who's solution agnostic and his problem focused, right, And that's what science really is, right, when you think about any scientists, when you're running a bunch of experience ements, right, you're essentially running an intervention seeing if it works, running an intervention seeing if it works. It's not the experiment

that matters. It's the outcome that you care about. So you know, in the pivot, the fixed point is the outcome, and then you pivot around experiments that help you test around that outcome. And so scientists almost accidentally become really good product people because what they're doing is, you know, I know what I'm trying to test. I know what I'm trying to test. I know what I'm trying to test, and I'll just test until I sort of I'm able

to get my hands around the edges. I don't have a predefined sort of you know, this is the way that I operate against that. Let's talk a little bit about startups and culture, and I have to begin by asking you. I love the show Silicon Valley. It just started the new season. Do you watch it? I don't don't. Was how accurate is it? Here's why there's a reason I don't watch it. I've seen episodes. There's you know, I

I don't watch it. And it actually was challenging for me to watch the first season of Girls for the same reason, which is it's it's clearly farcical, but if you're in if you're in that part of the world, it's just a little too close to home for me. Right, It's like, I don't like uncomfortable comedy. Right, I'm like, you're not a Larry David fat, Yeah, I don't. I don't do well with uncomfortable comedy. And and it is

a little uncomfortable with me. And it's why, you know, I help a lot of startups, but I try to make you know, I try to spend as much time outside of that world as I can, because I think that's where, you know, if you want to be a good product person, you've got to be exposed to the problems. And I think one of the problems of Silicon Valley is has so insulated itself from problem sets. You know, it's just solving its own problems at this point. You know,

there's two things that I have to share with you. First, I'm not the target demographic for Girls. Watch the first show, and basically, you know, sorry tapping tapping out really early on that one. But the fascinating thing about Mike Judge, who is behind Silicon Valley. He started out doing the broadest idiocracy, the broadest dumbest comedy, and then narrowed it down, narrowed it down. I think he did Office Office Space, which was a little ridiculous, but not quite as ridiculous.

This is the one that you know, it's clearly parody, but it seems to venture into cinema verity quite often, and it it to someone who's not out there, it really rings true. Yeah, I mean and it is, and it's hilarious, and it was really funny and really well acted, and I think, uh, they've done it. Yeah, they've done it. I think casting really was what made that show right there. They're believable characters that are able to carry it off as opposed to like, um uh, what's the other skiky

science show that's more slapstick Big Bang? Right? That is clear sort of laugh track comedy, right, you know, the characters are so over the top, so unbelief. Well you're not supposed to feel like you know those people, um in Silicon Valley. I really do know of those people. So so let's let me ask the same question differently, how does start up culture get unfairly mischaracterized in general, not just HBO, but in general. What do we misunderstand

about startup culture educate the listening public if you can. Uh. So, that's an interesting and hard question. I think it's not uh And I want to sort of caveat this carefully, right, So, I think it it. People really do think of Silicon Valley. They think of young white males doing these things, and in reality, there are you know, we know lots of

people of color. That's right, Old, older entrepreneurs with families are more likely to have sort of better exits, right, Like, we actually know there's a bunch of other variable there's a lot of really interesting start ups in the middle of the kind entree, you know. There there are a lot of things. Now, there's not as many people of color as we'd want. There's not as many women as we'd want. That's a serious issue that we're I spent

a huge amount of my time working on. And that's but it's a little bit of a see it be it problem, right, if we see it be it problems, yeah, CB A problem is like, well, if I never see a female scientist as a little girl, how do I ever have the opportunity to think, oh, I might be so it's a cycle that that has to be broke,

that's right. And so we need to be fiercely critical of the homogeney of startups while at the same time recognizing all of the people that are outside of that homogeny that you know, and we need to hold those ups so that we get more of them. Right. That that's really uh, that's really interesting. UM. So let's talk a bit about the gender bias sets out in Silicon Valley. There's been a couple of high profile lawsuits. We've seen

the turmoil at uber because of it. Um even a big venture capital firm like Climate Perkins had had a litigation. Is there a gender bias issue? And I mean there's no, there's no. To me, that's a that's like saying, is they're global warming? Right of economists will tell you that there is a gender wage gap, right like you know, to me, denying the science, it's amazing to me the people that deny the science of it, that they think

that's a problem of opinion. I did this research actually with with pay Scale, where they said, hey, do you want to put anything in our service? Said ya, I wanna ask two questions, Um, do you think men women have equal opportunities in the workplace in general? And do you think men and women have equal opportunities? Um in your workplace? And if you look at men, only one in five men see sexism both near them and in

the world. Right, So only one in five men something that we know is scientifically true, like actually are able to see that. Another one in five see it in the world but not near them, And three or five men just don't think it exists out there or in here, three and five. My special guest today is Matt Wallert. He is an entrepreneur behavioral psychologist, and previously he was a director at Microsoft Ventures, where he did a variety

of work, including some behavioral psychology at Bing. Is that correct? So that was actually prior to joining Ventures. I joined Ventures when I came back to New York. Um, I have a lovely eighteen month old and my wife said, you know, we were out in Seattle, said I want to co back to New York. My family is. I said to Microsoft, hey, I'm gonna go back, and they said Ventures. I said okay, and uh, And so I spent a good time there. But previous to that had

done a bunch of products. What did you do with BING and and how does behavioral psychology apply to being? My favorite thing about BING has been the three dimensional Bird's eye View. Was the first mapping software that had that. And when you're looking for a house, you're like, oh my god, I could see the park, I could see the house, I could see the water, I could It's amazing the level of detail that you could zoom in

on with that product. I was fascinated by that. Yeah, I mean mapping in general has always been fascinating to me, since, you know, coming from a rural place, I didn't have expose you know, I think you didn't get to go as many places as you do when you're on these coast teas. You travel around and things, and uh so it was a fun, really fun way to you know. I looked at a lot of maps as a kid as a way of like sort of visualizing the rest

of the world. Um so, so I really when I first came to Microsoft, they sort of said, look, you know, our our product process of very engineering driven, um which sometimes means that we make things that people aren't actually interested in using. So we want to sort of reverse that. How do you think about what people want to use. And so the first thing I actually ever worked on at Microsoft was putting cling On into the Bing translator.

Oh yeah, and it was It was actually a really hard project because Klingon is actually a uh you know, it's a created language, and the linguist that created at Mark okrand Um, you know, basically want to break all the earthly rules. So like all Trio terrestrial languages, real languages have a way of saying hello, the Clingon way of saying hello is just what do you want? Right? And so when you try and do that in a translator, what what do you want from me? It's not that

far off. Yeah, And so it was very it was very funny, I mean, hard to make a translator. But the point was how do we make something that takes a an audience that normally wouldn't engage with our translation and sort of start to look at it in a different way. And so that was the kind of thing that I did at Microsoft. So, you know, I created our what's now known as our Being in the Classroom program, and so they what is being in the class well?

So so so they started with a key data insight, which was we're not seeing as much church traffick from schools as we would think we do. And so they had these plans. The marketing department decided, well, kids aren't currying us enough, and so we're gonna have these plans go run a campaign around like encouraging curiosity and kids. And I said, look, I had a dasy degree, Like, let's just go look at some stuff. And you know, kids are plenty curious. You go out to a classroom,

you could see kids are curious. Like, that's transparently not the problem. So when you go out and look, right, one of the tenants of behavior science, go look at how people are behaving. You know, it was really teacher driven, and it was actually less about they wanted to search. It was what we call inhibiting pressures. So it was concerns about advertising, right, you know, schools are advertising free zones,

search engines or not. Privacy. I don't really know what Google is doing with my data, but I have concerns about it, right, have concerns about them taking my kids data.

And then um, even classroom searches. I mean, of all the things, well, that's the problem, right, It's all identifiable, right, And if they were using particularly if you're using Google in the classroom, So signing into Gmail and those sorts of things then you're searching are getting identified that profile, right, So it's all getting sucked into some profile and I don't know what they're doing with it. And then the

third concern was adult content. So what we did was roll out a version of being being in the classroom that's free for schools to sign up for. And then when you search from schools, it's ad free. Um, not tracked, yeah, not tracked, and and safe search is locked on and so um. And then Google eventually did the same thing, sort of following on to us UM and so but again you saw massive behavioral change increases in school searches.

That's a giant number. But that's the thing, Like, it's so often people think that the problem is what we call a promoting pressure like curiosity. People don't They're like, oh, why aren't people searching? Well, they don't want to, right, and so we're gonna encourage them to want to. So that's not the problem. Why are you working for United Airlines? Don't? Don't they need a chief behavioral psychologist, especially for their

own people's decision making? Is this is The goal of my CBO sort of crusade that I'm on is I do think airlines. I've actually done work with Southwest like, which is a totally different experience. And it's funny. Actually I got kicked off the United flight. Oh for what? Um? So I this was? Actually this was that was a puddle jumper. I heard you mentioned this. Yeah, so I got I got kicked off of a puddle jumper years ago.

Um because the stewardess was abusing the guy in front of me, and I said, excuse me, what's your name? And she knew in that moment he's gonna report me, and she said, I want you guys off my plane. And it turns out a stewardess can kick whoever they want off the gate agent kid for any reason. Gate agent can't do anything about it. Uh, and so so they kicked me off. And it's funny because did you get her name? I? Did you know? I? I? She say her name and then she can be off the plane.

And it's funny. United was not. They basically think if you get kicked off a plane, it's your own fault, right, But they and and interestingly they've not been very apologized. You know, they're sort of like this guy deserve what he got, you know. Uh, they're this whole thing has been so bungled, you know from a from dot Galilee at n y U has just reamed United for there are three rules of this. You not only violated each

of the rules. And I'm doing this from memory, admit your error, offered to accept responsibility, offered to repair it each step along the way. You just made it worse. It's it's astonishing, and it really, I mean, I have to say I could drag back up their old their old like apology letter to me, but it really was the same sort of thing that we're like, it's the corporate culture there. Yeah, and it was and and that's

where culture really matters. And it's funny. Actually a friend of mine, dance Storms, great product guy here in the city tweeted at me today he said, oh, it looks like United was listening, because I had tweeted at Alaska and virgin and said, hey, you know, you should put into your employee app a way that makes it much easier for them to make decisions like giving somebody free food or free entertainment or miles on the spot when something bad happens, and United today said hey, we're going

to do that. Oh really, that's that's part of it, part of the their announcement. I think this morning, where yesterday was, we put it in our app I think to use from now this will have blown over. But this is this is a giant drag on them for god knows how long. And it's the thing that's amazing is it's so avoidable. It's such a self inflicted wounds.

And this is the thing I think, you know, this is why I'm on this sort of CBO sort of question Chief Behavioral Office, here's g P A officer, because I think there are so many things that we see as FATA company that that really are actually avoidable. Right. I think that you know, we were going back to the gender issue, right, like we think, oh, women get pregnant and they leave the workplace and they don't want to come back. That's not true at all, Right, Like

there are all these systematic structural things. We don't have to accept these things as true. Right, everything is on the table for change. So I've tried to bring a lot of women onto the show, and they're is a chicken and egg issue in that I want to bring senior women with experience and and expertise, and there are plenty of them, but they're now in such demands that either they don't respond or I've had ten or fifteen percent of the hundred and fifty or so guests are women.

But you know, it's no a near half. And I don't even think it's proportionate to how the industry is structured. But you're still starting out with an industry that at the senior level, forget fifty fifty. I don't even think we're in finance and and some other related fields. It's astonishing. And so your example of having a woman a kid, see a female scientist, there is this sort of which comes from Yeah, there's the problem, and and you know, I this is this is why it is so frusting.

The three and five men don't think sexism exists, like I think people don't draw things to their natural conclusion. Right. If you're saying is there's no sexism, there's no systematic sum in the world. Yet yet we only have sort of like ten percent female CEOs. You're telling me that there is some genetic, gendered reason that women can't run companies.

And if that's a statement, making you just I can't say things on there like you're just wrong, right, like that you The natural conclusion of those two facts is that we are genetically born to be a CEO. Something about the genetics that makes you a man also makes you CEO worthy, Right, that's what you're saying if you're saying sexism doesn't exist, and the status quo that we have is is less less women. So let's talk about some of the startups that you've done that are geared

towards making the world a better place. Tell us about salary or equity? So I, uh have a like the product guy in me. Every time I build something, I recognize how I screwed it up, and then I have to build something to sort of correct my screwing cure.

That's right, and so, um, you know, salary or equity is a really a reaction to that conversation we were talking earlier, right where I got my first offer and I didn't know anything about equity, right, And so there are whole underrepresented groups who when we bring them into the startup environment because they didn't, you know, grow with an engineer parent, they didn't grow up with a Silicon

Valley parent. They didn't grow up with these things. I don't know what equity is, right, And so we've actually created a little tool where you come in and you sort of put in some of the variabs from your offer letter and it will give you a risk adjusted sort of. Yeah. It's kind of like twenty year in salary, right, so that you can start to compare offers um in better ways. You know, we built get Raised, which is

helping different different startup than startup equity. But yeah, we're working in a sort of an adjacent space, right, and so this is the you know, uh, we've held women are two point three billion dollars in raises um by sort of um creating a structure where they can come in and tell me what you do, where you work, how much you make. We'll tell you if you're underpaid, and then you so you're comparing this against a database

of that that job. That's yeah exactly. We use bureaulabor statistics data, we use our own data, we use public market data. And then you answer a few more and it generates a letter that you can give to your boss, basically laying out a like here's market here, open job postings in the area. Here's what I've done. Here's what I'm going to do, Like, here's how I provide business value. And that's been incredibly effective at getting women raises. Um and so two or three billion dollars so far. And

you guys take of that is it's all free. We have been speaking with Matt Walert, formally of Microsoft Ventures and a variety of other enterprises. Check out my daily column at Bloomberg dot com, slash View, or follow me on Twitter at rid Halts. I'm Barry rid Halts. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast. Matt. Thank you so much for for doing this.

Thank thanks for having me. It's been fun. Uh. We were talking during the break about the various names you have for startups get raised, salary or equity churn less, Thrive. Who creates these? You know? Uh so some of them. I remember exactly where it came from. Thrive was before my time. Um uh, Turnless. I actually was the CMO of Thrive. We were I remember having to treat with him. Any Drive was what was sold to lending treaty Mint. Yeah exactly. How is that the opposite? Because if you

go to Mint, you can't find a thrive tab. Is it just integrated and and mean I stand alone? Yeah, So they renamed it money right, and then I think shuttered it in one of their sort of is that the natural end game for all these acquisitions or are they really just aquahiers they want the engineering town. No. I think there was real product there. But I think you know what happened at a time, you know, when when the collapse came along, and I think, you know,

business had to reorient the they built. They built it, bought it primarily because we could show that we could raise people's credit scores substantially in a fairly short amount of times. So you get, yeah, you get credit score increases on the twenty to fifty point range in six months. And so their idea was, look, you know, a six hundred mortgage lead isn't worth nearly as much as a six fifty. Let's send our people who are not really

ready to you. You'll turn them around, get them ready, and then bring them back when they're when they're that's fascinating. What is churnalists? So journalists? This was so I actually it's one of the few names I actually really like. Uh And and it was and everybody knows what churn is. It's you go to Netflix. They added so many subscribers, but they lost so many. And so I was having a drink with the CMO of Thrive after the acquisition.

He had left to Thrive, and he and I were just talking, and you know, we were talking about what makes a good company good, and you know, I said, good companies their churnless, right, like, you know, no one ever has to leave because it meets their needs, right. And I was like, and that's how you employees that could be customers. I was like, you know that because I'm a behavior guy, right, and so you know, churn is the ultimate sort of like measure of behavior, right,

because it's literally am I gonna do it? Or not do it? And so I sort of was like, oh, really, good companies don't have turn and he was like, you should call your next company turnless. And I was like, all right, And we did and didn't have anything to do with reducing churning company. And so we were while we were building, you know, we built sort of behavioral interventions for lots of people. We built the AIRPS retirement tools, we built um um some various interventions around sort of

choice in in food and exercise and other things. And it was always about behavior, and so the idea really was to build interesting, sticky, behavior modifying things for the world. That's where get Raised. You know, we built that on the side while we were there, Right, it was building those sorts of things, and um, salary equity you went over that. So get Raised generates a letter which individual takes their boss sally equity is really just informational. Yeah,

there's the value of the offer you've gotten. Yeah. So then the net result of salary equity is basically taking the equity portion of your offer, and it gives you a sentence that says you should think you sort of think of this as like x number of dollars per year, right, So it'said. It basically takes into account investing um and sort of risk adjusted return and sort of breaks that into a yearly salary, so that if you're comparing, for example, a startup offer and a Microsoft offer, you can say

the equity component is worth blank. So here's the question I have to ask you. And I found this fascinating um in your bio. So you you keep saying I'm a behavior guy, I'm a psychologist. I'm behavioral psychology guy. But all the speeches I've seen you've given, most of the writings I've seen you've made, they invariably have a focus or at least an element of this, technology, this, startup, this.

And you said when I left Microsoft, I got far more recruiter inbound based on my background in startups and ventures than I did in behavioral science, despite being considerably better the ladder. So why is that, you know? I

think it goes back to this. I don't think companies are are There's a few companies out there looking for behavioral scientists, UM, but most of them I don't think I've woken up to the fact that they don't have teams and they need to write that this is going to be the sort of next way they're going to generate value in their business, both internally and externally. Uh. And so I think that's, you know, a part of what's behind that. I think I leaned towards um technology.

You know, technology when I meet with people, I built lots of things in the world that are not technology focused. They just you know, often their integrations into other programs, right, technology often build standalone things, and so they're easier to point to UM, and I know how to build them fast and cheap and come from that world, and so you know, it's natural that I gravitate there. But I

don't think it has to be technology. Right, We're talking earlier about the subway signs, Right, you know, I think putting up a sign in a Walmart line is not a you know, there's nothing tech about that. UM, it's just a you know, it's just it's a good behavioral intervention. Right, It's good behave real interventions. So there was something fascinating that I read that I have to ask you. You. I know, you do a lot of speaking gigs, but

you refuse to accept speaking fees. And just in the news was Obama being criticized for taking a four hundred thousand dollar speaking fee from a Wall Street firm. The rest of us, who are either in academia, authors, writing books, or just otherwise public figures, it's a lucrative side gig. You know, the greatest thing I could do during lunch is walk out of my office, walk three blocks, walk into a conference room, go blah blah blah for forty five minutes, pick up a check for grand and go

back to lunch. Why have you decided I'm not interested in taking speaking fees. I mean, I think what you choose to get paid for is really an important way of of how your approach life, right like you know, we are almost I don't disagree with you. Almost every everything that you could do is is potentially monetize herble right like almost you know? Okay, I mean listen, I speak it at nonprofits all the time. I don't charge them. I speak at universities. I've spoken at n y U,

at m I t at Harvard at Columbia. I never tried, even though Harvard is richer than you know, crotious. I never charge them a speaking fee because it's an educational thing. But if it's a conference where they're selling tickets and people are doing it for more than a break, even what why wouldn't you? And and by the way, there are things that other people get paid for that I've

elected not to get paid for. Plus it allows me to stay objective and neutral and except to reject what I want because it's what I want as opposed to going and earning a buck and to enjoy it, right, and to enjoy it, and I want to enjoy the spread of information. I think spreading information is incredibly important and I think you know, uh, the places that do that do Um, there's some places to sort of say, we want to pay you a speaker fee, and that's just part of how we work. So I asked them

to donate to a domestic violence shelter. So actually just came back from a passo yesterday where an agency had a fee structure and they donated to a domestic violence shelter on my behalf. Um, so so there are you know, sometimes it happens, but generally speaking, like, I think people should get paid for doing right unless unless the unless sharing knowledge is your job. Right Like if my job is a journalist, yeah, I get paid for that. Right. If your job is to be a speaker, get paid

for that. I just don't want my job to be being a speaker. I always want my job to be building things. So actually saying that changes what you will or won't accept, because now it's like, who do I want to talk to. I don't care about the salary. I don't care about this. It's oh, that's an audience I want to address wherever, and you know, and so I do you know, speak eternally. A lot of speaking engagements send them off to other people that that I

think would be better or more interesting. You know, I'll actually correct something you said earlier, refer to me as a cold and so I don't consult either, right, No, I only what is I believe in, you know, coming to get to change your mind, to how to get you to think differently about behavioral science. He's part of what's important to me in the world, and I think it generates a better world. And I want to do

it for as many people as I can. What I charge money for is coming in actually doing it, right. I want to get charged for the doing. I want to get paid on the things that I build, the implementation, the execution, because that's what matters. Because here's the thing about science, right, none of my ideas are original. They come from a long lineage of people before me. You're standing on the shoulders of giants, and many people will

stand on my shoulders after me. Right, there's this long and and if every one of those people like again, I like taking these to their sort of extremes because it makes me think of, you know, sort of thing differently about them. If all of those people before me had refused to share their information unless it was monetized,

I could never be where I am. There's a fascinating priceonmics article that talks about how hand and full of people have bought up the publishers of all the scientific journals and university UM peer reviewed things and they're charging absurd money for subscriptions and it's really crimping the exchange of ideas. That's something that should not be a for profit entity. Somebody should have had the forethought of buying it and putting it in the public sphere public domain, right.

I think that that, you know, that's the kind of like Mike Bloomberg sort of philanthropy kind of thing is buying up those rights. And I think sciencests responded appropriately, which is to say, we don't. We're gonna care less about those journals than we used to. We're gonna start

doing open science. There's a replicability product right like project like, we're starting to do these things that say no science should take place in public both because people draw conclusions from its stuff and it should be replicable and important, and because everyone should have access to those insights. I couldn't agree more. Um, you did a ted talk that I thought was really interesting about motivating people to do work worth doing. Yeah, explain. So there's this quote I

love from Teddy Roosevelt. Far and away, the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. Um And I think you know, I like money is meaningful, and I don't you know for anyone without it, they'll tell you how meaningful it. It's a tool that helps you achieve things that are useful in life. But there is certain but from a motivational perspective, what we see is meaning. Actually, you know, once you sort of surpass a certain level of money,

meaning is far more important. You know. One of the things I actually bring up in this talk that you know, I think illustrates this well is if you ask seniors in college you know what's important about your first job, that all say salaries, Like, salary is the most important feature. If you survey them a mere year into the job market, meaning has become the lead experience, meaning what they've learned. That's right, those things become the far more important piece. Right.

People get this very quickly. Um And I actually think that's one of the crisises of mental health in the United States is just how many people go to work and are miserable, disengaged, you know, sort of don't find meaning in their work. Um. This idea of meaning management, I actually think is really important. How do you go and say, you know? And I actually think there are interesting tech tools you could build. So imagine something like let's pretend you were a coder and you're far far

removed from the end user. Right, You're working at Microsoft, so it's it's not a small startup or something. You're far removed from the end user. What if I said to you, hey, did you know seven million people touched your code today? Right? What a powerful like you know, sort of motivating investment. And it's true, right, there's almost you know, almost everything that people do in the world,

Like for me, even the lowliest janitor. Like imagine if I could say, after you clean this hall, hey, did you know like ten thousand people walked this hall today? Right? Like that's an amazing just allowing people to see the echoes of what they do. Um, you know, and it goes into so many things. I mean, I think one of the points I make in this thing about sort of college students is we sell college to people as

as a financial thing. Right, we say the reason to go to college is to make more money, that's right, And it is to get a job. But what it's really about is to get a meaningful job. Right. What college allows you to do is to is to have the privilege of picking something that is important to you, right. Um, and so I think that that I love science fiction. Um, not just sort of on a personal entertainment level. But you know when I when product people come and tell me, like,

what do you I I habitually don't read nonfiction. I talk to people to learn things, and I read to learn about the world that emotionally, and so I read almost a totally fiction and I love and I love science fiction because science fiction is this clever thought of experiment of the world with limits removed, and it starts to get you thinking an interesting product direction you mentioned earlier. Um, you know, uh idiocracy, right, which I think is a

particular kind of vision of the world. But I think there's also a vision of the world that's very star Trek Like think about star Trek. The exist in a sort of post need world. We've been able we can synthesize matter out of energy, right, and so we've sort of surpassed basic human needs. And what do they do? Like do they sit on their couch and watch travel, travel the universe and explore That's right, Then they do amazing science and they build amazing art, and like, I

actually think that's the real thing. I think if you the big change of a post need world, there's a lot of people scared about what happens as as robots displaced jobs. What I think the really amazing part of that is that it frees up people to do other things. And the real dominant question is not how do we replace those jobs with with you know, so there other meaningless jobs, it's what do we do with the sheer amount of human potential that has now been unlocked? Right? Like,

how do we incorporate those people into science? How do we incorporate them into design? How do we incorporate them into other things that computers don't do well? Not just to sort of employ them, but because this is our shot at the future, right, how do we take the ten thousand people that got displaced by you know, sort of closing a factory and get them started thinking about greening the world. That that's interesting. Something else that came

up in one of your public speeches. Stayed with me. What do Eminem's tell us about human psychology? So people? Uh, I love this example, although I will tell you that that I'm going to find something different because the Mars people are like refused to give me free M and m's for life, which I think, after having mentioned it so many times, I ought to be able to get at least a package. Have you taken a speaking fee?

I know by my own right. So, so, the really powerful thing I think about Eminem's as a as a sort of metaphor for behavior change is that it shows how people focus on the wrong thing, right, you know, in terms of people really go think about creating new flavors, how delicious they are, etcetera. But the dominant thing that keeps me from eating M and m's all the time

is availability. Right, they're Eminem's right here. I'd be eating them right now, right, and so would you, right Like, it's that availability factor that is so interesting, And so you know, what people forget is mostly motivating reasons already exist. Right, let's go back to Let's use another kind of related example that the asking for a raised piece. Right, It's not like women don't want to get paid fairly. It's

not like I don't that Eminem's aren't delicious. The reason women don't ask is because it's hard, and there are systematic pressures that keep them from asking. The reason I don't eat eminem is because they're not here. There are systematic inhibiting pressures, and I think people don't. They're eminem's upstairs. We can pick we can pick them up on the way. This could happen and I might take some to go.

So the question is why do people eat more eminem's when they're multi colored than if you would have just put one color in a bowl. People actually less eminem's. Yeah, we love those that. We love that diversity of colors. You know, even though I don't think blindfold did anyone could tell the difference. There is no difference there. They'll

tell you there's no there's no taste difference. It's actually one of the things I always you know, when I try and jog people's mind with this, you know, I'm like, think about the fact that you have a favorite color of eminem. Any kid on earth will tell you what his favorite color color is, right, He's gonna She's gonna tell you, he's gonna tell you, I save the green ones for last because they're the best. Why the hell is the best? They don't taste any different than the

other ones, but they have a favorite color. And I think part of beaver science, the part of reason that beavirol science is so important in organizations, is because it embraces that irrational part of ourselves. The part that says it's not about how long in line I am in line, It's about how being in line feels right. The part that says it's not about the fact that the Eminem's don't taste different. I still have a favorite color. I'm you have to be familiar with the brown Eminem's and

the Van Halen Rider. Of course, I love the idea that that's a built in verifier of have have these persons actually gone through a full rider and done the full technology requirements that I want out of this and and brown Eminem's are relevant, but it's an instant check have they done it or not? Yes, it's a It's a great behavioral hack, and I think there's all sorts of those interesting kinds of behavioral hacks in the world.

I actually remember when I was a kid, you know how many people actually remember like lessons from sixth grade, like not many people. And I remember science class day one. Mr Mars I think was his name, was the science teacher, and he gave us our first set of experimental directions. And the first the first instruction was read these experiments these instructions completely before doing anything. And there were about ten steps and they was don't do anything at all.

And I had an exam like that, and I love that. I mean, I love it is stuck with me forever, right, and we'll stick with me forever. And I think that, And everybody gets to work my step, and most people don't follow the instructions. I think the last step was if you've done this step, quietly, fold your paper in half, bringing up to the classroom, and then you can leave

or or something like that. So all these people are working away that's right, And two or three people have walked out of the class and nobody understands it, right. Everybody looks them and thinks they're crazy. And I actually think that's I've never thought about it this way, but it's a good metaphor for why I think behavioral science is so important because it's outcome focused right. It doesn't just try and apply whatever the tool is righteologically through

these steps. It says, what happens if we break the rules, What happened if we get outside of these tools? What happens if we start with the outcome and then backwards? Huh, that's quite interesting. So let me get to some of my favorite questions. I'm gonna call you out for some bs that you said earlier. I'm gonna challenge you on some good challenge me. But let's let's let's plow this uh through us. So you told us about your background. You're working in in academic studying for your PhD. You

go to work at a startup before Microsoft. Give us a run off of your background quickly? What was your your path? So it was was thrived, We got acquired by lending Tree, then it was at landing Tree for a while, we broke out. We did uh churn lists, built a bunch of things sold that. UM came to Microsoft, did product at Microsoft, then ventures at Microsoft, and now I'm chief Dad. So that's your dad, officer. UM, tell us about some of your early mentors. You strike me

at somebody as somebody who has benefited greatly. Oh yeah, I mean I would not. I am a strong believer in mentorship. You know. I I think I'm a boy Scout, an Eagle Scout, and I think that boy Scouts had a profound effect on me, as having a Scout master had a profound effect on me. Um. You know I couldn't. I would be remissing. You know, Andrew warden Berry Schwartz both professors. It's worthmore. Barry obviously very famous for this sort of choice reduction stuff and all the Ted talks

and things. Um. Andrew Ward was the professor that I talked about earlier that said there's an orderly way to sort of approach disagreement in science, which is doing an experiment like that's your chance to disagree is to run to prove it, right. Um. And I think that that has had a profound impact on the rest of my life. Um. So you know, I think my parents were amazing role models. Um. In part, so my mom is a nurse and my dad works in durable medical quipment basically, um, wheelchairs. Mom

got her college agree right after I got mine. Um, so she she graduated. She was a foreign nurse forever. Uh. And and you know Dad didn't go to college. But they both are, you know, so smart and inquisitive, and and my house was a place where you know, I'll give a great example. The Oregans a ballot measure state. Right, So every year we get the ballot measures, and my parents would, from as far back as I can remember, five or six, we would have a family discussion about

what we all thought about the ballot measures. Really, and I was disagree, Like we were free to disagree. We were free to like sort of like they gave us the pamphlet and we were how many siblings in the house, just one brother eighteen months older, So the two of you and the parents debating Oregon ballot measures. Yeah, just talking about I just wrote a column on on Canada's marijuana initiative and trace the history of legal weed in America.

And everybody thinks it's California, but actually it's Oregon. It's like nineteen seventies six decriminalized medical marijuana, long before California did it. Yeah, sometime in the seventies, I don't remember the exacts. A fascinating sort of state, right in somewhat you know, everything east of the mountains is high desert, all sorts of kinds of people. It's both strangely sort

of like a hippie mecca but also very religious. Do you interesting you don't watch Silicon val I do watch Portlandia. So my joke, My joke is, you know, I thought it was a sitcom, but then I've been to Portland a few times and I learned it was a documentary. That's right, I mean it is. It is sort of eerily like home sometimes, and that's good and fascinating and interesting,

and I like that. Um. And the thing I really love about Oregon is you could sign in some ways, like Friday Night Lights is also a documentary Oregon absolutely right, Like it's about Texas, but you know, in many ways it's about Oregon, right, Like I came from a small town with the championship football team and they're a whole town shout up for games, and Origan is a microcos him up all sorts of different things, and and yet they've managed to live in relative sort of piece and harmony.

There's not a ton of acrimony. Um, it's a it's a very changing hasn't even though I know most of the people who have who are in like Portland's are relatively newcomers. Like everybody seems to be an immigrant. And what I find fascinating is Portland as a town that used to be a mill in mining town, and all these old buildings and factories have been wonderfully converted to restaurants and theaters and and you could see the rough hewn,

original exposed timbers. It's it's it's really fascinating. But isn't there now starting to be a little chafing about the gentrification? I think, Look, I think anytime in the crowds and and you guys are starting to get traffic out there, there's always going to be some chafing, right, Um, any time in a city that grows like I think that's inevitable, but grows like a weed. Like they are one of

the fastest growing cities in the country. I think Austin is first, and they might be second, a Seattle's second. They're up there, yeah, and and we don't have the infrastructure to support it. Um. But I think the thing that I love about Oregon, the thing I loved about growing up country is the chafing is like you can vehemently disagree with people and still come together for like dinner on Friday night. You know, it was that it's

that spirit of of disagreement but still respect. Yeah, neighborly compassion, right, Um, And I think that that, particularly at this era in American culture, that is so important. How do we disagree and still like love each other in an emotive and important way. Mayer Stateman at Santa Clara said he comes from Hebrew University of Jerusalem said the difference between Americans and Europeans and Israelis. In Europe they can disc they can have the political disagreement, but then put it aside

and go to dinner. The same in Israel. In the United States, people don't want to talk about the disagreement. They'd rather not have the debate and and then go to dinner. If they have the debate, it seems hackles gets raised and people get offended. But I I derailed you from mentors. Were there any other mentors I wanted? I mean, look, they were tons of you know, I close out on really saying, you know, my parents were

a key shaper for me. Um. You know, my father was fond of saying that my brother and I were his chance to change the world. He's sort of like, look, I didn't go to college. I don't have this sort of background. You guys are it, so you need to go be who you can be. And then that was company. So it was a strong sense of purpose coupled with a and whatever you end up being is okay, my mom, my mom. I think only a few years ago finally

stopped trying to convince me to come a nurse. You know here I have I'm an exited startup to done this thing. And she's like, you'd be a great nurse. Come back to Oregon, be a nurse. I'm like, I don't think I'm on that path, right They they part of the reason, you know, I don't charge for speaking and you know, take some of my income and build these pro social side projects and do all these things is because I had these parents who sort of said,

that's the stuff that matters. But that's really interesting. Tell us about some academics or others who influenced your approach to behavioral psychology. So you know, look, I I the nice thing about nice thing, the the interesting thing about being a real science and sort of the not modern you know, sort of application of behavior economics and some parts of judgment decision making. You know, we have the condiment Introversey. You know, we have these these iconic figures

who really have advanced the work. Um, you know Danna Rellie, who I'm lucky enough to sort of count as a friend. Like Predictably Irrational was one of my favorite books. I mean it's just Dan so full of insight and personal um, just the trauma with the burn Unite amazing. Yeah, I means so visceral. When you read it, it's like, oh, this stuff really matters. Yeah, it matters to him and and I mean it matters to think about how we just these little changes, what it means to someone going

through the burn Unit process. You could take someone in miserable pain and make their life appreciably better with a series of rational decisions. That's right shocking you and I. You know, I talked earlier about like why do I think GP Abril Officer is so important? And I sort of said, you know, I think it's about making all the rules. Everything is possible, any out we can reach, any outcome if we are willing to sort of take a step back and say every behavior is motivatable, if

we are willing to pull all of the levers. And I think what I love about Dan um is that. You know, he was one of those people that came out of the lab and said, no, there's an application for this. You know, we talked earlier about Tom Gilovich, Um who I think how we know it isn't so yeah, great hoth hand. You know, he's just a run in a bunch of amazing research. Um, he's sort of presage. I think he's sort of way ahead of everybody else. And and I think he's sort of pressage that I

was going to leave academia. I ravividly remember him calling me and saying, Hey, we love you at Cornell. We'd love to offer you this this interesting fellowship. We'd love for you to come. But you know, you keep saying applied psychology, and you know we're researchers, and you know, if what you care about in the world is applying psychology, you might not want to come into a graduate program.

And I think ultimately he was right. I got frustrated with just writing research papers because it wasn't moving the needle that I on it. And and I think Tom was really right, And I wish I had had known better how to listen to him at the time about Hey, I really needed to get out of the lab and that I was never going to be able to just do that, and and and so I think there's all these people. You know, that's one phone call from Tom Gillich, and he's given me lots of things. You know, by

the time I was a Cornelli's a great guy. But these little moments have big ripple effects. And so a lot of what what I think is important in mentorship is he's creating those moments, right taking the fifteen minutes to talk to somebody that you wouldn't normally talk to as an equal in an emotionally compassionate way, not to lecture them, but to to really engage with whatever is

very important to them. You know. I think at the temptation of many mentors is well, I have my stick, I have what I believe, and I'm just going to enforce that on other people. I think so much of what's important about mentorship, particularly in in our given the challenges that America faces right now, he's about saying, what do you want to accomplish? And then how can I help you get there. It's not about me judging your goals, are saying your goals are the right, goals are the wrong? Goals.

It's me saying whatever is important to you, I'm going to get behind helping you get there. Quite quite interesting. Um, I only have you for another ten or fifteen minutes. Let me get to some of my favorite questions. Tell us about failure, tell us about a time you failed and what you learned from the experience. Well, so you know, as I start pointed out to you earlier, everything I build as a failure, and that even when it's successful, it doesn't I recognize the thing I need to go

do next. Right, So get raised is really a reaction to thrive. So at thrive for example, successful company. But when I was looking at the data, so one of the components that really changed behavior there is we had a very clear, clear behavioral score and it had sub components. One of some components, for example, with savings, and I didn't want rich people to get a high score and poor people to get a low score. So I said, well, we're gonna do this is We're gonna remitting it's income.

So basically like savings. Yeah, percentage of your income that you save for ninety days, that's right, and so um, when you look at at saving as a percentage of income, women are actually significantly better savers than men. But the but the moment I took out the the income on a raw dollar basis, all of the men were doing

much better at Thrive. Why because they were getting paid better, right, And so here I was, we built this exitable, successful thing, and I felt like an idiot because I had only looked at what happened post paycheck, and that's really how to relative to the dollar amount. And so that's where I sort of got to get raised. Idea was we only did interventions post paycheck. What if we did something that it directly affected your paycheck? And so that's why

we built get Raised. At the next company, it was that, oh I screwed it up last time. Get Raised fantastic tool, two point three billion dollars and raises very successful. But there's many ways and things which I think I screwed it up. One of the important ones is it puts the burden on the disadvantaged. Right. It says to women, hey, you live in a world that is unfair to you.

You have to go do something about that, when really the onus is on men, right, Like, but you can get women to go to a site, fill out a couple of forms printed out and give it to their boss. You can't get their boss to go to a site and say, here's why you you are sexist in your pay practices. This is where I'm gonna challenge you. Okay, everything is changeable. I want to live in Some things are more changeable than others. Yes, so there is there's

certainly low hanging fruit that I am VMA agreement. There's get raised might have been the low hanging fruit. Here might have been the low hanging fruit. But I think what behavioral I think the whole point of behaviorl scientists to say, used to consider that as a thought question, what could I do to get a boss to be motivated to pay you fairly? Right? And we're going and thinking about those things like, for example, give you a

short answer to that. You now have a huge move towards e s G investing, environmental sustainable governance, and companies are now being ranked on what sort of diversification they have at their highest levels at their board, if their senior management. And it's an objective goal that hey, you're not meeting this, what do you what? You're here's a plan just as you could get raised. Here's how to get diversified or whatever it is, get retained right retentions,

and I like, let's do economic motivators. Forget the triple bottom line, will use your single bottom line. If you retain women, you make more money period period like turnover reduced high diversity. Like we know this, we can prove

it empirically. So hey, if I can get you to regularly evaluate women's salaries to make sure that they are comparative so that they don't leave you, Like, that's a good thing, and we can go build The next generation of tools that I'm building is actually, you know, I sold you every everything I build as a failure, and then that pumps the next It's an interesting life perspective. So it's not I'm going to change the language on you. It's not so much a fail you're as it is

a provisional step waiting the next hypothesis. It is incomplete. Science is perpetually incomplete. What's one of the things I love about it? And so the next set of tools that I'm building are actually focused on man. So here's where I'm gonna call BS on you. You said you read almost exclusively fiction, and yet I go to your website and there is Dan Arrowley's Predictably Irrational, Thinking Fast and Slow by Danny Kahneman, Stumbling on hop Happiness by

Gilbert paraps of Choice by Barry Shortz. Essentially all of the things that you recommend are explicitly nonfiction. Actually, if you go to the recommendation page, you will notice that there is a section for fiction, and I didn't. If you scroll down, I am recommending fiction books as well. So let's talk about some of your favorite fiction books. So, so, I, uh, it's funny the things that I are my favorites are

not necessarily things I read often. Right, I sort of said I read all of science fiction and things because I think it makes me a better product person. I love Blindness jose Saramago. Oh yeah, beautiful sad book. I will love a lot of Hemingway. You know what. I just read The Old Man in the City on a flight, and I was just I come back to, you know, to reread. I'm a big rereader of fiction, so I

tried because I'm what are you reading? Uh So, so what I've done over the last couple of years, Actually, what I've done over the last couple years actually is is I'll pick an author and read everything they've written, um, regardless of the quality. That regardless of the quality, because there are certain authors that, hey, you should read these three books. You don't want to read those three books,

that's right. But but what's interesting is even bad fiction teaches you something, right, Like, so I recently I would read through everything Stephen King had written, and there's some good stuff and some bad stuff some of his some stuff is bad. So the let me give you an example. And I'm gonna get nasty letters from people on this, and I, by the way, I know he's an immensely

talented guy. Misery is just astonishing. But I remember reading The Stand, which is like eight hundred pages, and then suddenly it's like he put the papers down for six months and then picked it up and just pivoted in a totally different direction. And I was like, oh, what a terrible thing to do to your readers. We were with you for eight hundred pages, and now it's like a different ending just slapped on. And I was kind

of the last Stephen King book I read. And so so I think that he certainly has a range of books from from what I think i've as probably even terrible, right, two very very good classics, amazing literature and and and even better movies very often. That's right. And and so reading the whole thing actually, like he's been writing for so long, you know, he stopped so good and so his prose is fantastic, his voice is unique. He's no for writing horror, but some of his non horror stuff

is amazing. Some of the movies stand by me. Other things. Yeah, I mean, that's that's just one of I read that book so long ago and it was just you forget it's Stephen King's right, I think green Mile. I mean, I think there's a bunch of things that people forget or Stephen King, but because they're because they don't get as much attention, they don't sell as much. Yeah, exactly, as you know all his horror stuff, that's right. Christine

was like it was a huge seller, that's right. And so and I think he even talks about that sort of commerciality and so reading so much of somebody, uh, you get to see like you know, when he got in a he got hit by a car very severely, almost died, um and which is what led to misery, and it just ship it was actually I think this is far after misery he sort of presaged his own life and sort of why am I thinking that? I

think missuries long before this. This is quite late in his career actually, um, and he stops writing for a while because it's very painful for him to write. And the stuff he produces then is dark. It's not horror, is just dark. He's clearly depressed. It is clearly bad and scary. And uh, I mean getting that sort of

that that long history is great, the old. I will admit that I broke my rule once, which was I started reading everything Cormick McCarthy has ever written, and I had to stop in the middle and take a break, because I will tell you, reading everything corm McCarthy has ever written with no breaks it tough. It makes you want to kill yourself. Every book is basically like, oh you care. He is like the he is the presage to get Game of Thrones. He's like, oh you care

about this? Great? Let me kill it, like, let me like just destroy it. From from from Cormac McCarthy. Uh, I think All the White Horses is pretty amazing. I mean, the road is obviously amazing. You mentioned you were a sci fi buff. You haven't talked really about any sci fi and that's what I I sort of said, like, none of the sci fi stuff really makes my favorite book list. Really, yeah, it's it's so interesting. My favorite

book list is very typecast. They're all very sad um right, like blindness is that they're just tragic and either something the tragedy stick with me. I guess really, I could give you a list to sci fi that's as good as anything else in there. And it's not that I got to cook for you that I bet you've never even read. It's a little esoteric call it out. So that's the other people read it too. I love it

dying inside. So the premise of the book is he's got a fairly robust set of e sp powers and as a kid he discovers this and he gets to reach out and do all these things with his ability to read minds and shells. It's not Shell Silverstein. It's something dance. So the name will come to me. And as he gets older, as he goes through colleges, the ability fades and loses it. And it's a giant metaphor, of course. But it's a wonderful book, and you, of

all people would really appreciate it. I'm going to do it. I'm definitely gonna recommend that we're running out of time. I got to get to my last two questions, my favorite questions. First, you work with a lot of young tech people, a lot of millennials college do. What sort of advice would you give someone who came to you and said, hey, I'm starting my career. I'm interested in

either behavioral, behavioral psychology or technology startups. I mean, the device I always give people is you want to think into your chunks. I think people are very bad year chunk. Yeah, I don't. I think people are very bad. So so the metaphor I always use is orienteering. Are you familiar with It's like longteering support is a weird country person sport. It's a race, but it's a race from nowhere to nowhere.

So you like, go out in the woods. You dropped off at point A, and they're like, here's a map in a compass, get to point B. But there's no path, right, It's not like there's our course you rise on. And so a lot of what we teach people today metaphorically is to sort of take out the map and compass and then walk to point B right in the most efficient possible way. And I think the right answer, and the way you actually win at orienteering is to say,

I know B is over there. I'm gonna run in that direction until I'm no longer sure I'm going in the right direction, and then I'm gonna stop and take on my map and compass, take a point run, take a point run, and actually think careers work best this way. I know, if you look at my career right, I've done all sorts of very different stuff, and yet when you look back at it, all sounds like a story

because it's all been united by common values. I know I want to change things for large groups of people. I know that it's about empowering people at the bottom of the pyramid, not the top. And and so because I have those values, that's my point B. And every two years I basically look up and say, am I still honoring those values? And then I pivot based on

how do I question our last question? What is it that you know about startup venture behavioral psychology today that you wish you knew fifteen years or so ago when you were coming out of school. I will go back to what I've said a couple of times through this program. Everything is on the table right the sooner you get to the place and you say, there's nothing I can't challenge. There's no rules that we can't reconfigure, like start from the design from the world as you want it to be,

and then work backwards. That's quite fascinating. We have been speaking with Matt Wallert, formally director at Microsoft Ventures and a a co founder or CEO of a number of successful startups. If you have enjoyed this conversation, be sure and look upward down a few inches on iTunes, SoundCloud or Bloomberg dot com and you could see any of the other hundred and fifty or so such conversations that

we've put together over the past three years. I would be remiss if I did not remind you that we love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I must thank my head of research, Michael bat Nick. Taylor Riggs is my booker producer, and Medina Parwana is my ACE recording engineer. I'm Barry Hults. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.