I recently went one-on-one with Sean Desmond, CEO of nCino.
Adam: First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Sean: I spent the first two decades of my career in enterprise technology, which taught me that great technology means nothing if customers can’t realize tangible business value.
When I joined nCino in 2013 as Chief Customer Success Officer, fintech was still a new concept in financial services—one of the most cautious and heavily regulated industries for good reason. Our job was to listen, learn their world, and prove ourselves through results, not promises.
Building our customer success organization from the ground up meant getting close to how financial institutions actually operate. Each one had different needs, different regulatory environments, and different legacy systems to navigate. That diversity made us sharper and more adaptable.
As I moved into product leadership and eventually into the CEO role earlier this year, I kept that customer-first lens. When I stepped into the CEO position, nCino had already established itself as the worldwide leader in cloud banking, but the real opportunity was to help financial institutions navigate what’s next, which is using data and AI to work smarter and serve their customers better.
Today we work with more than 2,700 financial institutions worldwide, and the lesson remains the same: we succeed at innovation in banking when we focus on delivering on our promises and building customer trust through proven, purposeful technology.
Adam: In your experience, what are the key steps to growing and scaling your business?
Sean: Growth starts with obsessive customer focus. At nCino, every product decision begins with one question: Does this help our customers operate more efficiently and serve their clients better?
For example, when we built nCino Banking Advisor, an AI-powered co-pilot deployed directly into the nCino Platform, we solved a real problem. Loan officers were drowning in data across disconnected systems. We gave them an AI co-pilot that surfaces the right insights at the right time.
Successful scaling also requires ruthless prioritization. You must know which initiatives truly move the needle and have the discipline to say no to everything else.
Finally, culture is your competitive advantage. Growth comes from empowering people to take ownership and think like partners and owners, not just executors.
Adam: What are the most important trends in technology that leaders should be aware of and understand? What should they understand about them?
Sean: The AI revolution is here, but many leaders are approaching it from the wrong angle. The question shouldn’t be “How do we use AI?” but rather “What specific business problems can AI solve for us?”
Generic AI solutions may perform well in controlled demonstrations, but they rarely deliver meaningful results in production environments. The real value lies in AI that’s designed for your specific industry, trained on your proprietary data, and integrated seamlessly into existing workflows. At nCino, we’re deploying AI agents that execute concrete actions within banking operations, analyzing credit risk, organizing loan pipelines, drafting compliance documentation, and prioritizing customer engagement opportunities. The objective isn’t to replace human expertise but to automate routine, time-intensive tasks so that loan officers and relationship managers can dedicate their skills to what truly matters: building client relationships and making informed credit decisions.
What many organizations overlook is this: AI’s effectiveness is directly tied to data quality. This leads to the second critical trend: data strategy. While most companies claim to be data-driven, few actually operate that way. Their data typically exists in siloed systems, inconsistent formats, and lacks standardized definitions for fundamental business terms like “customer” or “revenue.”
The organizations positioned to succeed with AI aren’t necessarily those with the largest data sets. They’re the ones with unified, clean, well-governed data architectures that enable practical application. This isn’t a technology challenge that can be solved through software procurement alone. It’s a leadership challenge that requires making difficult decisions about standardization, governance frameworks, and occasionally sunsetting legacy systems despite organizational resistance.
For leaders who haven’t recently assessed their data infrastructure, that’s the place to begin. Even substantial AI investment will yield limited returns if the underlying data foundation is compromised.
Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?
Sean: Great leaders are authentic, transparent, and decisive. They communicate clearly, trust their teams, and create environments where people feel empowered to challenge ideas, including their own. Another quality that often gets overlooked is operational discipline. Vision matters, but execution matters more. The leaders who consistently deliver results are the ones who establish clear priorities, hold people accountable, and follow through on commitments. They don’t sit back and set strategy; they ensure the organization has the systems, processes, and resources to implement it.
The best leaders I’ve worked with don’t pretend to have all the answers. They ask better questions, listen deeply, and empower their teams to solve problems.
Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Sean: Leadership grows through engagement and action. You can’t lead from the sidelines; you must lean in, participate, and model the urgency and ownership you expect from others. That almost always requires being uncomfortable.
You grow most as a leader during the uncomfortable moments: making hard calls, having difficult conversations, and giving feedback people don’t want to hear.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?
Sean: Stay adaptable. The pace of change across industries, not just in technology and banking, is accelerating. Legacy thinking is the biggest threat to innovation. Stay open, stay flexible, and be willing to challenge your own assumptions.
Put customers first, always. Every product and process decision should tie back to one question: Does this make our customers more successful? If you can’t answer that clearly, don’t do it.
Execute with conviction. Healthy debate is essential, but once you decide on a direction, move fast and commit fully. Alignment in action drives real progress. Half-hearted execution kills momentum.
Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing, and branding?
Sean: Trust is everything. In financial services, especially, your brand is built on credibility, transparency, and consistent delivery. Marketing that overpromises destroys trust faster than any competitor can.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Sean: “Crush the job you’re in, and if you want to be a leader, act like one before the opportunity presents itself.”
