Welcome everyone to another episode of the Embit podcast, which discusses tech and entrepreneurship. In today's episode, Josh Pickford joins the pod to discuss this start up maybe, which is a SaaS tool to help others reach financial freedom easier. A quick disclaimer before we begin, the podcast is not financial or investment advice All opinions expressed are our own and investing is risky. Always do your own due diligence.
So, Josh, you previously founded bare metrics, which helps combat churn rate using subscription analytics and sold it in November of 2020. Would you mind discussing building that business and your background as a founder? Yeah. So I've been, building stuff for the Internet for 20 something years. You know, I've got dozens upon dozens of different projects and companies over the years. Bare metrics was, sort of the the most recent thing.
Started it in 2013, sold it in 2020, sold it for around $4,000,000. Initially, I was focused on a lot of B2B products. That was sort of my my background from a software perspective and, had been in that space for a long time. And then, I was gonna take some time off after Bearmetric and then that lasted about 4 months, and I started maybe after that. And would you mind talking to a little bit more of what maybe is and what it aims to, accomplish.
Yep. So, maybe some sort of modern day financial planning and and and wealth building or wealth management. This is kinda stuff that you would typically go to a financial planner for. Younger generations would don't go to financial planners.
So, we're we're replacing financial planners, but we're also offering the tooling for people who would not have used them in the first place because they're not willing to pay for or they they've got more of a DIY attitude than sort of older generations tend to have when it comes to technology. So we're we're we're providing the toolset for people to, to grow their wealth.
And what tools are you providing to help replace those financial advisors and help all these new investors that are coming into the market to help grow their wealth. Yeah. So the problem that sort of exists today is that there are a lot of different places that you have money. And sort of the older you get, the more places that that money exists. So that's random checking account, savings accounts, investment accounts.
And those investment accounts include, like, maybe you have an investment account through your bank, but you've also got a Robinhood account. And, public account and, like, whatever else. Then you throw in things like crypto. That's a whole ballgame there. And then you've got, retirement accounts and there's just You've got mortgages, car loans, some houses that are paid off. Like, there's all sorts of stuff. And there's no way to see all of that stuff in one place.
And then in addition to not being able to see it all in one place, you have no way of, like, making decisions based on all of that information. So, you know, when you're when you're either giving financial advice or making financial decisions, it's important to have the whole picture. And that's quite literally impossible right now.
You would have to log in to dozens of different apps to actually see, how your assets are allocated, how much money you're actually spending or making in a month and nothing exists to see all all in one place. So we're we're ultimately building the tool set to see all that in one place and then the appropriate decisions based on your, you know, your appetite to risk. And what your long term, goals are. And how did you get interested in personal finance and helping others, learn more about it?
Yes. So I mentioned the baremetrics sale. I had, I started working with a financial planner after that, mainly to try to make sure that it blow it on on the money that we made. So so we're working on that or working with them on that and and quickly realize that the stuff that they're doing is ultimately really basic. Not that it's not beneficial or useful or they were doing anything wrong. They're just running the the typical adviser playbook there.
And, so it starts spending a lot more time figuring out, like, hey, well, if they're doing that, like, I I can also do that. They're not doing anything that I couldn't do. They don't have access as far as the types of investing to the things that I don't have access to. They're just doing it for me. And the reality was, like, I just if you spend a little bit of time looking into it, you you realize it's not difficult.
And so started looking at that and realizing like, well, we we can provide the tools for people to do this themselves. Financial planners, they use software to do a lot of this stuff, and they provide that to their clients, but it's awful. It's outdated. It's it's built for the financial planner or not for the consumer. So let's build software for the consumer that that equips them appropriately. And I, you know, my entrepreneurial brain just sees a problem like that.
And maybe arrogantly, I don't know, besides I can fix it. And so that was sort of the impetus for it last year. And you're building the tools to help people reach their financial freedom and invest with more information. Do you plan to also give access to more types of information through either courses or videos or articles to help people learn more about investing in personal finance.
Sure. Yes. I mean, on a high level, that's sort of like the that's the easiest way to sort of educate people, but I think at the same time, we will also Some of that stuff will be integrated into the to the app itself because I think it's more powerful instead of someone sitting there, like us telling them to read some articles, some 3000 article on something.
Instead instead, we will make a suggestion and then we'll provide the the the performance on that and some some sort of automated commentary of here's why that worked. Here's why that didn't work. Look. You know, maybe there was some sort of market dynamic that changed or whatever. So instead of just straight up telling them to go read or watch a video or something. It's actually showing them what to do and almost training people with real world.
Stuff to sort of educate themselves in that regard. And how is your startup different from companies like Mint and Intuit? So It's it kinda depends on, like, where you're focusing the, in this sort of life cycle. Mint. Mint expanded a lot over the years, but primarily they're a budgeting tool. So, maybe is not a budgeting tool. This is zoomed out a bit.
So there will be some very, like, basic budgeting components, but this is more about managing your overall finances and specifically building wealth around it. And so Mint tends to tackle the the budgeting side of that and and into it and all the random, products still is more around it, whether it's bookkeeping, Bingo, or taxes, or again, budgeting. This is less like that sort of in the trenches, like, constantly the categorizing expenses and stuff like that.
That's not this is not this is heavier the investing side of things. And without customers paying a percent of assets under management, how do your tools compare to someone using a financial advisor And what is your business model to make profit? Sure. So, on the the really basic level will charge a a flat monthly fee that has nothing to do with your net worth or your of the assets that you've got. It's purely based on future usage. The difference there.
So, you know, typical financial planner or adviser or even a other soft similar software in the space, ultimately, wants to charge you an assets under management fee, which can range anywhere from, you know, a quarter of a percent up to 2%. And you'll pay that forever, basically. And they're not doing anything different for you necessarily.
The the the adviser's game plan for someone who has $400,000 in assets is basically the same as someone who's got 4,000,000, but the adviser's then making, you know, ten times as much money from the $4,000,000 person for the same amount of work. And we think the incentives are pretty poor there where they're incentivized to do the least amount of work because they can make the most money from from keeping it simple.
And we're trying to incentivize ourselves to build really great tools that people wanna keep using and come back for instead of trying to upsell them on a services agreement. So won't make money from flat fee. Typical sort of subscription fee for this stuff. And in terms of your name and logo, my guess is that you created the name maybe is like, oh, what maybe invest and people who are interested in personal finance should do.
And then you're making it clear to them what they should do with their finances. How did you come up with the name and branding for maybe the We want people to play the what if game, like asking, like, thinking big picture, like, what what is it that I want out of life? And, you know, what if as a name for a company doesn't really isn't as great from a branding perspective, so the way that we talk about this is like, you know, maybe you start a business. Maybe you open a coffee shop.
Maybe you take a couple of years off to go travel for you know, for pleasure, maybe you build your dream house. Ultimately, you know, the word maybe is it's like, what if we did that? How can how can I pull that off from a financial perspective? Because that's that's ultimately the reason people don't do or don't do something is They don't have the financial competence to make that decision. Right?
So maybe your dream is to open a coffee shop like, you never do it because you have zero confidence in your financial ability. Whereas you could plug that into a scenario planner through maybe and realize like, oh, I can do that. Here are the steps I need to take there. Here's, you know, that'll be doable in 3 years based on x, y, and z. And so we want people to to reach those goals, the the things that they've sort of dreamed about, but then we can give them the financial confidence to do it.
And you started maybe in around March of 2021. How has your journey been building in public? And why'd you decide to build in public versus in private? Sure. I so, baremetrics was very in public. And that it served us well. From a marketing perspective. And that's kind of that sort of my default way to operate. So, I think for for maybe sort of a natural progression of that, but I also think, as a financial company, a fintech company.
Usually, there is a lack of transparency, and I think it's incredibly beneficial for customers to be able to to see how things are going and to have confidence that we take the the the security of their data really seriously, want to make decisions that ultimately benefit them the most in operating sort of in public and transparently, I think this sort of drives that home.
So but I'm I, again, I've been doing that for the better part of 10 years now, like, being incredibly transparent and, that's sort of how my brain operates anyway. So, it's sort of a natural move for us. And with your previous start up bear metrics, what are some of the things that you've learned from that start and building it that you're applying to building baby? I am they're very diff like, very different markets.
One's, you know, Their message is b to b, maybe is b to c, you know, sort of direct to consumer kind of stuff. And I think a lot of Operationally. It was very easy for me to get maybe up and running, build a team around it. I don't have to spend really any time, like, figuring out logistics of starting a company or taxes or payroll. Like, I just have I have this entire toolset sort of built in just from having done it for a long time.
So there's a lot of just it's very easy from it was very easy to get things up and running quickly and just focus on product stuff. So I think as far as, like, taking one thing from their metrics and moving it over to maybe it's, like, just the systems make it really easy for us to move quickly because we're not bogged down by, like, well, how do we do this? Like, I just know how to do it.
And to wrap it up here, what are some of your takeaways on personal finance and investing and where can people learn more about your tool, maybe? Sure. So, I think in the personal finance space, things simplicity is sort of the key. Whether you I'm gonna talk this is outside the context of maybe whether you use our tool or not. Like, just general advice here is financial tools and industries.
The the the companies in the industry love to keep things looking complex, because that's how they sell you their services is to say like, yeah. This is super complex, but we can handle it for you for a fee. So I think, like, beware of complexity. And, when it comes to investing, simplicity will likely pay off a lot more than whatever fancy, like, algorithms you're using or, you know, quick trades that you're trying to to make to time the market or whatever.
Like, you probably you won't outperform the S and P 500 at the end of the day. So, I think, yeah, keep it simple avoid complexity. If you wanna find more out, about maybe, go to maybe.co or follow us on Twitter at maybe. Alright. I'll have those links posted in the episode description down below for anyone interested in checking it out. Hi, everyone. That wraps it up for today's episode. Thank you for tuning in to the podcasts. And thank you, Josh, for taking the time to hop on the pod.
It was a pleasure. Hey. Same. Thanks, Shamus.