Profile: Grant Schneider
Meet Grant Schneider. Head of Upstart Columbus / Data Scientist.
Name: Grant Schneider
Current Job: Head of Upstart Columbus / Data Scientist
Current City: Columbus
Hometown: Newport
Q: What is it that you do at Upstart?
Upstart uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to extend access to credit. We believe that consumers are more than their credit scores, and by harnessing modern data science techniques, we’ve built a significantly more accurate credit model. This has allowed Upstart to quickly make progress towards becoming the most important technology partner to banks, which is one of the (many) reasons Columbus made perfect sense for our HQ2.
Q: What’s a problem that you are working to solve?
Extending access to credit by bridging the gap between the 45% of Americans who have access to prime credit and the 83% of them who have never defaulted.
In our research and analysis, we’ve shown that our approach has succeeded in improving access to affordable credit. Specifically:
Our model approves 27% more consumers and lowers interest rates by 3.57 percentage points, compared to a traditional lending model
For near-prime consumers (620-660 FICO) our model approves 95% more consumers and reduces interest rates by 5.42 percentage points compared to a traditional model
Upstart’s model provides higher approval rates and lower interest rates for every traditionally underserved demographic
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau published these results in a blog post last year, and I am quite proud of that.
Q: What’s a lesson you’ve learned that has helped shaped your work?
Learning to say "no" to people (tactfully).
As a person generally eager to please by nature, I tended to accept every request that came my way early in my career. At first, it was easy enough to just throw more hours at the problem, but as the number of requests continued to grow, this approach didn't scale well.
Once I started to truly grasp how much of a limited resource time is, it really resonated with me that saying "yes" to something means implicitly saying "no" to 1,000 other things (to paraphrase a Steve Jobs quote).
These days I try to make time for the things that are truly important and nothing more.
Q: What’s a trend in technology or innovation that you believe doesn’t get enough attention?
Artificial intelligence and machine learning get a lot of press for the advances made in “hot” areas like autonomous driving, natural language processing, and beating humans at previously impossible board games, but these techniques are set to have an even larger impact on the less glamorous but arguably more important industry of lending.
For more on this, see our CEO Dave Girouard’s blog post about our important truth: “The emergence of machine learning in lending will entirely reshape the banking and broader credit industry in the next 10 years.”
Q: What’s one moonshot idea that could help make Ohio a world leader in technology and innovation?
I briefly considered a few answers related to partnerships between the tech community, the university, and the local government. However, there’s so much exciting stuff already in the works there that I didn’t feel anything I thought up qualified as a proper “moonshot”.
For my moonshot idea, I’d like to see Ohio start revamping cities to be friendlier to autonomous driving. There is substantial effort being put forth by very smart people to solve the problem of autonomous driving, but let’s also attack the problem from the other end by altering our physical infrastructure to make the problem easier to solve. The more obvious benefits include safer roads and easier commutes, but such an endeavor would also attract more world-class researchers to the state and could ease housing costs (by allowing people to live further from our various downtowns).
Q: What’s a recent book, podcast or news story that you found interesting?
I’ve recently read and enjoyed a number of books, including Range, What You Do Is Who You Are, and everything Jocko Willink writes, but those are all books that you’d expect someone like me to recommend and are thus unlikely to be new to many readers.
Stepping outside the mainstream a bit, Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8 is a book by an autistic young man named Naoki Higashida, communicated via pointing to letters on his alphabet grid. This was an incredible read that provided a window into life with autism. It humbled me and certainly helped with building empathy. It can be easy to forget just how varied the human experience can be when spending all day surrounded by people fairly similar to oneself.
Q: What's your favorite place in Ohio?
Goodale Park.
I proposed to my wife by the park’s fountain in 2014 and have a lot of fun memories from Comfest in years past. When we were touring potential office space for HQ2 in 2018, I remember the distinct moment when I looked down over the park from what eventually became our office space.
The prospect of getting to return home to Columbus suddenly felt real and I let out an audible gasp, which is the equivalent of jumping up and down screaming after adjusting for my baseline level of emotional displays. These days, a chunk of my week is spent taking the pulse of the office via walking 1 on 1s, and I remain incredibly grateful to have such a great park at our doorstep.
Q: What makes Ohio special to you?
It’s home.
Being in Silicon Valley at a tech company is arguably the modern-day equivalent of Florence during the Renaissance and I was fortunate enough to have the incredible opportunity to spend 5 years there. Nonetheless, the pull back to Ohio was ever-present and strengthening as time went on.
Family, friends, and football were all things I expected to rediscover after moving back, but I’ve been extremely impressed with the broader community of people as well. Ohio has incredibly smart people working in a diverse set of industries, yet still maintains that Midwestern humility and down-to-earth nature we’re known for, with a small chip on our collective shoulder for flying under the radar for so long.
Connect with Grant on LinkedIn.