I was hired by the CPO as VP Product to bring back the glory days of Payments at Yodlee. Yodlee was a ~$200M ARR division of Envestnet (public, ~$1B total annual revenue), servicing 17 of the top US banks. The wedge was Account Verifications — a mature $25M business letting banks authenticate users with accounts elsewhere. Cash-generative, flat, and harder to grow every year.
The charter was two-sided: reinvent the mature book, and find the next curve that could help the division scale beyond $200M against Envestnet's billion-dollar ambition. Macro context made it harder — SVB collapse, declining deposits, FIs cutting costs, and consumer-facing competitors like Rocket Money (TrueBill) and Mint already framing the subscription-management narrative.
First: Account Tokens — the bank-account analog to what card tokens became for cards. Keeps underlying bank info safe and compresses the Account Verification lifecycle, packaged to sell alongside the existing AV product without cannibalizing it. A reinvention of the $25M wedge rather than a replacement.
Second: Subscription & Bill Tracker (SBT) — I championed a hypothesis: combine Yodlee's enriched transaction data with a partnership with Bill Shark (a negotiation service) to build a white-label "Subscription & Bill Tracker" for banks.
To move fast within a corporate structure, I adopted a "frugal and fluid" (Kanban-style) approach. I selected a nimble "tiger team" (1 PM, 1 Architect, 2 Designers, 2-3 Engineers) to build a working prototype rather than getting bogged down in documentation.
Early feedback from major clients like Bank of America indicated that a redirected "hosted" experience would hurt conversion. We pivoted immediately to build an Embedded UX design, allowing banks to keep consumers native in their apps.
We delivered a turn-key solution offering three distinct value propositions:
Building the software was only half the battle. Bringing a new product to market in a regulated public company required navigating complex organizational layers:
I led the negotiation of partnership contracts and data governance reviews to ensure the product met the strict compliance standards of Tier 1 banks.
I aligned Sales, Marketing, and Support teams around a new pricing model and "savings calculator" value proposition, ensuring the field was ready to sell a consumer-centric product to enterprise buyers.
Despite a major corporate restructuring that eliminated multiple teams, both 0→1 initiatives survived due to their strong business case and client traction.
Revenue Impact: Together, Account Tokens and SBT drove a 5–8% gross revenue increase on the mature $200M book — meaningful lift, and a rebuilt case for Yodlee continuing to matter inside Envestnet.
Client Traction: SBT advanced to active deployment discussions with Bank of America Diamond customers, Navy Federal Credit Union, and several smaller banks.
Consumer Value: Pilot data showed projected savings of up to 25% on monthly bills.
Strategic Context: Envestnet later slowed under increasing investor pressure, with large RIFs across the org. Yodlee transitioned from public-company division to private PE-owned business. The 0→1 work stayed shipped; the strategic context around it shifted.
You don't kill a $25M wedge — you reinvent it with a second product alongside it, and you find the next curve before the current one flattens. The hardest part is convincing a mature org it still has room to innovate. The 5–8% is what you hand back when someone asks whether it was worth trying.