Dom is an entrepreneur and technologist who co-founded Up, a next-generation Australian digital bank delivering super powered banking. Dom has been involved in software, web and mobile development for over 20 years from start-ups to global enterprises in Australia, the UK, the USA and throughout Asia.
Up were the first neo-bank to launch in Australia in October 2018 and have already amassed over 200,000 customers.
Dom's website: http://dompym.com/
Verbatim from the transcripts — each quote links to the moment.
“I actually ask the question, I turn it around the other way and ask people all the time, tell me a bank that you know of in the world that's good at technology.”
“So it wasn't like a deliberate decision, hey, let's design a cool bank. It was actually just a cool bank came out of what we were doing.”
“It's out of control, isn't it? It's hard to imagine that like money's being sent around digitally.”
“It takes a bit of gall to stand up and go, we can do this better than 200-year-old institutions that employ tens of thousands of people and that have billions of dollars.”
“We don't want to mess that up. I'll probably use some swear words, but you know, we didn't want to stuff it up.”
“I think that it's lazy. I'm not picking on you, but it's lazy to say that America are crap at all this. They're not.”
“For me, it's about people and helping those people... the passion is more interesting than the idea, I guess.”
What does it take to successfully disrupt a legacy industry like banking?
Pym says success requires both curiosity (the willingness to ask 'could we build this better?') and confidence (the guts to stand up against 200-year-old institutions with billions of dollars), a lesson he says he learned as a kid from hearing Dr. Karl on Triple J.
Should a digital-first business compete purely on being the cheapest or having no fees?
Pym warns that digital challengers who differentiate solely on price (no fees, best rates) risk going bankrupt; instead a business should build a strong brand and experience customers are willing to pay for, while remaining competitive but not the absolute cheapest.
How should a startup decide which ideas or companies to back?
Pym says he prioritises the people and their passion over the idea itself, but notes the idea still needs to be commercial and monetisable, or even a good idea will fail; he also values ideas that are impactful for others even if non-commercial.
Pym recounts working for 5-6 years building a digital bank in Asia across 10 countries for a big Australian bank that never launched, then returning to Australia to build another digital bank for a top-4 bank that also never shipped, prompting him and his co-founder to build their own.
Pym describes the pivotal meeting with Bendigo's then-MD Mike Hurst and incoming MD Marnie Baker where Ferocia proposed moving from being a vendor to running the entire customer lifecycle themselves as 'technology-led banking,' and Bendigo agreed to back the idea.
Pym describes meeting a TransferWise developer in Sydney after an Apple conference in San Francisco and exchanging API keys within 15 minutes to integrate the two systems, contrasted with how long such integrations would normally take in traditional banking.
Pym recalls growing up with a shared Apple IIe at school, a crappy home Apple IIe he wasn't allowed to use, saving up with his brother for an IBM clone PC, and being one of the last among his design peers to switch to a Mac, before eventually becoming a major Apple fanboy after getting an iPhone 3G.
Pym explains that the Perk Up mug started as a purely digital animation in the Up app celebrating free coffee refunds, until customer demand led the company to manufacture a real physical mug, made by the same merch supplier Pym worked with 20 years earlier running a record label.
Drawn from the episode transcripts.
Dominic Pym explains Up deliberately minimises fees (no monthly fees, no onboarding fees, no international or ATM fees) and instead earns revenue mainly through margin between deposit and lending products, while planning to add fee-generating products like home loans and share trading in future.
From episode 750→Up itself does not hold cash; money sits on the ledger of Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, which holds the banking licence that Up operates under as part of its collaboration with Ferocia, Pym's software company.
From episode 750→Every episode featuring Dominic Pym on The Daily Talk Show.
