FoundHER Making Financial Expertise Accessible

“People who work really hard for their money and have to make trade offs at the end of the month deserve best in class information on how they can achieve their goals—how can they live a better life given what they have, regardless of what that amount is.” - Ana Mahony

Ana Mahony is the Founder and CEO of Addition Wealth, a company dedicated to making personalized financial expertise inclusive and accessible for all employees. Working with forward-thinking companies, Addition provides employees with digital tools and access to financial professionals so that employees can navigate financial decisions with confidence. 

Ana built her career in consumer finance, working in the private sector as well as at the CFPB, before joining Uber in 2014. Ana spent 6 years at Uber in the Rides and Eats businesses, most recently leading the Eats US Cities team.

Ana is passionate about consumer finance, technology and building diverse teams. She’s been recognized by FT Partners as a Rising Star in FinTech and by NYC Women in FinTech as one of the most Inspiring Female Founders. 

Ana holds a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School and lives in New York City with her husband and two young sons. 

Throughout your career, how have female mentors supported you and your aspirations? 

I've had both female and male mentors support me and my efforts, and they came in a few flavors. I worked early in my career for a very successful woman, and it was inspiring to see the barriers she had overcome. It was great to learn how she operated and the tricks she imparted when she faced challenges earlier in her career. I also believe women can keep an eye out for other women and make sure equality is ensured. 

The second flavor is having a strong group of female peers to turn to. I have a great group of female friends, particularly from my business school class, and we constantly chat about it: How do you face this type of challenge? How are you balancing different growth in your career? How are you thinking about family work versus actual work? What are all the tips and strategies you have for succeeding at work and at home? 

And so, while they're not necessarily technical mentors, they're an extremely important support group that can act as people who inspire you, give you support, and help you succeed along the way.

We know you've held several exciting positions, from working at Uber to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. What advice can you offer undergrad students who are uncertain about what career or company is right for them? 

When you graduate, there can be pressure to find the perfect job, succeed, stay in it, and show long-term commitment to that organization. I had a number of different jobs early in my career to the point where sometimes I felt like, “Oh no, do I look like I'm too much of a job hopper?” However,  experiencing different types of jobs, work cultures, and skills in varying roles helped me understand what I like and want to do versus not want to do and what I am good at versus what I am less good at. So my first piece of advice would be: don't put so much pressure on yourself to have it figured out in the first job.

Experiencing broad variety and learning more about yourself can provide a fantastic baseline for your future. So, give yourself the flexibility to do that. And the second thing is: think about what you like —not what you should be doing but what you enjoy. 

How do you want to contribute? What are the problems you care about? My parents said to me very early on: you will spend many hours of your life working, so you should find something you enjoy doing so that you can be a satisfied person. And I think they’re right. The people I've seen who are successful in what they do also really enjoy what they're doing. It enables them to thrive. People who are capable and work hard will succeed—even if it's not obvious from day one. 

When did you start looking for internships and real world experience?

I was a lot less prepared than others. I believe my first internship was the summer after I graduated from undergrad. And that was really an exploration internship. So, if you can do things in undergrad, that’s great, but there are also opportunities later on to try out new experiences and find your interests. 

Someone I worked with at Uber did this interesting thing where after being accepted into an MBA program, she actually quit her job in January instead of June. She then spent those six months doing two part-time jobs. And so she essentially had two pre-MBA six month internships - working with both a startup and a VC fund. It was a clever, yet less traditional way of getting two more job experiences and sets of exposure to understand what she liked.

The fintech world and market have become increasingly competitive over the last couple of years. As a new business/service provider, what do you think was the main distinguisher that allowed Addition Wealth to stand out from competitors? 

We provide a very high-quality offering for the companies and employees we work with.

We put an employee-centric experience at the core of what we're doing. So we're not selling any financial products. We're not trying to upsell people on fees. We are in the business of providing personalized financial expertise, which is very different from what you tend to find in the market where people will give you a bit of education with the aim of trying to sell you a product.

We want to help people do what is right for them. And so that's a key differentiator in our offering. 

When looking for new individuals to join Addition's network of financial professionals, what are the main traits or experiences you look for in prospective candidates? 

We look for individuals who have solid experiences and high-quality engagements, as well as those who are personable with clients, and, overall, just have a great background.

Do you typically hire people with a lot of experience, or have you ever hired people fresh out of undergrad? 

On our financial advisor network, we hire experienced folks. We don't hire people straight out of undergrad to meet one-on-one with individuals to share financial expertise. But on our company side, we have more flexibility with roles in tech, product, operations, marketing, etc at all levels of experience.

How has the transition from working for a company to launching your own business been, and what has been your most important lesson from becoming an entrepreneur? 

The biggest lesson has been that the hardest part is deciding to start a business.

It’s a big, risky undertaking, but once you're on the other side, you're just working through the problems of, “Okay, what do I need to get done in the next three months? What is the next milestone to achieve? What is the best way to achieve it?” I would love to see more people, especially women, have the confidence to start their own companies. But sometimes, it's the confidence of “Can I do this?” that's the biggest barrier. And I know for me, it took me a few years to get the nerve to do it. 

The other thing is you have to have a lot of grit. Starting a company is not for the faint of heart. There are a lot of no's alongside the yes's, losses alongside the wins. And so you have to be committed enough to continue getting up every day and finding the way through to the next milestone.

Addition Wealth is currently focused and based in New York. Do you have plans to extend your network to other countries? And if so, how will you achieve this? 

We're a remote company, and our headquarter is in New York, but we have employees all over the place.  Our offering today is live in several different countries, and our network of financial professionals expands to those locations. We’re always growing into new countries based on the demand we see in market, so we’re actively launching in new regions as well. 

You've talked about the importance of culture at Addition Wealth, so how would you describe your ideal work culture?

My favorite work cultures are where you're working with super capable, hard working people. Everyone is really jazzed about the problem that we're working towards, so you have this virtuous cycle of great people producing great work that you can celebrate and have a lot of fun along the way. It’s amazing to work on a successful product run by really awesome people!

Was there a specific moment or experience that led you to found Addition Wealth? And what did you learn from this experience? 

I've always felt that more people deserve access to really high caliber and personalized financial expertise.

We live in a world where the best in class wealth management is largely limited to wealthy people. I simply don't believe it should be the case. It shouldn't be that those who have the most can better stretch the value of each next dollar. 

People who work really hard for their money and have to make trade offs at the end of the month deserve best in class information on how they can achieve their goals—how can they live a better life given what they have, regardless of what that amount is.

So for me, I have always been mission driven in what we're working to accomplish. 

Five years from now, where would you like to see yourself? And where would you like to see Addition Wealth? 

Me personally? It's a hard question.

Still doing what I'm doing today, and feeling really great about the set of solutions and impact that we're having with employees. 

I was at an employee benefits fair last year and somebody came up to our table and said, “I never dreamed of owning my own house, but through planning with one of your advisors, I now have achieved that mission.” We get a lot of testimonials like that. 

Yesterday, I was reading a quote from someone who was saying they had a lot of anxiety because their student loan rates were going up and they were able to work out a debt payment plan and a refinancing structure through the offering we have that put them on the best path forward. The quote was basically, “it's not that I no longer have debt, but now I know that I'm on track for where I am and my anxiety has gone down and I can better focus on other things in my life.” 

Those types of impacts are so meaningful and I really want to be able to have them with many more people because when you are stressed about your finances, it can then go into other parts of your life.

And so I would love to continue running  a successful company where we're able to have that type of impact on everyday people. 

Quick Takes

What are your top financial tips for undergrad students?

When you start a job, I think it's so important—and this is very hard to do from day one—but be able to save enough money so that you can walk away from a job if you don't like it. 

There are lots of people who get into a job and it can even be a high paying job, and they make their expenses match their income. What that means is even if you're unhappy, you can't really leave that job or it's tricky because you gotta find another job first. 

I would say build out a savings if and when you can, so that if you're in a job that you don't like, you can afford to step away and find something else. Or, even if you choose not to do that, just knowing that you can, I think, enables you to operate differently as a confident human being in the workplace.

As an entrepreneur, what are your go to self care practices?

I like spending time with my kids. They really take me out of whatever it is that I'm doing as they live in a completely different world. They offer me a break from all the things that I need to be doing or haven't done or could be going better. Their little smiles have totally different sets of concerns.

It puts me in a happy place and moves me away from whatever might be stressing me out that day. 

 Who is your female business role model?

I love this question because for many years, I was really searching for who is my role model.

I struggled because I never found this perfect person. So, at one point, I kind of shifted to seeing different people in their jobs and saying, okay, for this person, what can I learn from them that they do very well? Because nobody is really perfect. And I think if you try to put them on that pedestal, it can seem too hard to have somebody to follow.

Now, what I do instead is I really pay attention to, in general, women who are successful in their jobs. Then I try to understand what is it that has made them successful and how can I learn from that? How can I apply it to my everyday life? 

I have a couple of friends that had started businesses a few years ahead of me and they were moms with young kids. And so I looked for people who were a few steps ahead and found great role models there. 

I sat my friend down and asked, “What are the tactics in your life that you employ to make this possible?”  That shifted me from an open question of, “Is this even possible?” 

That was very powerful because sometimes you see these people who do very well, but you don't know on the back end what support structures and financing is helping them do this.