From day one, Moov’s co-founders set out to make our organization remote-first. While they knew it would be a challenge, they believed it could help make Moov one of the best places anyone has ever worked. While there are a lot of advantages to being fully remote—from work-life balance and flexibility to recruiting talent from virtually anywhere—it can also make it harder for teammates to feel connected.
Here’s a core memory:
I’m about six years old, in the car with my dad, and he’s quizzing me on math. He has a master’s degree in petroleum engineering—very smart, very into math and science—so it was pretty normal for him to give me math lessons from time to time.
I’ve been interested in computers and technology since my family got its first Apple computer in the 90s. I spent my time creating LiveJournal themes in HTML, and being in awe of the Space Jam website (it was a very different time).
You know that weird, quiet kid in the back of the class? That was me. When I wasn’t nose-down in a dog-eared paperback, I was furiously writing stories in my wrinkly legal pad. Sometimes it was a sci-fi/fantasy epic, other times it was a blood-chilling tale of horror or a Twilight-Zone-ish vignette with a twist.
Moov just made Built In’s list of the top 50 fully remote startups to work for in the U.S. and Purpose Job’s Best Remote Places to Work in 2023, and while everyone here is thrilled that our workplace culture has received recognition for the second year in a row, it got me thinking.
I used to tell my dad, who was a career military man, that I wanted to be a pilot. And I didn’t mean commercial or cargo flights—I wanted to fly fighter jets. The real deal.
What’s the best way to recruit phenomenal engineers? It’s not just the stock options and home office stipends (yeah, we do that, too). Engineers’ interest piques when they’re challenged. That’s why the best engineers want to attack gnarly problems.
My design career started at the age of six when I got my first Polaroid camera. I was obsessed with taking photos, and I started out by taking a photo of every family member, friend, or stranger who would let me, as well as many portraits of the family dog dressed up in my clothes.
The final year of a pre-med degree isn’t the best time to realize you don’t want to be a doctor. While I loved helping people, actually being in the room with someone needing medical care is a whole other challenge.
Truth be told, my story isn’t like some of the other stories shared by my team members. For starters, I found Moov the same way most people find a new job. I clicked through job listings and skimmed posts for keywords. If a role matched my basic requirements, I’d modify an existing cover letter and apply.
Chaucer was right; life is a lot like the Canterbury Tales. If you haven’t read the stories, the takeaway is that life is more than just a pilgrimage; it’s about the people you meet along your journey. While I’ve had quite the trek over the years, and I didn’t get to take everyone with me, I’d like to share some of the lessons people taught me along the way.
I owe my personality to my dad. I watched him become an entrepreneur and open his very own computer store. I spent many years there exploring computers, games, and building whatever I could. Problem solving and creativity were ingrained in my personality because of these early years.
The end of the year is fast approaching, and it’s time to pause and reflect on our immense gratitude. Let us share some of the things for which we are thankful.
Most internships lead to full-time jobs, not detainment by the UK authorities, followed by an 8-hour interrogation and deportation.
I’d just graduated from college and landed my first, big-time internship abroad working for an investor on the British television show Dragons’ Den (the UK equivalent of Shark Tank). The prospect of working with early-stage entrepreneurs and the venture capital community was a dream come true for an entrepreneurship major. I’d sublet my apartment, sold most of my belongings, and bought my one way ticket for the next stage of my life. Yet there I sat in airport custody, huddled around my three suitcases tightly packed with everything I owned.
Growing up, I was unable to talk. Speaking was difficult for me because of a severe stutter. Imagine being excited to share something with your friends, family, or bullies, but then your throat collapses in and completely locks. I knew exactly what I wanted to say—in fact, I had rehearsed it in my head multiple times—but I was often unable to and instead went silent.
Life has a funny way of trying to fit people into similar molds.
The human brain makes sense of the world through order, so when square peg people don’t fit into the round holes of society, things get uncomfortable.
Be an architect—that was the result of my high school career aptitude test.
That short, generic quiz somehow felt so official, but it failed to teach me anything about myself. Maybe today’s career aptitude tests are more sophisticated, but back then, it gave me an endpoint out of thin air and I didn’t understand why it selected that career or if it was even the right path for me.
Not many people can say that the Scholastic book catalog set their entire career in motion.
While other fourth-graders chose books like Animorphs and Goosebumps, I decided to purchase an HTML book for kids.
Why did I join Moov?
Well, it all started back in 2001, when a much younger Joel Tosi entered the payments world with a head full of hair and a heart full of childlike idealism.
A few years ago, a fintech company came to me with a formidable task.
“We’d like you to build a new product in four months,” they said, straight-faced and so matter-of-factly that the engineer in me felt an exciting adrenaline rush followed by a pragmatic gag reflex.
In 2014 I had the privilege of joining a small San Francisco-based fintech startup. I worked with some incredible people, and we achieved impressive results along the way. We built hundreds of thousands of multiplatform apps for large financial institutions, community banks, and retailers. I also forged early technology partnerships with game-changing products like Square Cash.
I will judge my success at Moov based on the experiences of my employees. Not how many people we hire, how much money we raise, or how many dollars we move through our platform. Of course, these things are essential. But the milestones related to these areas of the business don’t matter if my people don’t feel challenged, accepted, safe, respected, inspired, and like they are doing the best work of their lives. For me, that’s the end goal—to make Moov the best place anyone has ever worked.
My path to working at an embedded payments startup isn’t as straightforward as I would’ve hoped. In college, I studied finance and computer science with the singular goal of joining a big hedge fund as a programmer. But as I learned more about that industry, I had a stark realization I was jumping into a zero-sum game. I wanted to increase the size of the pie, not just take a bigger share.
Edtech. Fintech. B2B consulting. I’ve dabbled in several different industries, but I’ve always found ways to incorporate writing into my previous roles, from customer success to UX research and analytics. The truth is, I believe that words matter. And I believe in their ability to instruct, unlock ideas, and inspire.
