Why I’m Building Quin
Saving and investing apps just aren’t working for the majority of Americans, but Quin works for everyone.
On October 10th, 2012, I had my first transaction into what was the first neobank, Simple. While the initial onboarding was a tad rocky (a bug prevented me from logging in until at least a penny was deposited), the rest of the experience was truly life-changing. Simple’s Goals feature allowed me to save for Christmas. Usually, my wife and I would just scrape together what we could last minute. Even though I only started saving in October, we already had actual savings to spend on presents by Christmas. This was the first time in my adult life I was able to save successfully.
This had a profound impact on me. So much so I wrote one of the front-end developers at Simple on Twitter and asked for a job that I ultimately got. Then in March of 2013, I started my fintech career. I’ve since devoted myself to the fintech space to help others save and invest. After BBVA acquired simple, I left to do a kids payments company, Piggybank. After, I worked to make retirement accounts accessible and easy for everyone at Vault, which was later acquired by Acorns. At Acorns, I focused on retirement, cashback rewards, and even the flagship feature Round-Ups.
What I learned, however, is all these products are idealistic. They try to solve the issue by simplifying the experience to make saving easier and lowering fees. The truth of the matter is that despite explosive growth in the number of fintech startups, people just aren’t saving ¹. 45% of Americans have absolutely no savings, and 70% have less than $1,000. To make matters worse, the American Psychological Association (APA) says finances are the number one reason for stress in America, and 77% of their respondents say they felt considerable anxiety about finances².
This is where Quin comes in. At Quin, our mission is to bring financial peace of mind to everyone. We believe nobody should ever need to worry about their finances again. We’re making a product for everyone, not just the 30% that are actually saving. Instead, we’re going to bring a suite of tools and safeguards to all our customers.
Never worry about these financial issues again:
- Unemployment. If you’re unexpectedly unemployed, focus on writing your next chapter, and we’ll focus on writing checks to pay your bills.
- Unexpected expenses. When life happens, and you need cash quickly you’ll have cash on hand at a moment’s notice.
- Clients not paying. When you can’t get paid for your hard-earned work, we’ll pay you since we know you’re good for it.
- Making payments. Not only will we make sure your bills get paid, but we’ll also smooth out your income and expenses, so you never have to worry if you’ll be overdrafted because of the timing between payroll and large expenses.
- Building credit. When paying your bills through us, we’ll report it to the credit agencies, so you are always building credit but not debt.
I’m so excited to be building this and soon providing it to everyone. The team building Quin is passionate about solving this problem since they’ve all experienced a recent layoff and job search. The pain, stress, and anxiety is still fresh in their mind.
So far, the response has been incredibly positive and humbling, with one person describing the team building this “god’s work.” If you’re interested in Quin yourself, sign up for the early access list on our website: helloquin.com
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[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/20323/americans-lack-savings/
[2] https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2014/stress-report.pdf
