Imposter Syndrome as a Super Power with Cable's Natasha Vernier

This episode explores how imposter syndrome can be leveraged as a strength, especially in the challenging environment of startups and technology, featuring insights from Natasha Vernier, CEO of Cable.

1. Imposter syndrome can be reframed to enhance decision-making and inclusivity in leadership.
2. Entrepreneurship demands a deep, inherent drive beyond financial or status gains.
3. Balancing professional and personal life is crucial; personal commitments can positively influence work culture.
4. The startup environment offers unique growth and learning opportunities but comes with intense challenges.
5. Flexibility in work arrangements, like remote work, is essential for supporting employees through significant life events.

1: Introduction

Brief introduction to Natasha Vernier and an overview of the episode's focus on leveraging imposter syndrome. Suchi Srinivasan: "Each episode we have meaningful and vulnerable conversations with women leaders."

2: Natasha’s Early Career and Founding of Cable

Discussion on Natasha's transition from law and finance to the fintech startup world, and the founding of Cable. Natasha Vernier: "I was really interested in joining a startup working in tech."

3: Challenges at Monzo and Leadership Insights

Insights into the challenges faced at Monzo and the leadership lessons learned that influenced her role at Cable. Natasha Vernier: "Being a stress absorber is a big part of the job as a leader."

4: The Role of CEO at Cable

Exploration of Natasha's daily responsibilities and strategic thinking as CEO. Natasha Vernier: "I spend a good number of hours a week interviewing candidates."

5: Personal Life and Entrepreneurship

Reflections on balancing the founding of Cable with significant personal life events like IVF and parenting. Natasha Vernier: "If I hadn’t had kids, I think it would have been ultimately harder."

1. Embrace Imposter Syndrome: Use it as a tool to seek diverse opinions and improve decision-making.
2. Integrate Life and Work: Balance work commitments with personal life to enhance overall productivity and company culture.
3. Flexibility in Work Policies: Implement flexible work arrangements to support employees through personal challenges.
4. Continuous Learning: Always look for growth opportunities, whether in a startup or a large corporation.
5. Community and Support: Build a supportive community within the workplace to foster a collaborative and inclusive environment.

Imposter syndrome, or self-doubt, is something that we all experience in our lives and careers. But how can we turn this often negative experience into a positive one? Natasha Vernier believes you can make it your superpower and has used it to build her own business.
Natasha is the co-founder and CEO of Cable, a financial crime compliance platform. Before founding Cable in 2020, Natasha was the Head of Financial Security at Monzo, the fastest-growing bank in UK history. In that role, she was able to seize new opportunities and accelerate her career growth rapidly.

After a grueling period of IVF, Natasha and her wife welcomed their first child into the world. However, it just so happened that she was about to embark on her entrepreneurial journey. In this conversation, she talks us through that life-changing experience and how it influenced her approach to her business.

Join us each episode with hosts Suchi Srinivasan & Kamila Rakhimova from BCG to hear meaningful conversations with women in digital, business, and technology.

People

Natasha Vernier

Companies

Cable, Monzo

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Natasha Vernier

Content Warnings:

None

Natasha Vernier

I think that people who become founders need to understand that there has to be a drive within them which goes beyond just I'm smart and I can do this and I want to run a company and it sounds like a fun way or a good way to have a large financial outcome at the end all being well and they have to really have an innate drive within them that means that they just simply will not give up.

Suchi Srinivasan

In her element, a podcast from BCG. I'm Suchi Srinivasan. And I'm Camila Rekkimova. Each episode we have meaningful and vulnerable conversations with women leaders and allies in digital, business and technology.

This week, we're speaking to Natasha Vernier, CEO and co founder of Cable, a financial crime compliance platform. Before founding Cable in 2020, Natasha worked as head of financial security at Monzo, the fastest growing bank in the UK's history. After a brutal course of IVF, Natasha's first child came along just before she founded Cable. She'll walk us through that experience and how motherhood has fit into her journey as an entrepreneur. Here's such a conversation with Natasha.

Natasha Vernier

I'm Natasha Vognier. I'm the CEO and co founder of Cable. It's great to have you on the show, Natasha. Thank you for joining me today. Can you tell us how you first got interested in financial crime as a subject area?

I had not heard of financial crime until I was asked to get stuck in at Monzo. I started out studying law at King's College in London and then I went to Ernst and young on their graduate program. I did three years there, becoming a qualified accountant and working in their corporate finance team in the renewable energy department, actually. So I was working on things like financing for anaerobic digestive plants and wind farms and that kind of thing. From there, I went to a small boutique corporate finance house called Clearwater International.

I spent two years there doing corporate finance work and in about 2014 I got interested in technology, the fintech world, and started going to lots of meetups in London. And I discovered that I was really interested in joining a startup working in tech, wanted to be moving a little bit faster. I had never really felt like I was super passionate about what I had been doing until that date. And I decided that I needed to sort of make that jump into the startup scene in the tech world. And during that time, in early 2015, there were four challenger banks as they were being called back then.

Monzo, Starling, Atom and Tandem. I'd applied to join Monzo, or Mondo as it was called at the time, and it was super early. There were about 15 people there when I joined. We had about 100 prepaid card customers, and I joined as a business operations analyst or something similar, just doing anything and everything I could do to help make Monzo a success. And in about month four of being there, I was asked to deal with the fraud that we were starting to see on those prepaid cards.

And that is how I got introduced to working in financial crime or anti financial crime, which is probably more appropriate. So it really was fortuitous that I ended up doing that. I'd love to hear more about your time at Monzo. What were some of the challenges and opportunities you came across at such a new and fast growing organization? In terms of opportunities, joining so early meant that I had the opportunity to really grow and scale with the company.

I became head of financial crime pretty early on, and I would never have had that chance had I joined a bank that was much larger or more established at that time. There are lots of examples of people from those early days at Monzo who had that opportunity. It certainly was not limited to me. So it was really wonderful. It gave a lot of us really excellent opportunities to accelerate our learning and our careers.

Honestly, it certainly had some challenges. It was really hard work, lots and lots to do. It was difficult and challenging to grow and scale myself, to be able to keep up. And it was definitely stressful too. Being a b, two C company is something.

Now, obviously, cable is a b, two B company. Having seen the other side of it, I don't know that I would ever want to run a b, two C company. The customer operations, the consumer feedback, the endless interest from press was really hard, really relentless to deal with. Yeah. B, two C certainly presents its unique challenges.

Suchi Srinivasan

So let's move into the present day. Now, can you tell the audience briefly what cable does? So the short answer is that we automate the effectiveness testing of financial crime controls. If I can use a few more words to make it a little bit more simple to understand, there are two main requirements that regulated banks have with regards to financial crime. The first is to have controls in place to try to identify suspicious activity.

Natasha Vernier

So in that bucket of controls would be things like, you know, your customer checks, pep and sanction screening, transaction monitoring, all of those things. And there are lots of really great technology companies that have automated and solved those problems. There is a second requirement that regulated banks have, which is to independently test if those controls actually work. And until now, until cable, that regulatory requirement was satisfied by teams of people manually dip sampling a tiny percentage of accounts at banks to try to understand if controls were working effectively. Cable is the first and still only company to have automated the independent testing of those controls.

Suchi Srinivasan

Thank you so much for that overview. Natasha. At cable, what do you do as CEO? Tell us what your day to day looks like. Anything and everything.

Natasha Vernier

It is varied and lots of context switching. At the moment I'm doing a lot of hiring, so I spend a good number of hours a week interviewing candidates and thinking about job offers and hiring processes. I still spend a good amount of time on sales calls. So speaking to prospect customers, late stage pipeline customers, trying to get them across the line, or answering detailed questions about the product from a compliance point of view. I spend a good amount of time thinking with my senior management team.

So having one on ones with my direct reports and then having a meeting with all of our senior management team every week. And beyond that, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about product prioritization and a longer term strategy in terms of finance and fundraising and team makeup and structure and things like that. So it's really very varied and it does depend. It comes in peaks and troughs with regards to how much hiring have we got going on right now? How many late stage deals do we have?

And if I manage to get any spare time to do that, more strategic thinking. Yeah. The role of CEO is so varied and I really appreciate you demystifying some of the stuff that that diverse role entails. Why don't we dig into the details of your leadership style here a little bit more? You've said in a previous interview that part of being a leader is actually being a stress absorber.

Suchi Srinivasan

Can you elaborate on this a little bit more for our audience? Yeah. And I probably am good at this at times and bad at this at times, but I do think it's very important. I remember when I was at Monzo during a particularly stressful period of time, the team that I led were very stressed and I was very stressed and me becoming stressed amplified how they were thinking about things and it made them more anxious and it made things worse. And I had a manager at the time who seemed always to be relaxed and at some points at sometimes it would frustrate me because I felt like he needed more urgency.

Natasha Vernier

But actually we had this conversation of there is no benefit to me if he also gets very stressed about the thing that we're talking about. It really helped clarify in my mind how as a leader, a big part of the job is simplification and clarification, and there are always things to be stressed about. In a startup, there are always things going on. Everything is always needed yesterday, but stuff will only get done, and stuff will only get done with clarity and in the right way. If people are not feeling this urgency and a pressure, that it should have been done yesterday and that nothing is ever good enough and that things are very stressful.

And so I think one of the most important things as a leader is to be able to take on a lot of other people's concerns, a lot of other people's worries and their stresses, and remove that from them, take that stress off of their shoulders so that they are able to go and do their job with a clear mind. This is such an important point and something that can give a lot of clarity to those thinking of starting their own company. Is there any other advice you would like those people to bear in mind before they take the entrepreneurial plunge? I think that people who become founders need to understand that there has to be a drive within them which goes beyond just, I'm smart and I can do this and I want to run a company, and it sounds like a fun way or a good way to have a large financial outcome at the end all being well, and they have to really have an innate drive within them that means that they just simply will not give up. And I think that there are things in our earlier lives that can indicate that people might have that or not.

You know, being part of very, very senior sports teams, for example, or having a skill or a talent that has required hours over years of training and practice, playing an instrument to an exceedingly high level. All of those sorts of things that indicate that somebody just simply will not quit. If you have those experiences in your earlier life, I think those will help you realize the kind of commitment that you have to put in. This is a ten plus year game, and it has to be almost all that you think about for that time. And it will be easier by far to give up than it is to continue.

And you have to know for sure that you will not give up and that this thing that you are doing is going to satisfy and interest you for a very long time. Fantastic advice, Natasha. It's so true that entrepreneurship is a very long game. Before we wrap up this section, I'd like to double click on another comment from a previous interview. Can you explain how you make the imposter syndrome your superpower?

Yeah, I think that people often talk about imposter syndrome as being a thing that holds them back or makes them worse at their job. And one of the reasons that I started cable is I want to prove that a woman and a gay woman can build a successful company and do so whilst being kind. I think there are so many examples of very successful startup founders who make decisions that don't benefit their employees or society. And there are examples of people treating their employees and their colleagues not very well. And I want to prove that you can do this and build a successful company in a way that is kind and in a way that, honestly is how I would have wanted to be treated.

And I think having imposter syndrome helps me center on that. I don't feel powerful every day, even though people think of me as a CEO and therefore probably like, I have lots of power, and I do. But it's a very strange thing to internalize. I don't feel particularly powerful, but that means that when I'm faced with a really difficult decision, I don't make it on my own. It means that I want to bring in and talk with and get the views of the people around me in our senior management team, in our executive team and my family.

Having imposter syndrome means that I am not blinded by the things that I think I'm good at. And it means that I seek other opinions and look for help and try to think about things in a way that encompasses many more views than just mine. Without imposter syndrome, I think it's very easy to insist that you're always right and that you already know the answer and that your way is the only way to succeed. And I don't think that's true. And I think that by having imposter syndrome myself and having doubts about how good I am at certain parts of my job means that when I am faced with difficult decisions, I pull in more people and I hopefully end up with a more, more rounded view on how to move forward and ultimately make better decisions.

Suchi Srinivasan

Absolutely true, Natasha. If framed in the right way, imposter syndrome can absolutely be a positive. Thanks for sharing all of those framing thoughts about the imposter syndrome. Let's shift gears here a little bit. I want to talk to you about some of the major life events that have happened throughout your career journey.

You were in the very early stages of setting up cable when your first child was born via IVF. Can you tell us what that experience was like? Yeah. My wife and I had been trying to have a baby for a couple of years, and that was already in process in motion before I honestly thought about starting a company. By the time that I was coming to leave Monzo and trying to decide what to do next.

Natasha Vernier

And this thought, this idea of cable came about. I hadn't really. I hadn't really planned or thought about what it would be like to have a kid in this company at the same time. And I think probably that naivety benefited me in the end, because if I had probably known how difficult it had been to do both at the same time, I may not have ever started cable. So my wife was pregnant and I had decided to explore this idea with the support of my wife and started to raise money.

And then it just kind of all happened. There were a few fortuitous turns along the road. I got pregnant and had an ectopic pregnancy in the first year of cable. And had that pregnancy sustained, it would have been very difficult for me, I think, to have given birth and had that physical recovery whilst also building cable. So actually, my wife carried both of our children and that's fortuitous, right?

Not everybody has that ability. Most women are going to be carrying the babies themselves. And so that was something that I was able to share with my wife, which was lucky. It was honestly, I think, naivety to do both at the same time. And we knew we didn't just want one kid, so once we'd had one, we might as well have another.

It's definitely been challenging, but I think if I hadn't had kids, I think it would have been ultimately harder. And what I mean by that is without the kids there, it would be way easier for me to say, no, I need to work late, and no, I can't do this thing at the weekend. I need to go and work, and I have a very good communication with my wife. And when she says, you need to come down and have dinner with the kids, and we're going to this birthday party with the kids and I need you to come, I can't say no to that because it's absolutely right that I should help her. It's absolutely right that I should be there with my kids.

I don't want them to have lots and lots of memories of me not being there. And so it makes it easier because I have to step away. I have no choice in that. I have to step away, I have to help, I have to be present with my family. That means I get a break from cable, and it probably means that ultimately I perform better at cable.

It definitely means that we have a better culture internally for those other people at cable who have children as well. I think without having children, it's very difficult to understand the commitment, the time, pull and the pressures that come with having children. And so by me having children, I think that definitely helps those other parents at cable as well. Wow, Natasha, that was a lot. Thank you for sharing all of that with us.

Suchi Srinivasan

You're right. Children do put things into perspective in a way that nothing else ever does. Now, you and your wife went through a pretty grueling course of IVF, and it would be great to hear some of your reflections of what support do you think would have helped you at work when you were going through that experience? That's a good question. I think the biggest thing that comes to mind is being open to hybrid or remote work, because when you're going through IVF, certainly my experience was that we had so many appointments with the doctor in the early days, and you are going sometimes every day for four days, and then you have to wait until you take a test, and then you just have to go when the test is positive for another appointment.

Natasha Vernier

And these appointments are pretty ad hoc. They come about without much notice. They're pretty time consuming. My experience was we used to wait a lot in the waiting room. Our appointments were never on time.

And so having that ability to work remotely, work flexibly, honestly enabled me to go through that process. If I had to have been in an office, I would not have been able to do it. And so that's the biggest thing that comes to mind. Yes, Natasha, that sounds very on point and very helpful. Hopefully, leaders of the future will be able to double down on what you've said and help others who are going through situations like this with IVF.

Suchi Srinivasan

Now, as we wrap up the show, can you tell us about a time that you felt in your element? I think I feel most of my element with regards to work when our team is all together, we have until now, not had any offices and we've been fully remote, and we have been getting together once a quarter somewhere that one of our team members lives. And the social side of those meetups when we are relaxing and having fun and maybe playing some games or we've got some music, we've got a couple of DJ's in the team, and we've got some music going. And I feel surrounded by people who are trying to achieve the same things as I am and are interested in the same things as I am, and we're all moving in the same direction. I feel very in my element when surrounded by the team, energized by being together and relaxing with them as we reflect on what we're trying to do here at cable.

Well, that's all for today. This has been in her element, a podcast from BCG. Join us next time to hear more meaningful and vulnerable conversations with women leaders and allies in digital, business and technology. Thank you so much for listening.

Camila Rekkimova

Thank you so much for listening.

Suchi Srinivasan

Thank you so much for listening.