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🥳 Happy New Year and thank you for being a FinTech fan!
Eugene 00:02
All right. Welcome to the podcast, Jacklyn. Nice to meet you.
Jacklyn 00:05
Thank you so much.
Eugene 00:06
Jacklyn, you started your startup recently, a couple of years ago, and it originally started as an Ensemble. Later you rebranded to Onward. Before starting your company you've been at Uber, Blue Apron, and several other companies.
Tell us how you end up launching a FinTech company in the first place? When you started building your startup, was it a FinTech company first? Your company tracks children's expenses for divorced parents.
Can you share more?
Jacklyn 00:31
Yeah, I definitely knew that I wanted to be a founder and I wanted to start a company. I knew that I wanted to do something that was highly mission-driven, and had a really positive impact on society.
Then I left Blue Apron, in order to start something of my own. At that time I had a few different ideas that were not in the FinTech space.
And so I wasn't specifically looking to work in FinTech, I think what really drew me to this opportunity is actually the really deep emotional pain points behind the target market and the customers that we serve. In many ways, I see us as a bridge between FinTech and the emotional needs of our user base. The mission and the impact of the company that I built were more important to me than whether or not it was FinTech.
Eugene 01:19
You said that you had two other ideas. Why did you decide to go with this one, which started as Ensemble?
Jacklyn 01:26
I left The Blue Apron in 2019 in order to start a company. I had a few ideas that I had started validating and then the pandemic hit. One of the ideas was pretty much eradicated by the pandemic because of the cultural implications of how users changed their behavior.
The raw pain points around this particular problem are so stark, that I knew that there was an actual need to be met there. And the personal identification with the problem. I saw my own parents get divorced at the age of 14, an age where you're old enough to understand both sides of the table and not necessarily know who to believe, and as the child are somewhere in the middle.
And I thought I had experienced some stress that was passed down from my parents arguing about the money to me and thought that there was a real opportunity here to make an impact and avoid that type of stress, not only for the parents but also for the next generation.
Eugene 02:29
When I was reading your application description on the App Store and Play Store, it actually felt more like a Mental Health application that removes stress and makes it easy on everybody. Such a nice thing. And two things combined are just wow, it's a no-brainer, people are just struggling with all this stuff every day.
Why did you wait so long, since you were 14 years old? Why didn't you go the first time: okay, I need to build a business to solve this. I'm going to go into this FinTech.
What was this triggering point when you actually decided: “Okay, I must do it. I must build Onward.”
Jacklyn 03:02
You're saying I when I decided to build Onward specifically or why? What was the point of my career that I decided to start a company?
Eugene 03:08
I guess both. Let's start with the one where you actually decided to solve this pain problem, like expense management.
Jacklyn 03:15
Going about that first part, I was actually working at a venture studio in New York called Co-Created, I originally joined them just to get access to other entrepreneurs and free office space in New York. Sometimes the journey can be lonely, and I thought having some other folks that were in similar positions could be helpful for me. And I came across the idea of Onward while I was there. And I was looking for something to start as a business.
The timing was right, I thought there were really “big legs” behind this idea. We also had some initial pre-seed funding, that we were able to get through that connection with the venture studio from Citi Ventures. So everything in the stars aligned in terms of timing that made that the particular right moment to start Onward.
Holistically, in terms of my career, both of my parents were entrepreneurs and both grandfathers on either side were entrepreneurs. So I knew that I wanted to start something but I really wanted to spend the first 10-plus years of my career learning.
I intentionally started out my career at an early-stage consulting company, helping entrepreneurs to raise funding to understand the mindset of the entrepreneur building something to then understand VCs and how they choose companies to invest into.
Then getting into a hands-on operational role at Uber and Blue Apron gave me that foundation of seeing all aspects of the entrepreneurial journey from different vantage points before going in and starting something myself.
Eugene 04:48
What was the most impactful part that you learned back at Uber, Blue Apron, and consulting companies, and what was the actual thing that helped you build this company?
Jacklyn 04:57
There were a lot of lessons about the culture that I think were really instrumental for me in building this company, particularly at Uber and Blue Apron. I happened to be at Uber at a pretty interesting time. I joined around 2500 employees and left at around 13,000. So it was a period of hypergrowth. There's also a period of a lot of turmoil in the media that started during my last six months there, I'd say around January of 2017.
And I feel like, in many ways, part of the demise of that period of Uber really came back to the cultural values that were set out at the organization. Cultural values included stepping on toes, principled confrontation, and always be hustling. And I think some of those cultural values, and also, the rating system, where people were actually rated against each other versus teams being rated holistically actually caused a highly competitive environment that did not promote and appreciate and reward teamwork. So seeing some of those cultural values really degrade the culture of the organization, even the company’s standing in the media, and eventually stock price at the IPO. And was a very formative experience.
Then I joined Blue Apron, which had a much softer culture that originally attracted me to them. But in many ways, it was also the demise of the time that I was there. I joined a few months before the IPO, and then the IPO was not what they had hoped, and then I saw subsequently two rounds of layoffs during my time there. Lots of this was due to the soft culture and lack of accountability. So the culture really sets the tone and is the beginning of everything that you do at a company.
That's why before I even hired my first employee, I laid out the cultural values of the organization to be very intentional and specific around how I wanted to build the culture.
Eugene 07:07
Building culture starts from day one, you cannot just wake up and be serious, okay, let's build a culture here. It's still better than with Meta, like in a lot of FinTech companies laying off so many people these days.
You obviously had different experiences like hyper-growth or at the early-stage companies, very different flavor, compared to these big companies.
Let’s use this as a stepping stone because the culture and the target audience that you serve is very unique in a way that you need to be really aligned well, on the values, on the mission, on the spirit, right? And how you actually do this, not just externally, but also internally.
How do you project all your values through the product from your team to your customers?
Jacklyn 07:46
Interestingly enough, our first cultural value is empathy. And that is because we do serve our target audience that has very strong and significant emotional pain points.
They're coming from a point of very interpersonal friction, which is actually one of the reasons that they come to download Onward, and they need our services. So we really have to put ourselves in their shoes, to serve them best. That's really important for me and that cultural value is not only outward facing towards our customers but also written in a way that is also inward facing, and empathy for each person on the team in our various roles.
That's come to light in some interesting ways. I did an exercise at one of our offsites this year, where we had to pull a name out of a hat and choose another person at the company, put ourselves in their shoes, and say:
What are the KPIs that are most important to them?
What do they care about?
What's easy or difficult for them in their role?
The team found that really valuable. We also live those values through talking to users, I had a user call two days ago, and everyone on the team speaks to users every single month, to really build that empathy. And even if you your parents weren't divorced, or you didn't go through a divorce yourself, it's really important to understand those emotional mindsets in order to build the best product for our target market.
Eugene 09:08
How do you find the energy to do those interviews with the customers? It's not like your average customers, you just spent some money, and you have this whole situation going on there. How do you prepare yourself?
Jacklyn 09:18
I love doing interviews, I would say it's one of my favorite things about the role. And I think it's because I look at it as a privilege. It's not every day that people share with you the most intimate aspects of their family life, particularly around the arguments that they have about money, how they split custody with their ex, and how contentious or amicable, their divorce is.
I feel really privileged that people are willing to share that type of information. And honestly, it's been inspiring to hear people be willing to share so much and so many details about their lives. It is really a privilege and so I was lucky because people are opening up and sharing. And that's always really nice.
Eugene 10:06
It's nice to be able to listen on the other side and understand and actually reflect and be fully empathetic. For all the listeners that are listening right now, and thinking about divorces in their lives if they have been impacted in any way… by talking to all these people, what would be your number one advice to them if they find themselves in a similar situation?
Jacklyn 10:29
Interestingly enough, in the United States, the number one cause of divorce is infidelity, followed by money as the number two cause of divorce. So actually, a ton of people are getting divorced because of money. And I think as a society, we've become very uncomfortable when it comes to talking about money. At least in American society - people are uncomfortable, even if you think about asking your best friend to pay you back for dinner or lunch, where they might owe you that money. That's an awkward conversation. And people who are in a relationship very often struggle in terms of talking about money.
No matter who you are, I think it's important to be conscious of how uncomfortable we are as a society and talk about it. And even before you might find yourself at a point of divorce to build really open and proactive communication around money, even if you're in a relationship, but also in your friendships, parental relationships with siblings, if you're taking care of parents- there area lot of relationships where money can cause friction.
So first and foremost, my advice: if you find yourself going through a divorce or separating from somebody you are in a romantic relationship with, there are many systemic problems that we're actually solving with our app.
So today in America, the average cost of going through the full legal process of getting a divorce is $34,000.
Eugene 12:01
Wow.
Jacklyn 12:03
Yes, and because the vast majority of people can't afford that amount of money, they end up actually not going through the full process and exiting the divorce process with no child support agreement in place. So today in the US, actually 65% of those who get divorced with children have no child support agreement in place. This is actually part of a nuance that many people are not aware of about why we have such a big problem to solve. It's insane.
If you think about what that means, if you have no child support agreement in place with your ex, that means that every single expense is up to negotiation. That means you're texting and emailing each other all the time when it comes to money. But actually, even if you do have a child support agreement in place, this was also very illuminating for me to learn kind of back at the beginning of starting a company, child support is calculated differently in every single state in the US. And it only covers food, shelter, and clothing, by legal definition. And so there's still a bunch of different expenses that are not included. That includes all medical bills, all extracurricular activities, things like math, tutoring, and summer camps.
To some degree or another, this entire market is talking about expenses via text messages or emails, and spreadsheets. And you can just imagine if you had to email an ex multiple times per month, just how difficult that might be.
Jacklyn 13:37
My recommendation would be even if you don't go through the legal process, try to at least at a personal level come to an agreement about how money is going to be shared for your children. Actually, look at your bank statements for the past several months, look at how much you spent money on your kids in each one of those months and be realistic about the stuff that comes up.
You can even look back on a one-year basis. Because sometimes these expenses are seasonal, whether it's summer camp back to school holidays, and ensure that you and your former partner have a good understanding in place of how much money your kids cost you and how you're going to split them even if they're not covered.
But these are categories not covered by child support, things like medical bills and extracurriculars, etc. I think the more you can proactively communicate, lay everything out, and go into the process with an expectation of how those expenses will be handled. You're definitely going to be better for it.
Eugene 14:36
Oh, that's a nice overview of what's actually happening in society and because of all those kids who are going through the hoops and expenses. What would be the most strategic parts for you to focus on next for Onward - the legal side, the expenses side, etc?
What do you think about it?
Jacklyn 14:54
We are building ourselves as a FinTech player. I would say a lot of other divorce apps in the space that are focused on other aspects of divorce relationships.
Eugene 15:03
I checked the reviews - yours are the best so far.
Jacklyn 15:06
Thank you, thank you. We're very proud of that. But there are other apps out there that focus more on custody calendars, and scheduling and communication features that are purely focused on finances. And we think that that's a really interesting play in this space.
From here forward, we actually are creating a suite of innovative financial products targeted at the needs of divorced parents, things such as card products, savings products, etc. So I don't want to give away all our secret sauce, but you can expect some more interesting financial products to be coming down the line from us over the next several years. And I think what's really interesting about this space is if you think about the financial dynamics in the space, you basically have one person who has primary custody. And that person actually, because they have more time with the kids, will end up fronting more bills on their card.
Jacklyn 16:05
So it’s all coming out of pocket, then they need to ask to be repaid, which is emotionally challenging, and then often kind of nag or remind the other person without certainty whether or not that other person will repay them.
If you think about it,every single month, somebody provides an unsecured loan to their former partner, for the tune of 1000s of dollars, because the average cost of raising a child is $1,100 per month per child per the USDA.
So if you have two kids, you're out of pocket, let's say you could be to over $2,000 a month, and you do not know whether or not you're going to get repaid for that money. Just think about it. From a financial perspective, it's like a short-term unsecured loan from someone you're not sure it's going to pay you back.
Eugene 16:56
So negotiations are still happening but inside your application. And they are basically discussing: “Okay, what makes sense, and what doesn’t". So do you have to go through the same process each month? I hope because of your applications it is less painful for them. How do you do this, like the monthly settlement? Like, how did you come up with this time period? Why not weekly, or other periods?
Jacklyn 17:17
We actually don't set it. So the two co-parents can choose whatever cadence they want to settle up at. Our research indicates that about half of people settle up monthly, and about half of them settle up after every expense or every couple of expenses and not on a traditional cadence. Very often, the difference between those two different groups is that sometimes people will transition to us from the text message, where they were used to settling up more like one-off expenses.
And sometimes they transition to us via Excel. Those who used Excel, usually only kind of went through the pain once a month. So they still like to settle up once a month. But we don't push any particular cadence on people. We enable them to self-serve based on what what what works best for the relationship
Eugene 18:01
From your current users do you see more happening on a monthly basis or just a one-off basis?
Jacklyn 18:08
About 50/50. As I mentioned, about 50/50 of the user base.
Jacklyn 18:12
I cannot help but ask a question - how do you compare yourself to Venmo? Obviously, you’re a more niched version. Venmo used to be a nice tool. Not anymore these days. Also what about the social component? How do you see it in your app?
Jacklyn 18:26
Actually, we have a lot of team members that come from PayPal/ Venmo, three of them at the moment so far. And I really have a lot of respect for what Venmo is doing, what you would find for our target market is that Venmo is very often used.
But Venmo usually is at the end of a negotiation cycle. It's just the thing that processes the payment. But there was still all the back and forth that happened first via text messages or emailed spreadsheets. So we're an end-to-end solution, I would say. And our app automates all of that difficult communication that would very often otherwise be happening via text message. Before that, we also keep track of who owes who's at all different points.
Venmo doesn't have a running list of all the expenses, what each person owes, the ability to negotiate on those, record keeping, which is also very important to this target market, the ability to have every conversation, every transaction recorded in a place that they can then export their data if they need it for legal purposes, etc. Venmo doesn't offer any of those features.
So for the actual payment processing, it's a great option but in terms of everything that comes before it - if you rely on Venmo you're still texting, emailing, and negotiating live.
Eugene 19:44
Makes me think that you build them not just financial stuff, but actually emotional stack for them to go through this process.
Jacklyn 19:50
Exactly.
Eugene 19:51
Awesome. Before we dive into the team and fundraising and all the amazing stuff that you built internally, can you share more about your original start named Ensemble, right? And then you have rebranded to Onward. How did your mission evolve during the process? And what made you decide to rebrand?
Jacklyn 20:14
I really loved the name Ensemble. I thought it represented as a group of people coming together for the benefit of the children. This concept of it takes a village to raise a child, like grandparents are involved, parents are involved. And the reason that we ended up rebranding was actually that people had such a hard time spelling the word Ensemble. Unexpectedly.
Things you would never think about as a founder! But we had 14 different spelling variations leading to our website. And when I would be on user calls, I would ask people to find us in the App Store and share their screens. And I'd say,type in Ensemble, and I could see that they were just stuck. They didn't know how to spell it. They were uncomfortable pronouncing it in case they pronounced it wrong.
Given that we're a consumer app, virality is really important to us. So we didn't want people to either forget the word, forget how to spell it, or be uncomfortable pronouncing it when they want to share the app with a friend. And so we thought we wanted to choose a name that was simpler, catchier. And Onward, for me, is really symbolic of the brand.
If you were to just do some searches around divorce on Google, the vast majority of everything that you would find is very negative, backward-looking content that actually makes you kind of angrier. It usually villainizes your ex. And it still sort of reinforces some stigma around divorce.
Whereas we've really thought about turning that on its head. In my mind, if nearly one in two marriages ends in divorce, there should be nothing wrong with being a co-parent. From a brand perspective, I really want to normalize, co-parenting. And instead of looking backward, look forwards and get co-parents excited about that next stage of life. Excited about the relationship with their child or children, etc. And that's really where the name onward came in.
Eugene 22:20
I think it is very aligned with your mission. Certainly, well aligned.
Let's talk about the team. You said that three folks are coming from PayPal and Venmo. And I saw a nice picture of your team, I got one of the offsites looks really great. Then you did seed right, and in series A, you just raised $10M. Congratulations.
How did you manage to get this amazing team together?
Jacklyn 22:54
First of all, the funny story about that photo, is that we took it the day before the article went live. We happened to be at an offsite that week which we have once per quarter. And by chance, we took that photo at about six o'clock, just as the sun was setting the day before the article, which went live at 7:30 in the morning, and I was like, hey, I really want my whole team to be in this article. And I told them when we took the photo, at such short notice, I don't know if we can promise it and somehow it managed to get in!
Jacklyn 23:23
I was really happy that the team got to share that moment.
But in terms of how I thought about the team, building a team with FinTech experience has been something really important to me from day one.
Partially because I don't come from a FinTech background as the founder. And because we have such complex financial products on our roadmap, I really wanted to make sure that we had that talent. And those previous experiences are well-represented on the team. In terms of how I built the team, it was just a lot of heads-down work.
Eugene 24:00
Tell us your secret, how did you find them?
Jacklyn 24:04
I found a trickle-down effect. Our VP of product comes from PayPal, he brought in the other two folks that followed from PayPal. I really needed a VP of product with that particular skill set.
And I literally decided to spend a weekend just looking for this person. So I created a list of all the top FinTech companies and literally went person by person searching for product folks within every single organization and writing every single one of them a message from my LinkedIn. I think I wrote like 250 people that one weekend and it ended up paying off and bearing fruit.
That was great. And he brought in another two folks. And then otherwise, actually, recently, I hired an operations person who helps as well with hiring and he's just systematized that approach, looking at target companies and reaching out to them on our behalf.
So since then, we've brought in other folks with FinTech experience, including someone who joined our team about three weeks ago and came from Acorns, someone from Intuit - so really amazing companies. I think for me, it just goes back to being intentional about who we want to hire, what backgrounds they have, and then going after it.
Eugene 25:27
It is pretty amazing for somebody who is not from FinTech to build such an amazing FinTech team like that. That's a really good job.
If you would recommend to other founders who are trying to kind of replicate the same success as you, in building the team, what would you recommend to them?
Jacklyn 25:43
I’d say doexactly what I did. Go ahead, always know what you want. Think about your dream team member or team dream person for whichever key role you're hiring for. Then try to find that person at a bunch of other companies that you know and you believe are relevant to your space. Then just relentlessly go after it one by one and write to them and tell them your story.
People actually are pretty responsive when the note comes from the founder themselves. So I would say to do that - go one by one, write the people that you think would be great for your company, and you'd be surprised how many people are willing to have conversations.
Eugene 26:22
Awesome. And obviously, there are two parts to FinTech: the Part that is Tech, and the part which is Fin, and both are very technical.
How do you make sure that they are aligned with the mission and the values that you have in your company?
Jacklyn 26:33
The biggest reason that I think a lot of people responded to the message that I sent them on LinkedIn was that the mission resonated. I think, for most people, it's pretty rewarding to work at a company that they believe is mission-driven, and also has a lot of positive impact on society. So that actually hasn't been the hard part.
Eugene 26:55
you skip the hard parts.
Jacklyn 26:59
Exactly. Most people even if they've not gone through it, can relate to the problem. And then in some cases, actually, we just hired a new VP of Engineering, who is a co-parent.
If you can get people to feel a particular connection to the problem then the problem solves itself.
I always told people, whether it was employees that I was recruiting or investors during conversations, don't take my word for it. Literally call anyone you know, who's been through this problem, and ask them about what it's like to share finances with their ex. That'll be your validation.
Eugene 27:46
That's a nice pitch. Before Onward you had experience working at the VC company, then with an angel accelerator, and before you had consulting experience. And then you started this company back in 2020. If I'm not mistaken, I think you did a seed - $3 million. And then series A a couple in October 2022 was $10M.
How impactful was the experience that you had before those companies? How have you been able to raise these rounds these days?
Jacklyn 28:16
The focus was on the experience I had at Uber and Blue Apron which made a big difference to have bigger name-brand companies that are well-known and well-respected in the industry. And it was probably more helpful to me than any of the experiences I'd had earlier in my career, whether it was like early-stage startup consulting, or VC experience.
Eugene 28:51
Knowing this, would you do the same kind of career path? Or would you skip the VC route in the very beginning?
Jacklyn 28:55
I would do the exact same career path. I had always been really curious about working in VC, and I thought that that was potentially what I wanted to do long term.
And for me, what I learned during that is I think it's a super interesting industry, but it takes a very long time to learn whether or not you made the right decisions, usually it’s five years or 10-year horizons.
Whereas at Uber, I could make a decision for let's say, putting out a new incentive to drivers, go live within two hours and find out the next day when I looked at the data, whether or not it was a good decision. So feedback loops are totally different.
Personally, I really like that feeling that you can be hands-on, you can change something and the next day you see how it performed. So I wouldn't change anything. I think my career path was really interesting. I learned a lot. I met a lot of great people so far and it all brought me to where I am today.
Eugene 29:59
That's a great answer. If you sidetrack for a second, you mentioned all this experimentation that you're done back at Uber and the speed of the feedback, have you actually adopted the same kind of structure in your current company?
Jacklyn 30:15
Yeah, we did do a lot of testing, A/B testing on stuff. And we do the same thing here. Just recently, the last two weeks, we've got a text message that our app can either send for you or that you can send yourself. And so the last couple of weeks, we've done some experimentation with trying different content for that text message and seeing how it performs. So we do use those similar strategies, ourselves.
Eugene 30:51
Amazing.
Advice time: so if you've put yourself in the shoes of early-stage founders, so they have no idea how it's done at Uber and other big companies, what would you tell them to do first, when they want to do experiments in their businesses?
Jacklyn 31:08
ou're saying specifically about experiments of a general kind?
Eugene 31:11
AB testing, like if I have a FinTech product, what and how should I think? What is the mindset if I want to execute something like you do?
Jacklyn 31:21
Yeah, I would say always start with a hypothesis. So for example, with this experimentation that we're doing with a text message, we're trying different hypotheses, for example, you know, if you mentioned the more emotional pain points that people are dealing with, that'll help them convert more or if you share, the value propositions of what people get after using the app, that'll help them convert more.
Have a philosophy on why you think changing something might impact your metrics for the better. And then test it out, try to see if you can have a control so that you can measure the results more efficiently. And don't be afraid to try things, especially in the early stages, where the opportunity costs are lower, and you want to be agile, sometimes you might find something you didn't expect in your testing.
Eugene 32:13
Haha and not to wait 10 years, like in the VC industry. Awesome.
So you brought on a COO recently, as you mentioned, and a bunch of VP folks should be amazing. Most of the early-stage companies struggle with scale, rather than understand how to build processes, you know, onboard the team, and actually show okay, these are the new ropes and so on. And obviously, your experience back at Uber, going through this hyper-growth phase as well. And hopefully, you are lucky enough to experience the same hyper-growth in your consumer application.
What do you think about preparing and not over-optimizing and making it perfect before it’s time?
How do you make sure that you invest the right amount of time and effort to build this process right now at your company?
Jacklyn 32:58
A small correction, actually, we didn't bring on a COO, we brought on a business operations lead.
At the C level, actually, partly, to kind of answer your question to not over-engineer things, we're still a small team, we're 10. We'll probably be 20-25 by the next several years before we raise a series B. So we don't want to over-engineer with multiple levels of seniority. There's no need at this stage.
I think folks who are later in their career and really had that level of experience, for example, our VP of engineering came in with 20-plus years of experience from being a VP at a previous company. And so a lot of folks actually want to stay at the level that they were at previously. And that's kind of the way that leveling has come into the organization. But I really try not to think about that too much. I want to get the best people around the table with the most relevant experience and help them to solve the problems that we have in front of us. And so I try not to dwell too much on seniority. And again, to not over-engineer hierarchy at the organization, any organization at this stage.
Eugene 34:06
It's really amazing. Not many consumer FinTechs can afford that kind of mindset, and building such a close-knit team is really amazing. Especially the focus on expertise and background.
So I think one of the reasons when I checked the reviews, and I'm going to change gears for a second on the App Store and the Play Store is that everybody loved the application, and they really adore that it's free. And most of the other companies that are on the market, actually charge them some monthly fees and so on.
And because you believe in FinTech first, you are already positioned for a much better outcome. And again, so I'm curious, how do you see the business model going into the future?
Jacklyn 34:49
It was important for us to start off free. We think about the expense tracking app that we developed as the ability for users to come into our ecosystem and then from there get to know us and build trust with us and then upsell them on financial products. Not to say that we won't at some point charge a subscription for the expense tracking version of the product, we might at some point choose to do that. But really, we wanted to validate first are they willing to invite their ex to join them on the platform?
And putting a paywall in front of all of that is not really where we want it to go. But in the long term, we plan to monetize primarily via our financial products. So for example, if we launch a card product, it would be an interchange of items purchased on the card interest, if we have a savings product down the road, etc. So the primary revenue source is from the financial products that we launch.
That said, there really hasn't been a brand out there that speaks to co-parents in America. And I think about us holding that, that space.And that's why I think over the long term, it'll be valuable for us to have this kind of distribution list and access to the most co-parents that we can, in this country, and even provide them with really interesting and relevant content.
Even if today we don't monetize every single one of those users. I think over the long term, it'll be a really interesting asset in play for the company to have access to so many co-parents in America.
Eugene 36:24
Yeah, it's a really unique opportunity for you to cover this entire market, and good news - if you're successful enough, generationally, you’d be able to reduce the pain over time. So it's really a generational impact that you’re building in there. That's super awesome. Can you share more about your financial tech stack, in a way like, so to all the other founders that are listening? Obviously, there are Plaid and other integrations and I bet you are using something like Twilio for SMS, etc. What are the things that were not obvious to you as a founder that didn't have any FinTech experience before?
Jacklyn 37:00
Yeah, so the thing that was least obvious was talking to these banking as a service (BaaS) providers is that there are so many out there today, I would say there are at least 15 to 20. And when I was pitching, every single VCs invested in a different one of them, and they asked me to speak to them, and they wanted to make introductions.
And suddenly, I've got like 25 people who all provide essentially what looks like the same service. And there are just very small nuances between them. And so I think that wasn't necessarily intuitive, although a lot of them could have provided us the same values that would have the same products that we were looking for. And that was actually one of the reasons that I knew I wanted to bring on a VP of product, who had FinTech experience, who could help evaluate those a bit more closely.
Eugene 37:45
So the final decision was made by basically your team like figuring out what actually makes sense.
Jacklyn 37:51
I would say, we spoke to at least 15 banking as a service providers, at least 10 to 15. And then narrowed it down to about three that we liked the most, and that we'd heard really good things about from other founders in my network from VCs.
And then, in the end, we chose one, really based on how the conversations had gone with the founder of that new service platform, and also some of the features that they offered. Specifically, with the one that we chose, they bundled the ability to complete ACH transfers, with other financial products, which was actually something that was harder to find elsewhere in the industry. So pretty basic process, start talking to everyone and then narrowed down to, let's say, three top contenders and took things from there.
Eugene 38:44
BaaS is a very hot topic these days. And having 15-20 vendors to choose from is actually a good position to be in. Back in the day you would have only a couple of options that you need to go and they have all APIs, and you had to manage and work with all of them.
In the long term, when you think about Series B and beyond, do you see yourself working with the same BaaS providers? What do you think about being a vendor locked in?
Jacklyn 39:04
Yeah. For now, yes. We're planning to scale with the provider that we've chosen and thought about that intentionally when we went ahead and decided who to choose. If we get to a point down the line where we have, we hope we have too much scale and need to start thinking about other solutions thenthat would be a great problem to have.
Eugene 39:25
Absolutely. Awesome. I think we went through all the main questions. We covered the team part, the product part, the mission, right, how you build it, how you fundraise, about previous experience. So did we miss anything else? As a part of your amazing story, starting from zero and getting here?
Jacklyn 39:41
Thank you. I think just some other interesting facts about how we think about our problem space are for me, I really think that the way that America is structuring families and what the modern family looks like today looks a lot different than it did in the 1950s.
Today in America, 37% of millennials keep their money separate at the point of marriage. And that's growing every single year. And so I think our technology and we really think about it as starting from the most complex relationship among two different people when it comes to dealing with money. By far the most acute pain point in that space.
That said, our platform actually naturally lends itself to expand over time to married parents with separated finances, or even cohabitating couples. There are a lot of points in the family that we think we can touch, whether that's grandparents, the children themselves, etc. We believe it is the most acute problem out there to solve, but then, from here forward, helping people who are actually working together will be a much easier problem to solve.
Eugene 40:55
Awesome. That's really amazing. And there are avenues for you to grow and expand, into other parts of this relationship, and money management. It is infinite in a way when you think about generations.
Before we close up, what would be the one piece of advice that you would give other FinTech founders who are trying to build a product in the consumer space?
Jacklyn 41:13
I would say the most important thing for me that I think has always propelled me forward in my career, and I would recommend anyone early in their careers, is to dream big. Dream big, and assume that anything is possible. And if you have that dream, the world can prove to you otherwise. But if you don't have that dream, it will never happen.
So for everyone out there wanting to start a company – it's possible.
Believe in yourself, believe in whatever idea it is that you're working on.
Don't be afraid of failing, dream big. And then everything else can cascade from there. That's my biggest advice.
Eugene 41:50
Awesome. Thank you for sharing. I thank you for coming. Really appreciate your story. And I think it's going to be very interesting for people to learn and actually build it and use all this knowledge in their own businesses. And I was thinking, while preparing for this interview, one key phrase stood out at the end: upward and onward.
Jacklyn 42:12
Yeah, we do tend to use that quite a bit internally.
Eugene 42:15
Thanks so much.
Jacklyn 42:16
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
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