How Working at a Culture-First Company Helps This SVP of Product Thrive

Lindsay Swift never knew what she wanted to be when she grew up, which resulted in a career path that evolved based on trying new things, figuring out her strengths, and deciding what she liked and didn’t like. (A career in public relations, which she majored in, fell into the latter category.)

After joining the fintech sector doing implementations, the Atlanta-based Swift knew she found the right industry—but after a number of years, she realized she wanted more of a challenge in her day-to-day role.

“Several trusted mentors and coworkers encouraged me to consider moving into a product role, which I found incredibly intimidating at the time,” Swift says. “I finally took the leap and haven’t looked back!”

Today, Swift is the SVP of Product at the lending platform Momnt, where she loves having the opportunity to create top-notch user experiences to help customers achieve their financial goals.

Here, she shares why Momnt’s culture sold her on joining the company, what it takes to succeed in a product role, and the reason failure is necessary for career success.

I connected with one of our co-founders, Lena McDearmid, through a former coworker and friend. At the time, Momnt was in the very early stages and needed someone who could wear several hats to meet multiple needs they had at the time. I was missing the fintech space after briefly exploring another industry and found the vision of Momnt’s founding team compelling. They had a clear strategic vision for the company and product, and were working on solving real pain points in the consumer lending space through thoughtful innovation. 

They were also building a culture-first company, which meant that caring for the people involved was a key pillar of the vision from the get-go, and still is today. An exciting product, solving real customer problems, in an awesome company culture—I knew I had to take the risk to be a part of this journey.

Momnt is an embedded lending platform enabling businesses to offer financing to their customers in a simple, user-friendly experience. Businesses on our platform see increased revenue by offering financing options to their customers. Our consumers get access to multiple offers allowing them to fund all or part of their project or procedure with loan terms that meet their specific and unique financial needs at that time. For some of our consumers, this means they can replace an HVAC unit in the middle of the summer or afford a needed dental procedure to maintain quality of life, where they may not have been able to do so otherwise. For others, it offers flexibility to increase the scope of their project or hold onto cash a bit longer.

I lead a team that is focused on solving problems for our customers, partners, and even our employees. We are constantly looking at new and different ways to build and maintain a best-in-class user experience while taking proper precautions to protect Momnt, our customers, and partners. There are so many factors to consider in every decision we make, which is a fun jigsaw puzzle to solve every day. Fortunately, I am a problem-solver at heart so this is right up my alley!

Tactically, that means I oversee our full product roadmap across multiple delivery teams, ensuring we are delivering business value that is strategically aligned with the goals of the organization while listening and adapting to the needs of the market and our customers. Right now, we are focused on giving our consumers more flexibility in how they use and manage their loans. It’s always fun when we get to enhance how our customers interact with the platform.

Momnt has changed a lot over the last few years, but one thing that has remained constant is that the people who are successful here are curious problem-solvers who take on challenges head-on. Someone who isn’t afraid to figure it out without needing a lot of direction and is willing to raise their hand to take on a project or solve a problem will thrive.

A lot of people think about culture as free lunch, ping-pong tables, and unlimited PTO. Those are great perks—and Momnt does have some of these things—but to me, that isn’t company culture. Company culture is how people treat each other day in and day out and how leadership at all levels of the organization cares for and supports the humans who work here. I’m proud of our culture for encouraging everyone to show up as their authentic self, caring for each person’s career path and growth, and treating each other with respect and allowing space for each person’s voice to be heard. I see these values consistently throughout the organization and in our customer interactions as well.

Momnt is a great place to be a female leader. I love that we have a female co-founder and a number of incredible females in leadership positions around the organization. And while gender diversity in the leadership team is celebrated, I’m not treated differently. I am just treated as a leader. Our executive team supports and elevates gender diversity in the workplace at all levels. Having diverse voices at the table allows us to make better decisions for our employees and customers alike.

Communicating clearly and concisely and sharing information with various personas is at the core of everything I do. In a product role, specifically, it’s critical to be able to communicate across different audiences—customers, developers, and internal business owners—in ways that make sense to them.

Growth happens outside of your comfort zone. If you constantly stay where you are comfortable, you may experience less failure, but you will also remain stagnant. In order to move forward and grow, you have to take some chances, try something new, fail, and learn from those failures. I lean on this advice almost daily leading a team at such a fast-growing company. We are constantly pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zones to reach the next milestone.

I love reality TV. It’s my escape to shut down my brain at the end of a long day or week.