EXCLUSIVE – The recent decline in the stock market doesn’t scare Noah Kerner, CEO of investment platform Acorns.

In fact, Kerner, appointed CEO of Acorns a few years ago, told Bank Innovation that addressing this “fundamental challenge,” of missing financial literacy for working Americans is at the top of his list for Acorns’ strategy this year.

Based in Irvine, Calif., Acorns was founded in 2012 as a mobile-first investment platform. Its user base surpassed 270K users in January 2018. Last October, it had 100,000 accounts, he said, meaning it experienced a 170% increase in three months.

Aside from further expanding this userbase, adding new products such as Acorns Later and developing new features such as a new pricing level, as the company’s appointed CEO Kerner wants to utilize Acorns media arm: Grow, to educate and guide people on all financial matters.

“I would say we have this great opportunity,” he told Bank Innovation. “I am obsessed with the merging of education and product. Most of the media content that you see is essentially just causing people anxiety. Every time the stock market falls, people are made to believe that things are bad, and they need to pull out. But we are hellbent on cementing in people’s minds that they should stay the course.”

That’s one of the reasons Acorns launched Grow, its own financial literacy blog, back in January 2016, he said. And indeed, he commented that Grow has a strong readership, assuming that most Acorns users are regular readers of the site.

As for Acorns as a whole, Kerner is gearing up to launch its retirement account, called Acorns Later, in the coming weeks. Acorns Later already has 340K people on the waitlist.

“The first step was to help people invest spare change, the next is education, and then to help people solve other financial challenges,” he said.

This year, in addition to those goals, Kerner will also focus on scalability.

Kerner knows a thing or two about that, having founded millennial-focused marketing agency, Noise, through which he developed products and marketing campaigns for companies like Facebook, Vice Music and Chase Bank. In the past, he also served as the first Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer at WeWork, and currently serves on the Board of VH1’s Save The Music Foundation.

Kerner studied psychology and economics at Cornell University.

Read more about Acorns plans for 2018 here.