Build Like A Rebel

For the Builders Who Don’t Fit the Genre.

Earlier this year at a conference in Chicago, someone asked me what my favorite music genre was and I completely blanked. He must have thought I hadn’t heard him because he started helping me out: “Country? Alternative rock? Classical?”

I paused, thought about it longer than anyone should, and finally said, “You know, I really do like it all.”

A few months later, a good friend (who has a much more refined musical palette) sent me his playlist of his top twenty favorite songs. Just for fun, I ran it through ChatGPT to see what it would say about his personality. The output was surprisingly accurate, then he challenged me to do the same. As I built my own list, I realized how eclectic I really am and why that seemingly simple question had stumped me.

(Side note: if you’ve never tried this, it’s actually fun, especially if you swap results with friends. You can see my playlist at the end of this post.)

When we hit record for our MoneyPot podcast recording, Jordan Wright, CEO of Atomic, started us off strong by sharing his favorite song and the story behind it. It was such a grounded, personal moment—and there was another powerful one later in the recording about forgiveness (more on that in a future post). It reminded me how music has a way of revealing who we are before we ever talk about what we do, and it set the tone for everything that followed.

When Darin Petty, founder of Chisel, was asked the same question, his answer stopped me in my tracks (pun intended).

He said he loved the Zac Brown Band, not just for their sound, but because they broke their own mold. When the industry tried to box them into Country, they pushed back. They built their own label. They recorded Jekyll + Hyde, a hard-rock-meets-country experiment that critics hated and fans didn’t quite know what to do with. Darin loved it for one reason: they refused to play by the rules.

And that, in his words, is exactly how Chisel was born.

After years on every side of the banking-fintech-processor world, Darin saw how the system had calcified with archaic processes, mountains of forms, and too many middlemen between vision and execution. So he and his team decided to take a different route: empower banks and fintechs to build directly, without dependency. To package the expertise, the compliance, and the tech in a way that gave power back to the builders.

That’s the kind of defiance I can get behind.

Not rebellion for rebellion’s sake, but defiance as a form of integrity. The kind that asks better questions:

Why are we still doing it this way?

Who decided this was the only path forward?

What if there’s another way and we’re the ones meant to build it?

I’ve watched Chisel up close as a board member, investor, and believer in the builders who dare to do it differently. The ones who color outside the lines not because they want attention, but because the lines were drawn wrong to begin with.

Darin calls it curious defiance. I think it’s the same creative courage that drives any great builder, whether you’re writing code, composing a song, or reimagining an industry. You listen for a new rhythm. You refuse to settle for the expected. And sometimes, you have to create your own label to make it happen.

So here’s to the product rebels, the ones willing to sound off-key before the harmony catches up. The ones who know that innovation often starts as noise.

And here’s to those of us learning to do the same in life, to build what’s next our own way, even if it doesn’t fit the genre.

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Between Builds: Tiffany Haynes’ Playlist

1. Colton Dixon – Build a Boat

2. Sugarland – Settlin’

3. Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

4. DJ Khaled – All I Do Is Win

5. Benson Boone – Beautiful Things

6. Bob Seger – Old Time Rock and Roll

7. Israel Kamakawiwo’ole – Somewhere Over the Rainbow

8. Ram Jam – Black Betty

9. Johnny Cash – I’ve Been Everywhere

10. Maroon 5 – Harder to Breathe

11. David Crowder – How He Loves

12. Sugarland – Something More

13. Colbie Caillat – Try

14. Nickelback – Photograph

15. MercyMe – Even If

16. Aretha Franklin – Respect

17. Pat Benatar – Hit Me With Your Best Shot

18. Journey – Don’t Stop Believin’

19. Louis Armstrong – What a Wonderful World

20. NF – My Stress

P.S. If you try the playlist experiment, share your top twenty or what ChatGPT said about you in the comments. We all know it only captures a fraction of who you really are, because algorithms don’t have soul.