Lauren started working in traditional financial services early on in her post-college life. "I mean really traditional; I worked for a whole life insurance company! It was an awesome learning experience because they invest so much in training, but it wasn’t the right long-term fit for me. " Next, she did a major pivot into AI-powered asset management, her first taste of fintech. "In that endeavor, I was introduced to Quovo, and since 2016 I’ve been working in connectivity. I spent some time at Plaid before joining Pinwheel (my current company) in 2020 and I’ve climbed up the ranks from sales to CRO!"
Lauren Crosset, is Chief Revenue Officer of Pinwheel, a NYC VC-backed startup whose platform unlocks access to payroll systems by providing a uniform API that allows consumers to grant both read and write capabilities to any consuming app. "My teams sell, partner, implement, support, and manage our prospects and customers through their lifecycle with Pinwheel. This includes traditional financial institutions and fintechs. Today I’m quite focused on company planning. My management style is focused on empowering leaders and ICs to take ownership and drive the company forward. I still love working on specific deals and new initiatives, and I balance that with thinking more long-term and strategically about what we need to be successful in the future, and how we ensure we’re making decisions that help us get there."
When asked about Pinwheel's culture, Lauren says: "Creating a fairer financial system is Pinwheel’s North Star. We look for passionate and connected employees because it’s not only great for the company culture but necessary for success. As a leader, I work really hard to ensure that our employees feel trusted to own their expertise while also fostering cross-collaboration. "
Lauren is proud of creating impacts in FinTech through what they do as a company. "Because we enable the next generation of financial services. We're focused on building a fairer financial future by providing the income layer that makes it easy for businesses to connect payroll accounts to their applications with consumer permission securely. I’m focused on growing our network of financial institutions and fintechs to enable more businesses to bring modern financial tools and services to the market, fostering a more inclusive financial system for all consumers. If you think about the most basic building block to understanding someone’s financial life, it all starts with their income and employment."
More on Lauren
Where you currently live: Upstate New York
Living arrangement: I live in a house with my husband, daughter, and dog (and during the day our amazing nanny without whom I would not be able to do my job!)
Family at home: husband and daughter
Hometown: Syracuse, NY
Favorite hobby: Sailing
Favorite part of your day: Family walks every morning
Favorite show to binge: Anything Bravo
Podcast Recommendation: I love “How I Built This” with Guy Raz. Hearing about the extremely varied paths that entrepreneurs have taken to build their companies is fascinating and inspiring.
Daily Diary
Tuesday
7:00 am - Wake up, make coffee, get my daughter and husband out of bed, and then we take the dog for a walk as a family! My favorite part of the day.
7:30 am - Make breakfast or watch my husband make breakfast, almost always oatmeal, our
daughter is allergic to eggs so we’re a big oatmeal house and occasionally a green smoothie too.
8:30 am - Our nanny arrives and takes over playing with Louise (my daughter)
8:31 am - Open laptop. I do sneak a peek on Slack as soon as I wake up just to make sure I didn’t miss anything urgent, and then I try to stay focused on my family.
9:30 am - 1:1s start with one of my team leads. First is Will, our Sales Lead. His team is responsible for all sales; new business and upsells/expansions, so we talk about how we’re tracking toward goals, especially any specific deals with unusual terms or where the team could use some help.
10:00 am - On Tuesdays I spend an hour 1:1 with my boss Kurt, our CEO. We review what my teams focused on the week before, what we’re focusing on this week, and what we’ve learned. We also carve out time to share feedback and connect as humans who are both running really quickly trying to build something incredible.
12:15 pm - I run downstairs and grab something for lunch.
More meetings back to back all afternoon; some customers and some internal.
4:00 pm - On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have a calendar hold to carve out a little extra mom time while Louise is awake and then I finish up my work after she has gone to bed.
5:30 pm - Dinner and family time. We eat so early because we want to eat as a family. My husband is awesome and comes home around 4:45/5:00pm to cook.
7:00 pm - Books and bed for Louise.
7:15 pm - Finish up work, have a glass of wine, and hang out with my husband and our dog
9:30 pm - I’m asleep!
Wednesday
7-8:30 am - Key morning routine walk, breakfast, fam time, etc!
8:30 am - Get to work! I’m pretty terrible at keeping up with my inbox but I try to get to everything pressing, occasionally read a newsletter, and review the calendar to prep for the day.
9:30 am - Sales team meeting. It’s Will’s meeting, but I sit in to see if I can be helpful!
10:30 am - Finance <> GTM sync to compare notes on where we are relative to our plan. We’re always looking at things like top of funnel traffic from our customers, who is close to launching, what deals are being signed or renewed, and how conversion looks on a per-customer basis. Our revenue isn’t super straightforward because of the nature of our B2B2C business, so we make sure to spend time every week looking at the details.
11:00 am - 12:00 pm - Internal product team meeting to ensure they have a chance to ask questions on customer feedback on our products. Sales and AM teams also share their opinion on where to invest.
From noon - on is relatively similar to the day prior Customer, partner, and internal meetings, followed by dinner at 5:30 pm.
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