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Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach

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Re: Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach

#21

Post by johlindenbaum »

imalex wrote: post #16

By the way, this is US only. We only link to US banks, so it wouldn't be very useful to download the app in a different region. Our team is pretty small, so international expansion probably won't be in the radar for awhile.

You'll probably find that Canada is in there for free. If you guys use the same Intuit link that Level uses, you'll probably find "Royal Bank of Canada" and "Royal Bank of Canada (US)" in the list of supported institutions. Level worked great in Canada if you went through the effort of downloading it from the US AppStore.

Re: Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach

#22

Post by mind_heist »

Hello - I am a pretty decent user of financial apps , I use - Mint extensively , - Personal Capital to a fairly decent amount. - Also use an App called "Clarity Money" that was launched recently. - Experian & CreditSesame for credit scores.

Could you explain the finance "coach" aspect of your app ? I have been in several situations where I wish one of these apps had told me a particular financial pro-tip & I have always felt let down. How would your app exactly be a coach ?

Re: Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach

#23

Post by phailhaus »

kevinmannix wrote: post #20

What are the security concerns? What are you doing to protect user data? One of the biggest drawbacks to Mint I've encountered from friends is that they don't feel that the account data they provide is safe, or that it has a large possibility of being exposed - this has led many of my peers to not use Mint (personally, I've been using Mint for 3+ years). That being said, very willing to try this. Personal finance sho…

I'm surprised your friends feel that way, because I was the exact opposite! I was wary of using Mint until I found out it was by Intuit, which I trust far more.

Re: Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach

#24

Post by orless »

U.S. only, so can't try it out. But judging from the animations on the website, I'm really irritated by the chat interface. You say "relatable English", but I personally don't react with "Woohoo!" to the "paycheck came in" message. I don't see what added value the chat interface really brings. I don't even think "predetermined choices" can be called "chat".

Re: Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach

#25

Post by tbirrell »

kevinmannix wrote: post #20

What are the security concerns? What are you doing to protect user data? One of the biggest drawbacks to Mint I've encountered from friends is that they don't feel that the account data they provide is safe, or that it has a large possibility of being exposed - this has led many of my peers to not use Mint (personally, I've been using Mint for 3+ years). That being said, very willing to try this. Personal finance sho…

To add on to this, even with the reticence many of us approach Mint with, it has the reputation of Intuit behind it. What can you say to alleviate these fears?

(directed at Penny)

Re: Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach

#26

Post by imalex »

willsun wrote: post #6

I'm curious about your decision to use a chat interface. Given that the primary purpose is to provide insights and explanation, it seems a traditional UI presentation would be superior -- my sense is that a chat UI is best for two-way communication, as opposed to one party presenting great insights and the other just acknowledging, but presumably you guys have considered other pros/cons.

Great point about two-way vs one-way. We find that it's still valuable for one-way communication because our main goal is to make finances relatable and easy to understand, and a chat interface literally forces us to be simple and clear in how we explain. Certain concepts might be easy to name but hard to explain (APR, rolling average, prorated spending), and a chat interface allows us to teach those concepts in great detail.

For example, here's a excerpt from explaining how credit card interest works:

Penny: Chase charges you interest based on your APR (annual percentage rate).

Penny: You probably saw this number when you signed up for your credit card :credit_card:

Penny: APRs are usually about 12-24%.

Penny: As far as I can tell, your Chase Freedom's APR is about {{ numeral(0.15).format('0%') }}, which is about normal.

You: OK

Penny: To compute how much interest you get charged every day, divide your APR by the number of days in a year, like this:

We also do a fair amount of two-way communication when we're understanding a user's circumstances. When Penny coaches people about investing, we try to understand the user's financial situation based on how much risk they're willing to take, how much they have that's investable, their horizon for returns, etc, all of which fits pretty naturally into a chat interface.

Re: Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach

#27

Post by ptasci67 »

dontmitch wrote: post #19
ptasci67 wrote: post #8

I have been using Penny since the second launch on Show HN and have been absolutely loving it. Hands down solves the number one problem I have with Mint, et al which is an overload of information. The screen with all my purchases auto-categorized (not always right but close enough) is fantastic and I depend on it. The simple chat options are exactly what I want to know and only a few clicks away. The gifs are also su…

Wow, that's awesome to hear! For what it's worth, we don't think the premium experience (Penny+) is a good fit for most of our users. Locking extra complexity behind a premium version was actually our way of keeping the core experience simple (and encouraging people to not mindlessly turn on extra features unless they're confident they want them). We think the simplicity of the core experience is one of the main reas…

That's great to hear and I think y'all have struck a good balance IMO. #keeppennygreat

Re: Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach

#28

Post by imalex »

orless wrote: post #24

U.S. only, so can't try it out. But judging from the animations on the website, I'm really irritated by the chat interface. You say "relatable English", but I personally don't react with "Woohoo!" to the "paycheck came in" message. I don't see what added value the chat interface really brings. I don't even think "predetermined choices" can be called "chat".

Hey, co-founder here: I'll be the first to say that the chat interface isn't for everyone. If you'd prefer to get the facts with minimal extra stuff, Penny might not be for you. What we've found from working on this from so long is that the chat interface goes a long way towards making finances relatable and easy to understand. For most people, the biggest barrier to personal finance literacy isn't education; it's motivation. So celebrating wins like paychecks coming in actually helps a lot—feedback says people love being told they got paid and celebrating.

Re: Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach

#29

Post by reitanqild »

imalex wrote: post #15
reitanqild wrote: post #11

Not compatible with any of my devices. I guess that is because my devices are located in Europe. (I have a Samsung S7, english setup and an older Tab).

Sorry about that! Since we only link to US banks, we're only available in the US. Hopefully international expansion will be a thing, but we're a little too small for that at this point.

Understandable at your point.

Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it at all since my main annoyance is when google does it. :-]

Re: Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach

#30

Post by dontmitch »

yellow_postit wrote: post #17

Why did you make the decision to not be on any other chatbot platforms? If that's the primary interaction mode, it seems odd to launch a separate app just to chat with a singular bot.

A couple reasons:

1. Those other platforms didn't really exist when we first launched. Messenger launched their platform about nine months after we started Penny. 2. (The real reason) We still don't think we can provide a better experience via a chatbot platform than we can with a standalone app.

To motivate that second point:

The benefit to a chatbot platform is that you meet people where they already are, and "signup" generally has lower overhead.

The downsides are many, though. Most platforms don't allow for things like securely submitting username and passwords, e.g. when connecting a bank account (although Messenger is starting to allow webviews, which can be repurposed to handle this). Browsing your aggregated transaction history, changing the category of a transaction, viewing your balances, etc. are all poor fits for a chat interface (again, Messenger has only recently started to address this). Pre-populated responses aren't first-class citizens in most chatbot platforms. We get more control over the UI, e.g. when displaying animated graphs, in a standalone app than we do within chat. There is/was no way to lock individual chatbot threads behind passcodes to protect your privacy... and on and on :)

Finally, there's also the problem of discoverability, which no chatbot platform has solved in a convincing manner. Downloading a standalone app is a pain, but once you get over that initial hurdle we think the experience is still significantly better than delivering Penny over a chatbot platform.

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