This Is How You Disrupt An Industry

Forbes

Arad Levertov is CEO and Co-founder of Sunbit, which empowers millions of people to manage life’s expenses by creating better ways to pay.

There’s always been a lot of talk in fintech about disruption. But real disruption doesn’t come from just adding features or tweaking existing products. It’s about delivering fundamentally transformative products that shake up the status quo. Getting there involves a shift in the way companies traditionally build their businesses.

The Road To 10x Better: It’s Not About The Money

Most financial services companies set out with the primary goal of making money or demonstrating year-over-year growth. And while your company needs to be really financially healthy to have a sustainable business, and to serve as many customers as you want to, I’d argue that you have to start with a different kind of “why.” I believe that you need to start by truly identifying with the struggles and pain points of your customers and having a real passion for delivering real value by offering the best solutions for them.

Real value doesn’t just come from tweaking an existing solution and making it marginally better over time. True disruption isn’t just “good enough”; it must be groundbreaking, delivering solutions that are drastically—at least 10x, in my opinion—better than what’s currently available. Financing can be cumbersome and time-consuming, and there are economic and emotional barriers to exploring new options. These high switching costs demand that a new solution be meaningfully impactful to be adopted.

Once you’ve seen the world through the customer’s lens, apply your company’s talents and resources toward alleviating those pain points. This is where innovation shines: Think beyond what even your typical customer does.

For instance, customers have been trained by the status quo to accept hidden and late fees as a fact of life. At Sunbit, when we introduced our products, we made sure that there were no fees of any sort—and that was a step-change for the industry, and likely in part why so many people who are offered Sunbit take it.

Easier Said Than Done

The road to 10x is littered with challenges, so it certainly isn’t easy. If you build solutions that are hyper-customer-centric, it’s likely that in the short term, you’re leaving some money on the table. From a revenue standpoint, if we charged fees, we’re likely to have still been able to attract the same customers since they probably expected the fees anyway. But the 10x point of view means that you’re working to create what’s best for the customer—and that means that you’ll need to be more efficient to stay financially healthy.

That’s a positive forcing mechanism overall. It forces companies to be more creative. It makes them think through the smartest ways to leverage technology and set up operations so that there are efficiencies that allow them to serve customers the right way. And ultimately, that makes for stronger businesses.

The Long-Term View

Relationships—even customer relationships—require sacrifice, and in the short term, that may require harder work for your business. If you stay true to your North Star—your belief in serving your customers in the best way possible—then in the long term, you’ll be repaid with growth. But growth is a reward that can lead to its own challenges.

As a company moves from innovator to market leader, as more employees join and decisions become more distributed, it can be easy to cut corners finding easy ways to generate revenue. Maybe it’s in customer service at first, or charging more fees or approving fewer people. Those are called shortcuts. And they are also evidence of losing sight of what matters most: your customers. When 62% of Americans say that deferred interest should be illegal, you should listen. Complacency will cost you customers when better offerings appear that are centered around their needs.

It’s critical not to lose sight of that North Star. Remember the “why” that you had when the company started and the mission to serve customers by relieving their pain points. If you treat your customers like a number, instead of a person that you are there to serve, they’ll respond accordingly.

You’ll likely see the long-term rewards in the form of growth, loyalty and financials. You’ll likely see a strong net promoter score and grateful customer reviews. When you invest first in your customers, they’ll return the favor in the long run by investing in your business by choosing you.