Sadi KhanCo-founder & CEO

My first advice would be, don't start a company. It’s genuinely very hard. Everyone told me that before I started, and I didn’t believe them. Now, I say it to others and I can see they don’t believe me either. But it’s true, it’s a whole new kind of hard that lasts for years.

Because you need to have an extreme level of conviction that the problem you’re working on is worth decades of your life. You must be ready to go for years without being paid, recognized, or even supported, and still believe it’s the most important thing you can solve.

When I retired, I didn’t feel I was adding value to society. I’ve always been an engineer and builder. I wanted to solve something that made people’s lives better. I realized that if we can help people save money, we make society wealthier, and that became the foundation for Aven.

Today, Americans owe about $1 trillion in credit card debt and pay around $200 billion a year in just interest. We want to cut that in half, saving consumers $100 billion a year, by giving them cheaper, faster, and more transparent access to their home equity.

It taught me the value of elite technical talent. The difference between a 99.9th percentile engineer and a 95th percentile engineer is massive. I learned that recruiting and keeping the very best people is the most important investment any company can make.

Three things: intelligence, work ethic, and mission alignment. Intelligence is underrated; we want the smartest people we can find. Then we look for those who can work hard for a long time. And finally, their personal ambition must align with our mission of reducing the cost of capital for Americans.

Every Sunday at 6 PM, our leadership team meets to lock in our roadmap for the next seven days. It helps us move fast and stay accurate. We make sure we’re never wrong for more than a week before we correct direction.

As a founder, I think it’s vital to understand the legal and regulatory details yourself. I’ve personally read the Dodd-Frank Act, Card Act, and TILA. It’s not enough to rely on others; you must know what’s possible, what’s safe, and what’s compliant.

In hindsight, we should have started with a smaller, narrower feature set. Most product managers will tell you the same thing, it’s better to build something focused and simple, then expand later. Early on, we tried to do too much.

Many people didn’t believe we were real. We’d get calls asking if we were a scam. Sometimes I personally had to answer those calls to assure them. It showed how important human connection and communication are when you’re introducing a new idea.

I aim to be maximally rational. I learned this from Mark at Facebook. Being rational makes you predictable, and being predictable helps others make decisions even when you’re not around. My goal is to make decisions so logical that anyone with the same information would reach the same conclusion.

Because it helps scale decision making. Emotional decisions don’t scale, rational ones do. If people understand why we’re doing something, they can explain it to others and execute with clarity. That’s how great execution happens.

Our mission is to reduce the cost of capital for consumers. But to do that sustainably, we must not die, meaning we must be profitable. So, our profit comes directly from the savings we create for people. That way, being profitable means we’re fulfilling our mission.

I don’t believe in pros and cons lists. Instead, I identify the most important axes like cost, reliability, and performance, and rank them by priority. Then I compare options based on those priorities. It’s a process I use for both business and personal decisions.

I live a very simple life. I don’t drink or party. I moved close to the office, cook for my family twice a week, and go to the gym. I wear the same outfit every day, black long sleeve, jeans, and a vest, to avoid wasting energy on small choices. Boring is great. I love boring.

Because it removes friction. I have three identical workstations, same keyboard, mouse, and monitor setup, so I can start working immediately. If your keyboard is off by even a millimeter, your typing errors go up. Small consistency makes a big difference.

Calm and focused. That’s why we’re based in the South Bay instead of a busy city. We want our team to have peace and mental space to think clearly, work deeply, and stay connected to our mission. Less noise, more focus.