gm,

As many of you know, I’ve been spending an increasing amount of my free time exploring the world of web3. After writing this “whole cryptocurrency thing” off as a bubble and/or scam in 2017, I used the extra time I found early in the pandemic to reassess that conclusion. They say there’s no zealot like a convert and since my conversion, it’s become increasingly clear to me that web3 is where the world is headed, and thus where I should be spending my time.

I joined Upstart in 2014 without much of a plan beyond “this company has an amazing mission and some of the best people I’ve ever met so we need to pack up the car, drive to California, and figure all the other life stuff out when we get there.“ Although I wouldn’t be so bold as to claim I’ve figured out the “life stuff”, the “amazing mission” and “best people” remain as true today as they were 8 years ago.

I hadn’t distilled it at the time, but by extending access to credit, Upstart was providing freedom to millions who’d never had the opportunity to enjoy it before. Freedom to opt out of the broken system with all the biases, inefficiencies, and regulatory capture that had held large swathes of the population back for a long time. This became especially apparent to me after negative experiences those I love had with the traditional credit system. My father, who literally built the house I grew up in with his bare hands in rural Ohio and only paid cash for things, couldn’t get a credit card in his 60s due to lack of credit history. Along similar lines my wife, an immigrant, could only get a $500 secured card despite being well on her way to having a PhD. In both cases, it was clear to me that a smarter credit model would understand that they are more than just a score.

It’s been incredible to see our machine learning models evolve from those early days with none of our own data to the sophisticated powerhouses you all continue to build today. It’s been a truly humbling experience to get to work alongside such amazing people with so much to teach me about machine learning and life in general.

With that, I’m excited to let you know about the new role I’ll be taking on: leading Upstart’s cryptocurrency efforts. While there are tons of details, roadmaps, etc. to be figured out and shared later, allow me to start with two things I believe that make me unreasonably excited about this opportunity:

• The blockchain is the most powerful technology for freedom since the printing press, and we are likely to be on the precipice of another reformation/renaissance. If When we execute on this crypto initiative, we will provide opportunities to billions of people to enjoy freedoms that don’t exist today.

• There is an incredible opportunity for our ML models and blockchain data to be greater than the sum of their parts -- I might say “synergy” if I didn’t detest the word so much. I’m excited to leverage my experience working with you over these past 7.5 years to ensure the future crypto team and I understand your needs as a customer.

I should also address the timing here -- there is a lot of change within ML right now and we face macro headwinds that could make the waters pretty choppy for a bit. Rest assured that this transition has been underway for the better part of 9 months now (even before that time I visited Paul in Miami, the crypto capital of the U.S.) and we’ve tried to be as thoughtful as possible. I want to emphasize that rather than being worried about what comes next for the team as we face these headwinds, I’m honestly getting a little bit of FOMO -- just like past turbulence, the next few months will be difficult and require our team to stretch, but we will come out the other side having further demonstrated the superiority of our approach to traditional lending. Anybody can do this lending thing in an easy macro environment!

On the Columbus office front, Rachael and her team have been doing all the heavy lifting that makes the Columbus office special for years now, joining Becca’s org more recently. For the residual public-facing work, Alex will take over as our office lead. I’m excited to see him leave his mark on our HQ2 and take Upstart Cbus to the next level!

Upstart’s crypto efforts will be a marathon, not a sprint, so I plan to stop and catch my breath for a few months before jumping into this new role headfirst. Starting July 5th, I’ll be off the grid, reading and learning, spending time with my wife and kids, and running a series of physical and mental experiments on myself.

I look forward to continuing to watch the awesome things you all build, albeit from a different vantage point within the company.

lfg, wagmi, and lgtm,

Grant