Anders Jones is Looking for ‘Growth Seekers’

You don’t need to be in Silicon Valley to innovate—and you certainly don’t need to be rubbing shoulders with Apple, Facebook and Google to find the right talent for success, according to Anders Jones, the CEO of the financial planner startup Facet.

“Talent is everywhere,” said Jones, who cofounded the Baltimore-based company in 2016 as a fintech alternative to the traditional Wall Street advisor model.

“The actual core inventions are happening all over the place,” Jones said on the “Hire Learning” podcast with MSH founder and CEO Oz Rashid.

It’s one reason why Facet’s roughly 300-strong workforce is 100 percent virtual, said Jones, whose past venture capital work turned up investment opportunities off the beaten path.

But how does a startup get its far-flung virtual teams on the same page when funding is on the line? The company needs a strong mission to connect employees together, according to Jones, who looks for what he calls “growth seekers.”

“Basically, someone who is really passionate about self-improvement and has a growth mindset,” Jones added. “And what is interesting is that actually maps pretty closely with the most successful clients that we have.”

In order to find the right “growth seekers,” Facet puts employees through a long interview process that is designed to weed out candidates that aren’t fully on board with the company’s philosophy.

“We probably have a much higher disqualification rate in the first screening interview and a much higher close rate, or success rate, if you make it past that first screening interview as a result,” Jones said. “It adds a lot of efficiency to the hiring process, but more importantly, you get a lot of like-minded people.”

Unlike the customary financial planning model that charges on percentage of assets under management or commissions, Facet offers a flat annual fee—usually between $2,000 and $6,000 depending on how complex a client’s financial situation may be, Jones said.

The idea behind Facet was hatched in part when the mother of a fellow co-founder was nearly locked into a long-term high-fee annuity that would have drained much of her modest nest egg. Another co-founder, who managed high net-worth individuals, couldn’t help his parents because his own firm’s fees were too costly.

“Anyone who’s charging you based on assets or commissions, their incentives are naturally misaligned with yours,” said Jones.

And thus, Facet was born.

“We’ve built the sort of Uber Black for planning,” Jones added. “It’s taking a very high-cost, premium thing and making it a lot more accessible.”