Yieldstreet Spotlight: An Interview with Lindsey Fielding, Vice President of Growth
by Jena Leibowitz | EMAIL MARKETING
We are thrilled to present the fourth installment of Oxpecker and Impala, our YieldStreet interview series. These talks will help you get to know us better as a company, our values, and what makes us tick. See Part I with our CTO here, Part II with our General Counsel here, and Part III with our Head of Origination here.
Today we sit down with Lindsey Fielding, Vice President of Growth.
What were you like as a kid? I grew up in Canada in the cold winters of southwestern Ontario. I was always extremely curious and loved learning, especially school. I was always asking questions to understand why things happen and how they work. How did you get involved with YieldStreet? Coming from a psychology background, this is a very interesting industry. Macro-economic trends show that people have traditionally made terrible decisions around investing and managing their finances—most haven’t saved enough. To make matters worse, traditional finance has done a poor job of relating to the consumer. They’re very opaque, treating consumers like they’re incompetent and need hand holding. These factors create a perfect storm for a dysfunctional system—and as I see it, things definitely aren’t working. What was intriguing to me about fintech specifically is that it came in and said, “I care about the user experience. Let’s be transparent. We want to open up new avenues.” It was exciting to think about how you can take something like investing, which is typically almost a taboo topic and make it something that’s intriguing, exciting, and engaging—something that people would want to talk about or mark on their calendar. YieldStreet was and still is the only company doing exactly what we do. The company’s unique value proposition was really attractive to me. That, and I really believe in the company mission and founders. I joined when YieldStreet was only five people—I came on board based on their whole vision and business plan. Where do you see YieldStreet in the next three years? YieldStreet has always been and will continue to develop an investor-first approach. When we think about building the company and our product set, we’re always thinking about what is actually best for the investors who put their faith and trust in the company. We take that incredibly seriously and we want investors to be able to generate wealth in their portfolio. As we look ahead, we see YieldStreet becoming a platform that addresses a number of needs in wealth-tech. We’ll continue to expand to new audiences, with new product sets, which allow as many people as possible to access new wealth creation opportunities. What do you think YieldStreet needs accomplish to be successful in the future? We’re proud of the fact that we operate in an entirely white space, so it’s our opportunity to lose. We’re offering something new and not iterating on existing product, like you might see with a robo advisor, as an example. While that’s very exciting, it requires a level of education and awareness-building from the brand and company. We’ve really tried to focus on providing that needed level of transparency, education, and resources for investors to become familiar with what we’re doing. We want to help investors to become truly comfortable in making investing decisions that are right for them. We’ve had a chance to do just that—specifically with our introduction of marine finance. We believe that we’re the only platform that’s ever offered this asset class to retail investors. In less than a year, marine finance has gone from a new asset class to our most popular asset classes. What do you like most about YieldStreet? I like the big picture that we’re tackling. I really believe in that vision. When you look at an average investor’s journey, the overwhelming majority never really have an opportunity to get ahead. Few investors, even when they’re doing everything right, can access true wealth generation from fixed income products. That’s a big problem. Institutional investors have large portions allocated to alternatives, yet the average investor’s portfolio typically has no alternatives. That, in our opinion, shouldn’t be the case. We want people to have more options beyond the stock market, and I love that we can give our investor base that peace of mind. It’s rewarding to see the level of enthusiasm and engagement from our investor base. We’re seeing investors making multiple investments and maintaining their portfolio for a multi-year period. It’s exciting to see the investments sell out so quickly and hear stories directly from investors about the difference we’re making for them. All of that feedback fuels us and tells us that we’re on the right track. We want to continue to make our impact larger and larger. What excites you most about YieldStreet’s future? If I think about YieldStreet in 5 years, I’d love to walk down Fifth Avenue (where our office is located) and have the majority of people answer “YieldStreet” when I ask them what wealth management platform they’re using. I think we have the ability to make a large and lasting impact on the industry. What are you reading/watching/listening to for fun and for work?
The Alchemist
I loved this book’s message of pursuing your own path and finding meaning in life.
The Art of Choosing
This book was important because it helped me understand how and why people are choosing our investments.
How I Built This
This podcast has a variety of great stories about how entrepreneurs hustle.
The Knowledge Project
Shane Parrish has interesting people and his interviews go really deep. It’s about higher level thinking and tackling problems.Published:
01/31/2019
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