Sila Money, a venture-backed company that specializes in creating banking and payment platform APIs for other fintechs, attracts new recruits through a culture of learning.
This is especially important in the fast-paced world of financial services technology, where companies and their employees must adapt rapidly to stay ahead of global trends in their industry — digital currencies, challenger banks and more.
“There is no internet protocol for money,” said Shamir Karkal, co-founder and CEO of Sila Money. “Programming for a neobank is difficult. We have people who come to us deep in technical skills but needing to be shown how to apply them for money movement. Our craftsmanship culture teaches people the tribal knowledge they need to build quality APIs that our clients love. We celebrate each other’s work and take great pride in helping people learn.”
Karkal explained that the fintech’s vision — making money programmable — is very compelling to a lot of people, since it can enable a whole host of financial inclusion and wellness benefits that can have a real impact on society. Yet few people have the expertise in knowing how to build APIs for it.
Unlike some tech companies that have a “sink or swim” culture that relies on mass hiring, Sila takes an apprenticeship approach to recruiting and retention. Karkal noted that while the company’s hires are already very talented, it’s impossible to know all of the contingencies an API needs to deal with unless that person already has that experience, and yet so few do.
“What do you do with an API when the Fed goes down?” Karkal said. “Most people don’t even know that the Fed does go down and if your API relies on the Fed, what do you do? We know you have to learn that. People come into Sila and say it’s such an awesome group of people, but I don’t understand what they are talking about half the time. Our teaching culture is what people want to experience in a fintech.”
The pandemic has had a major impact on Sila and its culture, making the company evolve and codify its apprenticeship learning program. Before the pandemic, 80% of its staff lived in Portland, Ore., and were able to get together in person, allowing learning on a casual, as-you-go basis.
In other words, most training was done in the office.
Since the pandemic has forced the organization to operate remotely, Karkal discovered it was no longer important to have staff in a central location. Since April of last year, most hiring has been done outside of Portland, with new employees coming from Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta and Florida. Today, 50% of Sila’s staff is outside of Portland.
To adjust to the new distance learning environment, Sila has made the apprenticeship much more systematic to make sure that every person is being taught everything they need on a more consistent and thorough basis.
The pandemic has also affected how the fintech keeps fun in its DNA.
“We used to have a happy hour in the office on Thursdays,” said Karkal. “We now do a virtual Zoom meetup to play games and get the new people introduced, helping each of us learn what everyone else does. We even have a Fun Slack channel. Just like the apprenticeship program, the pandemic has made us rethink how to have fun because that’s an important aspect of work.”
“The only thing better than building a payments platform to make money programmable and provide access to this platform around the world is doing it with people you enjoy spending your days and weeks with while you do it,” Karkal said. “Sila is doing both of these. We take great pride in our work and the team feels like they are part of making positive changes in society."
