1/ Figuring out which problems to tackle first with @MaybeFinance has been challenging.
Ultimately we want to help people be in control of their finances and their future without the need for a middleman (i.e. a financial advisor).
2/ But one of the reasons this problem hasn't really been solved well is just how varied each individual/family is when it comes to their finances.
It's very much solvable, but it just means we'll have to build this in phases and the first few phases will absolutely fall short.
3/ Not that they won't be useful, they will. But this isn't something we can build in a few weeks or even a couple of months.
Generally speaking here are the phases I've laid out in my head...
4/ Financial Dashboard
This is about data centralization. Connecting all of your accounts from all the places.
We'd report on the data, but not offer insights or advice.
This is just "get it allll in one place so you aren't logging in to half a dozen accounts".
5/ Path to Financial Independence
One of the biggest reasons folks want a tool like Maybe is to understand what their path to financial independence is. Once we've got all of the data (phase 1), we can then work with customers to show them that path to independence/retirement.
6/ Financial To-Do List
One thing that makes managing your finances so difficult is that you don't know what you don't know.
Lots of ways to optimize tax savings, for instance, but knowing what to do and when is very complicated.
We'll generate monthly to-do lists for you.
7/ Investment Optimizations
Based on your financial goals, risk profile, etc., we can show you ways to optimize your investments (rebalancing, tax loss harvesting, asset allocations, etc).
8/ Simulations/Forecasting
Playing "what if" to any given financial opportunity and having it percolate throughout all the previous phases.
9/ One of our big goals is help you be financially literate. The major downside to roboadvisors is that you still don't actually know what's going on.
In a decade you'll still be saying, "I don't actually know what's going on with my money".
We want to actually equip you.
10/ Being your personal finance dashboard is a massive undertaking and it'll take quite a bit of time to really get to the point where it encompasses all we'd like to do.
11/ As we start tackling these phases we'll almost certainly figure out ways to add value faster or solve problems more simply.
We'll also find certain parts to be much more difficult than we imagined.
12/ But I believe that each person being in control of their finances and understanding how the various parts work ultimately means everyone can become financially independent sooner and enjoy life on their own terms.
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I'd LOVE an macOS/iOS/iPadOS-native take on this space.
I feel like humanity is ready for the kind of app that offers more than the overly-structured typical word processing/spreadsheet software, but not at the expense of speed.
Folks throw out so many "better alternatives" to Notion, but they're almost always extremely text-focused or spreadsheet-focused, which is just polishing the same 💩.
$300,000 went to the team. All team members who had stock options got the full value of their options and then folks who didn't have options (we stopped issuing options a couple of years ago) received a bonus based on time with the company.
1/ Last year I failed to sell Baremetrics for $5m, but I learned a ton, and one of those things was the world of asset sales & stock sales.
This is about to get real nerdy but this is crucial if you’re trying to sell a company. It could literally save you millions of dollars.
2/ Depending on how your company is set up, you’ll have the option to do an asset sale or a stock sale.
In an asset sale, you’re selling the assets of the company as opposed to the company itself.
3/ In a stock sale, you’re selling stock that the company has issued and generally you’re selling the majority of the stock such that the buyer controls the company thanks to their majority share.
You’re basically selling off ownership of the company.
1/ One of the biggest misconceptions I see from first-time founders is what multiples they could sell their company for.
So, let's talk about that a bit, in an effort to downplay the notion that you'll get filthy rich from your company.
2/ I'm going to overgeneralize some things here, for the sake of brevity. Yes, I understand there are always exceptions, but chances are you aren't it.
First up, let's talk about the reasons someone buys a company.
3/
1. Flipping 2. Revenue 3. Acquihire 4. Strategic
Again, there are other reasons, but those are the big ones.
2/ In 2018 we launched a product called Baremetrics Intros, which essentially helped companies and investors find each other based on their actual data instead of just who they knew. Three months later…we shut it down.
3/ It was, commercially, a failure. We just couldn’t get any investors (our target) to fork over any cash. We opted to shut it down instead of going deeper down an already risky rabbit hole.