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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

#31

Post by willsun »

imalex wrote: post #26
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 grea…

Makes sense, thanks for responding. I'm personally partial to chat UI when appropriate, and it does seem like this approach helps reinforce the personalized coaching aspect. Good stuff!

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

#32

Post by dontmitch »

reitanqild wrote: post #29
imalex wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :-]

Agreed. We've reached out to Google a couple of times asking if they can display a more helpful message than "not compatible with an of your devices" when the real reason is "Only available in the US". Not a great UX.

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

#33

Post by sdflkd »

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.

FWIW some people have foreign (Canadian) Google Play accounts (for example) but still live in the US.

Or maybe it's just me?

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

#34

Post by timcederman »

phailhaus wrote: post #23
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.

Intuit bought Mint, and the whole thing is built on top of Yodlee. http://yodlee.com/

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

#37

Post by beejiu »

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).

https://meetcleo.com/ if you are in the UK. Can't vouch for it, but the product seems identical.

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

#38

Post by imalex »

tbirrell wrote: post #25
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)

Privacy and security are really big priorities for us, so we do our best to address those concerns whenever we can. As far as personal info is concerned, we store the minimum possible info (first name and email, no address, DOB, etc). And we use a popular service called Plaid to do the transaction retrieval, so we never store sensitive credentials. Plaid actually powers many, many other financial services, so they're quickly building a great reputation themselves.

The other aspect is that banks are really good at physical security, but not so great at data security. Consider the recent Chase breaches, where a ton of sensitive data was leaked—you're obviously placing a lot of trust on Intuit or Plaid whenever you use Mint or Penny, but at least they're modern technology companies that probably hold themselves to higher data security standards than your bank.

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

#39

Post by dontmitch »

koolba wrote: post #9

From the Privacy policy ( https://www.pennyapp.io/privacy.html ): > We will never sell any information that could identify you for marketing purposes, and we only share limited amounts of information with third-party services on a need-to-know basis. Very nice! It doesn't show up in HN but they've even gone out of their way to bold the relevant bits. From the FAQ: > Penny supports over 15,000 banks in the United Stat…

That FAQ is a little out of date—I'll update right now. Once you remove duplicates, we support closer to 8-10k banks through Plaid, and we have two monetization strategies (monetization was our focus at YC):

1. A premium subscription service that gets you some power features within Penny; we just launched that today. 2. Recommending affiliate products.

It's important to note that affiliates can be a mixed bag. Mint.com was the product that turned me onto Betterment when I was hunting around for ways to invest my money; I'm legitimately thankful that they did since I love Betterment. At Penny, we think we can tastefully and in good faith recommend some affiliate products. Those recommendations fit perfectly into our coaching model too.

Unfortunately, most personal finance companies start pushing credit cards on people that don't need them because it pays the most money. We're building Penny in a way that disincentives crappy behavior like that.

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