Ceresnie of Orchard gives must-do advice for startups
NEW YORK–Last February 8, a huge crowd turned up for the fireside chat of Empire Startups’ Fintech meetup with Orchard Platform CFO and co-founder Angela Ceresnie at Rise in Chelsea. Orchard provides analytics to the marketplace lending industry.
http://www.meetup.com/NY-FinTech/events/228075094/
Ceresnie shared her thoughts on what it’s like to start and manage a “smaller” company with his three other co-founders. She worked previously worked for big financial institutions like Citibank and American Express.
“There are people who work 70 hours and they can’t get things done then. There are those who work 40 hours (and make things work),” she said, adding how she liked tech startups, because it requires less face time. With fintech, (you) move away from your desk.”
Having grown from 20 to more than 40 employees, she said it was important to instill values with their team, especially when you know some people may not be aligned with your business.
“Once you get to 20 people, it’s important to have common language and guided principles,” she said.
Ceresnie said Orchard Platform now lives up to 3 values: honesty, orienting action to the future and succeeding together.
On success, she said it’s true measure is all in your mind.
On what to watch out for, she says be wary of overtracking metrics.
On hiring, she said she looks for more diversity in skill sets. Not many may not know this but Ceresnie had an engineering background in R and statistics.
On job interviewing, she’s most interested in finding out the person coming in and knowing how much they are qualified.
Ceresnie gave credit to Better Works for help them manage and set goals with their team. One of the things you must when running a business is “having your books and having products out of the door.”
The Orchard Manager Database is the first comprehensive resource for institutional investors to identify and evaluate a wide spectrum of marketplace lending managers. Listing their information in the database enables managers to securely and directly reach institutional investors interested in allocating capital to marketplace lending.
