Interview with Timothy Wu, Head of Growth at Nearside

Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m your host, Shane Barker, and we have with us Timothy Wu, the head of growth at Nearside, a platform that provides software and financial services to SMBs. Nearside was formerly called Hatch, but they recently rebranded themselves. We’re still using the old name in the conversation, but really we’re talking about Nearside. In this episode, we’re going to talk about the company and how they’re helping small businesses sort out their finances. If you need help growing your online presence for your small business, please reach out to my team at shanebarker.com. We’re here to help with content marketing, influencer marketing, website optimization, and more. For more information, check out my website, shanebarker.com.

Hey guys, what’s going on? We have Shane Barker here with the Marketing Growth Podcast, and we have Tim Wu from Hatch today. I’m excited to have you. We were talking about this before we jumped on; between your busy schedule and mine, traveling and all the fun stuff, it’s sometimes difficult to get together, but the moons aligned, and here we are today. I’m excited about chatting with you. Tim, how are you doing?

Well, you guys have something interesting, man. You got a nice background of working at Square, and now you’re over here at Hatch, and you guys have developed something I think is, when it comes to businesses—and I’ve worked with a lot of them, small, medium sized businesses—understanding having your banking card or your bank do more than just hold your money is kind of what we’re looking at here with hatch.

I don’t want to give away too much of the awesome stuff that you guys have created there yet, and that’ll be a little later on in the podcast. What I like to do is start things off and get to know a little bit more about my guests. Tell us a little bit more about Tim. Where did you grow up?

So how was it in San Diego? How is it when it goes from 80 to 81 degrees? How do you guys handle that up there? When that one degree change, when you guys have the season change, is that difficult, huh? I mean, it’s got to be a struggle.

Yeah, San Diego is beautiful. I try to get out there as much as possible. I’m in Sacramento. Sacramento, the weather’s not bad here, but, yeah, it’s pretty comparable, for sure. And then obviously, went to UCLA. I used to teach at UCLA, I touch a personal branding and how to be an influencer, course. So we got a little Bruins action there. So that’s good. We’re already starting off real strong. Who knew that was going to be the background.

But how big was your family growing up?

Yeah, that’s awesome. So is that a cultural thing? I know a lot of times you keep the family real close, and is it really tight knit families?

Which is awesome to me. That’s the way it should be, right? I mean, it’s a family unit. You hear too many horror stories when you have somebody else watching your kids, then all of a sudden something happens. You’re oh man, especially, it’s expensive too, right? So make it be and it’s nice to have the family unit. I was in school in Costa Rica, which is a whole nother story, but there were three generations there. I had grandma, her son, plus his wife, and then they had a daughter. So there were three generations in the family. But you could tell how close the family was. They instantly brought me in, and so I do love that. Culturally, I think it’s really awesome to have your family that close once again. I think probably as a kid the thing of this is kind of cool, but you’re, God, this is, it’s kind of hard because everybody’s here, but I think later on you realize there’s some value in what grandma brought—probably it was part of the reason for who you are today, not only because of your parents, but obviously grandma had some good quotes and some other things that helped mold Tim into who he is today. So that’s awesome.

So yeah, I love that. I think that’s awesome. And where do you currently live? Where you at now?

So it’s the new way of doing things, right? I think people were always looking at it anyways—between Basecamp and some books that came out. My team’s always been remote, so when COVID hit for us it was from Tuesday to Wednesday. We didn’t have to break up the office and figure out who was going to do what. We already had Slack going and all the channels to make sure that communication was there.

That’s awesome. I love that fact. Now you can go anywhere. That’s cool. It’s always an added bonus. I think that’s going to be a new perk for businesses or companies saying, “Hey, listen, we don’t have a problem as long as you’re getting your work done and making shaking hands and kissing babies and making things happen, and then we’re good there.”

So where did you go to college? You go to college in San Diego as well? (Oh no. UCLA.)Yeah, gotcha. And what was your major there?

I always ask people about their degrees because it’s interesting. There wasn’t really growth—you might think growth was happening, but we didn’t use terms like growth strategy or learning how to do growth until later. I was intrigued by where someone starts off and where they end up. You wanted to do law, then you ended up answering bankruptcy calls and thought maybe it wasn’t what you were looking for. In law there are probably better options, so you jumped into growth.

So how did this whole workshop? I want to talk to you about being head of growth at Hatch and what you have going on. How did you get the job at Hatch? What piqued your interest? You have a background at Square—you were there for almost four years and went through different roles. What drew you to Hatch? Why did you join?

The first one didn’t do too bad. Last time I checked, you got bought by Square, and that’s awesome. I love the startup thing. I mean, Square—I’ve heard nothing but good things about them. I do think there’s something about startup energy, and also having successes in the—so you kind of know when it comes to leadership and stuff.

I think the big thing you touched on is that at Square you start to see things differently. When you’re dealing with small businesses, you start to understand their struggles. Then you looked at Hatch and said, wait, this is a solution. This is something that I think is important, because we’re used to banking being very archaic—you put your money in an account and that’s it. But your money should be working for you. There should be ways to make it work for yourself, not just for the bank. How do you make your money work better for you? That’s what we’ll touch on today.

I’m excited to know a little bit more about Hatch. We’re gonna wait just a little bit—we’re sneaking up on the good stuff here in a minute. So how big is Hatch right now? How big is the company?

That’s awesome. Hiring was so interesting. There were so many challenges because I work with a lot of small businesses. They started getting more people in the door and business starts to go again, and they can’t find anybody. I just need somebody with a heartbeat, which isn’t a great requirement. But at the end of the day, it was difficult. A lot of talent just seemed not to be out there. Now we’re starting to see some sneak back in. Unemployment isn’t happening anymore, so people are getting ready to get back out and into the work scene.

Let’s talk about small businesses and what you’ve created and how you help them. I think that’s what intrigued me to interview you: what you’re doing and how it’s very different, once again, from a typical banking situation. Talk to me a little bit about what you do to help small businesses save money.

So yeah, I love that because I think that’s what the gig economy is—and with, once again, whatever that entails—those people kind of get lost a little bit. They’re a small business, but they potentially aren’t if they’re not making a certain amount or if they don’t have their EIN number. But there’s still a business. I mean, they’re obviously trading their time for money. So I love the fact that you guys are saying, Hey, I understand the typical model of small businesses, what we define them as. But really what you guys are saying is, Hey, we’re here to help everybody. If you’re trading your time for money, if you’re doing something like that, then you’re a business, and we’re here to help support you guys in that and give you guys access to whatever it is—the cards and the other stuff. I think we’ll probably touch on that a little bit.

So what would you say? I guess my question for you, in regards to Hatch, is how is it different than other digital banks for small businesses? What kind of differentiator do you guys have? There’s got to be a reason why you jumped from Square to this. You said, Okay, this is it—they’re doing something really cool.

So I think that makes total sense because the gig economy is huge and only going to get bigger. There’s going to be more people stuck in that middle area where they’re not quite established but definitely more than just starting. Hey, we’ve got something going there, and the fact that you guys want to cater to them is great.

As you said, with Square, they integrated into businesses, then started offering loans and more, all starting from a little reader. I can see you guys doing something similar. You guys will go in there and help develop their business so it’s not just a weekend side hustle but a full‑time venture, and you guys can use some of your suite of services. You’ll always have that loyalty because you guys helped them go from a side hustle to what we all want: being entrepreneurs.

I just read stats—millions of people are quitting their jobs to do their own thing. COVID forced people to think maybe they could do this, maybe there’s something there. You guys are taking care of those people, helping them make the jump from full‑time employment to a long‑term venture. I love that you guys are serving a market in dire need and that you guys saw that opportunity.

So what’s your end game at Hatch? Is there a bigger vision? Do you guys want to buy Square one day? What’s the goal?

Thanks listeners. I hope this helped you learn how nearsight is helping businesses serve their customers better and how you can make the most of their services.

On my next episode, we’ll talk in more detail about customer experience and how to tackle feedback well. So stay tuned for the Marketing Growth Podcast.