2022 has been an epic year for myHSA in many ways! As I look back, this is the first year that I feel like the company is being noticed and accepted, and we have begun our journey to change the way in which Spending Accounts are utilized in this industry. Here are some of my highlights for the year.
We have become a big company - sort of. Since the very first days of myHSA, I have always (jokingly) said to the staff, “when we hit 20 people I am gone.” I never thought of myself as a big company person and so the reason for the joke was that I was content to stay small and nimble. I love small companies; I love watching people do what they love and giving them the freedom and ability to do so. As a company starts to grow, you get too many defined roles and rigid responsibilities. What actually happened this year, regardless of our growth, is that the underlying parts of the company did not change. At our heart, we will forever be a start-up, but with the introductions of project management, “roles and goals” and many other implementations from some of the people here, we are becoming something far beyond a start-up.
We have decided to not move fast and break things. This was a term I used many times throughout our history, to move fast and break things. It was only recently that I learned this was a Facebook term - which made me hate it - but the parts that I love were the fundamentals of how we started the business. It is the next phase that will take it to the next level. Moving fast is always fun, but when we are wanting a certain level of excellence from our company it is important to do things not just fast, but also awesome.
We have focused on our “Upgraded Flex”, a temporary name coined by our Head of Growth, Allison G. Our superpower is that we have always been good at Spending Accounts. This year that has proven itself again and again, but not in the typical manner. Our plans are not the typical top up “bucket” afterthought when developing an insured benefits plan. We always knew our place inside a benefits plan was never as a full package to replace the clients benefit insurance. It was to bullet proof their clients plan to be able to offer things that a traditional plan could never possibly offer or adapt to become. We bring a beautiful, complexity into the plans and make it simple.
We have a real office! For those who don’t know, myHSA started in a house - well not an actual house. It was a commercially zoned house in the trendy district of Marda Loop in Calgary. When I sold my last business, it was my attempt at keeping a bit of brick and mortar in my life. Instead, it became an amazing birthplace of one of the coolest companies around, with the culture to back it up. We used to work so close together that you could hear literally everything. It was from that chaos that we became a unit. Now our office, although in a cool building in the heart of the beltline on 17th Avenue in Calgary, our fundamentals remain true. We hire for culture and nothing else. We are fortunate being in an industry where no one does what we do, and therefore it works for us to hire the people that fit our culture the best. I spent most of my life wondering how anyone could work in an open office without a door. Now I spend most of my days wondering how people could not.
I am excited for 2023. The stage has been set for our goal as an organization from the beginning - to be the spending account provider of choice, with our own spin on things.
Tim Kane
CEO & Founder
myHSA
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