#159 Aura Finance: Chasing the Ghost of Mint

Kelsey: My name is Kelsey Willock and I am from Chicago. I am a creative writer, but also fascinated by financial services. 

I’m Josh Muccio and this is The Pitch. Where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. Today on the show, Kelsey Willock pitches the personal finance platform she wished she had in her 20s. Kelsey always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but something was holding her back.

Kelsey: I was trying to pull myself out of $150,000 of student loan debt. I was working long hours at Goldman, but all I wanted to do at the end of the day was work on this project. given the economic position that I was in, I really wasn't ready to take a leap of faith But I realized like I can do this. I can learn about things that I'm not familiar with. And I became less afraid. And finally, six years in I felt ready to take the leap of faith to solve the problem directly. 

The Pitch for Aura Finance is coming up, after this. And whether you’re watching or listening on YouTube, Patreon or your favorite podcast player - thanks so much for subscribing and don’t forget to turn on notifications.

Welcome back to The Pitch for Aura Finance. Let’s meet the investors

Elizabeth Yin with Hustle Fund

You're an A plus founder.

Charles Hudson with Precursor Ventures

I feel like I’m the lone dissenter

Jesse Middleton with Flybridge

I don’t normally like edtech, but I really like you.

Returning from season 6 with a new fund, Jenny Fielding with Everywhere Ventures

Toughen up there, lady! That’s healthcare!

and Kate McAndrew with Baukunst

For those who can’t see, my jaw is currently on the floor

[clap]

[hellos]

Kelsey: My name is Kelsey Willock, and I am the cofounder and CEO of Aura Finance. I graduated college with $150,000 of student loan debt, and that left me very anxious and insecure. I had gotten my dream job at Goldman Sachs, which I thought was the best place to learn about money, but what I didn't realize is getting into the game is not enough if you don't know how to play it. Very early on in my career, I was lucky enough to meet a manager named Amy that really helped give me the confidence and guidance I needed to actually start playing the game. With her help, I refinanced 11 student loans, I started investing for retirement, and ultimately healing my relationship with money. The problem is, not everyone has someone like an Amy in their life. That's no wonder 88 percent of people are anxious about money. Two out of five can't even cover an unexpected $400 emergency expense. And it's not just a problem for them, it's also a problem for their employers, as they're more likely to miss work, take sick days, be compensation dissatisfied, and more, costing their companies $500 billion a year.

That's why we're building Aura, the first psychology based financial wellness employee benefit that combines coaching and wealth management for employees. We make it really easy for our members to get onto the platform. We partner with HR teams and charge them $349 per enrolled member per year. And our program is really working. In just the past year, we onboarded 17 paying corporate partners, including companies like LinkedIn, Figma, Whoop, and more. We also locked in two company-wide enterprise deals, one of which included a Fortune 100 company that went live this past week, where we beat our annual baseline enrollment goal in one day with them. 

There will be 100 million millennials and Gen Z in the workplace by 2030. So this is already a $34 billion opportunity. And we're building the solution we wish we had at the beginning of our journeys. With Aura, no one will start their job facing that journey alone. We are raising $3 million to invest in our product, to reach our next revenue milestones and scale our sales and engineering team. Thank you. 

Jenny: I'm so curious on kind of your secret sauce. I have to admit I get pitched a company like this probably once a week. So you seem to like really have cracked it in some way. I'd love to hear more. 

Kelsey: Yeah. Essentially, everything that we've built has been informed by real human coaches. For instance, my business partner, Courtney Carden, is actually a certified money coach. We are designed to unblock limiting beliefs and help build better behavior patterns. And when we pitch our partners, we're often the first time they've ever heard the word psychology and money in the same sentence. 

Jenny: So what does that look like? Is there a survey? Is there a chatbot that's helping these?

Kelsey: So there are multiple different interventions. Things like getting to know your relationship with money through our money personality quiz, which we developed with a team of behavioral scientists and researchers at Georgetown and Cornell. It's an eight question quiz designed to essentially build a Myers Briggs for your money. We also further curate your user experience because a highly avoidant person needs to be spoken very differently than someone that is highly obsessive, and so that is just one of the ways in which we get to know our members better. 

Charles: What does the coaching program entail? 

Kelsey: So, a member enrolls and they are brought to a digital dashboard, which will start by getting to know their relationship with money and we'll get to know their holistic financial situation. What's going on in checking, savings, spending and more. That onboarding takes about five minutes. Once we have them do the intake, we build them a plan for their money and their mindset. It is highly actionable. Things like, hey, we noticed you have $10,000 in excess sitting in your checking account. Move it over to a high yield savings account like Aura. So highly prescriptive, highly actionable and rewards based. On the opposite end of the spectrum, they might be in more of a wealth building stage. So we'll help them open up a managed investment account in alignment with their values, and they can do so also directly with us. Additional action items include helping them navigate a conversation around money with their partner. Money is the second leading cause of divorce, although I'd argue it's the number one. 

[laughter] 

Kelsey: They're highly intertwined. And we are also very effective at doing so. 37 percent of our members take action when they're in their first 30 days with us. 

Jesse: And when you're pitching the buyer - is the buyer, I assume, an HR role or? 

Kelsey: It's typically the head of HR, finance, who also needs to be convinced because HR is not a revenue generating side of the business. So you have to effectively prove out ROI or cost savings. Head of people, and then oftentimes we often work with total rewards leaders as influencers. Aura is also a powerful predictive analytics tool allowing total rewards decision makers to make more data informed decisions around how to compensate their people which is, to them, invaluable.

Jesse: Right. You mentioned it's the first time they've heard psychology and money, that, that makes sense? Like, it's a unique approach. Like, is there something that you've found that really just, when they hear this, they say, I'm willing to try it at least? Or, or do they jump right into like, I'm willing to buy? 

Kelsey: There is an existing frustration with current financial wellbeing programs. There's your traditional 401k benefit that really tries to provide good financial literacy resources, but struggles to innovate. And then secondly, there are hotline calls to certified financial planners, which are really built for folks that already have a certain baseline wealth. Those programs really struggle with adoption at the companies. And so they are eager to look to additional and new solutions such as Aura that can boost engagement and enrollment, of which our Fortune 100 partner has already told us we exceeded their prior partner's enrollment annual goal in one day, showing that Aura is immediately an out of the gate, able to adopt a new audience more effectively. 

Jenny: Can you talk about the churn? Many of the apps I've looked at, you know, people are enthusiastic at the beginning, especially the new year. And they kind of drop off as things change, they get busy. So, what keeps them engaged and what do your numbers look like? 

Kelsey: We actually originally went to market as a direct to consumer company. In 2023 our churn from a consumer perspective was 5.8%. I'm very proud to say that our churn this past year was 1.8 percent with our employer partners. Also driven by the fact that they're not paying, their employers are. 

Jenny: Very cool. And how much money have you raised? 

Kelsey: 1.3 million. 

Kate: And that was, you started in 2022? Is that? 

Kelsey: That's correct.

Elizabeth: I think the piece that I found really interesting was how you tie this to how HR is able to change their compensation practices. Can you say more in terms of perhaps a concrete example of what might someone may offer instead of something else because of the data that you provided. 

Kelsey: Yes. If you think about Pinterest as this data set of consumer intent, you can think about Aura's data as a set of information on employee intent to save, spend and invest their paycheck. That analogy actually came directly from one of our partners. They have a severe problem with the dental hygienists at their company turning over. They have an over 60 percent annual turnover rate with them. But now with Aura, not only are those dental hygienists getting access to behavioral coaching and wealth management, the company can also understand that the dental hygienists in the suburbs of Chicago want to buy homes. So they can more effectively make decisions to allow those individuals to eventually buy homes and understand that the relationship between them and their employer, is inherently financial, and they're helping them achieve those goals directly. 

Kate: So I think what I'm hearing from you is it's a highly kind of product led experience, a la Noom. Are you employing any individual wealth managers or coaches or anyone? Is there any kind of human to human or is it all really product-led feedback based on the data and what you're learning about the person? 

Kelsey: So over the past year, our main initiative for the company, was to write ourselves out of the equation, because for the beginning we were working with real human coaches and informing our model. Now we do give folks still the opportunity to sign up for a coaching call if they need assistance. On the back end, we use that as an opportunity to further inform our product experience. But over the next year, as we continue investing in our technology, the ultimate goal is to write ourselves out entirely to no longer need to have those human to human coaching interventions.

Kate: Got it. And can you speak more to your intent in the medium to long term to offer various financial services? 

Kelsey: So, we already do. We are a registered investment advisor. 

Kate: Okay. 

Kelsey: Some of the products that we already offer include an HYSA, high yield savings account, and a managed investment account. We also have an IRA in beta. We also partner with a company called Atomic Invest. So while we are the registered investment advisor I'm not interested in investing in that technology. I'm interested in building a digital behavioral coach. 

Kate: Have you noticed any trends in the underlying either demographic or psychographic of the employees that are really excited to use you or like the power users? Are they young? Are they middle aged? Tell us more about that. 

Kelsey: Yeah. First generation Americans and college students, we're seeing a significant activation rate. These folks might not have had conversations about money in their households growing up. Or their parents might have come from countries where they distrusted their banking systems. They're working to build a healthier relationship and break the cycles in limiting beliefs that they have been surrounded by. I had originally thought we were going to attract the young 20s, but I think it's, it makes sense that our average age of our user is actually 33, because you need to feel the pain. And oftentimes folks in their early 20s might not feel the pain yet. And when I say pain, they may not feel the pain of having to provide for a household, buy a home, take care of a child or a parent. But when you reach the age of 33, maybe you've gotten married, maybe you've gotten divorced, maybe you've experienced a significant pay increase. And those folks are really activating well with our platform. 

Elizabeth: What is the user experience when a person leaves his or her employer? Like, is, you know, if, if my money is in your platform, I assume I can still get to it, right?

Kelsey: Yes. We're experimenting with a number of different ways in which to keep that individual actively engaged with us, whether it's giving them an opportunity to introduce us to their employer or also giving them an opportunity to pay directly, and also giving them meaningful time to make that choice and decision. In our contracts, we've also written in, if you sign up for the program in January and leave the company in February, the company still pays for you the entire year. Giving them the opportunity and us to win them over in the long term post leaving their employer.

Elizabeth: But let's say that I choose not to pay, like, do I have to offboard? I guess, what happens to my money?

We’ll be right back.

Elizabeth: But let's say that I choose not to pay, like, do I have to offboard? I guess, what happens to my money?

Kelsey: That's a really good question. Um, you would, you would likely need to offboard or we could ACAT out your positions. I think as we learn more though, we're going to figure out, you know, that might not be the best solution. 

Jenny: You have to figure that out because your average person is not going to pay that. What percent of employees are you converting, and how has that changed over, say, a year?

Kelsey: Yeah. So across the 15 original partners we onboarded, we didn't onboard entirely company wide, we onboarded cohorts. And our average enrollment from workshop to signing up was 37%. That is extremely and astronomically high for what you would consider an EAP type solution, which on average is anywhere from two to 5%. With our Fortune 100 partner, we did 3% in one day. We're already tracking 5% by the end of next week. 

Jenny: How do you think about kind of the cycles, like, there was tons of employee benefits, say, in 2020, 2021, 2022, and then all of a sudden, as people were getting, more austere, they were cutting a lot of those benefits. So, how do you think and position your business not to be affected by those types of economic cycles?

Kelsey: Yeah. It's hard for me to say that I'm happy about the economic position that we're in, but I do see it as opportunity. We live in a time where inflation is highest, the individuals that are in the workforce feel like they can't live like their parents' generation, and financial wellbeing is the number one demanded employee benefit currently. It is not necessarily and always that the company is the top priority because not all financial wellbeing companies prove out ROI like us. So to me, I see significant opportunity to bridge the gap between employee demand and employer support of said demand. And I think that's why we're seeing such significant success in a time that people say, do you really want to be selling into benefits, even when benefits are scaling back? Absolutely. Especially if we can succeed in it. 

Elizabeth: Digging into the user experience, how much granular detail do you get to see around spending, for example. Like, are you in people's credit card purchases, or, or whatnot? 

Kelsey: So, we originally, when launching with our corporate partners, intentionally did not integrate with credit cards because we were concerned that our corporate partners would have an information security problem. But, fortunately, with the proliferation of companies like Mint, may they rest in peace umm 

[laughter]

Kelsey: - companies are quite comfortable with that and familiar. So on our roadmap for Q2, we will be integrating plaid solutions that will allow us to further see really in depth spending. Right now it is user generated content. So we rely on that individual to provide us effective data. 

Jesse: You mentioned, I think, that you started in consumer. I guess I'm curious - I personally am not sure that it's a great thing that our, like country's healthcare system relies on, the employers mostly like support and like it's led to some pretty bad situations - personal belief. I worry that something similar could happen if this plays out, like, the financial side, if all your bank accounts are tied to your employer and now you're like making - you know, I don't want to quit my job because then I had to deal with moving my account. But I am curious, the employer is a great distribution channel, but the relationship with the employee is what ultimately matters for you. Was there, was there an ah ha moment for you that was like, we need to sell through employers, like, we can't go consumer? Was there something that you saw there that just led you to make that decision? I'm just wondering how you view the world looking in the next five years. 

Kelsey: So we originally started direct to consumer, and I'm very grateful that we did because our consumer and immediate community was a lot more forgiving than a corporate partner would be. And we, my business partner and I, we're prolific writers. I had a blog called Not Your Boyfriend's Investment Advice, and she had a blog called Nourishing Your Wealth and Wellbeing, Your Weekly Aura. And we had a few thousand subscribers. And it was going quite well. We saw pretty significant traction within the consumer landscape, although many told us to lean out of that world because it is really crowded and it's challenging and you will eventually have to become a marketing engine, in which my business partner and I actually didn't want to do. The CAC was going to eventually be too high for us. And so in 2023, we began experimenting in the corporate market landscape. If any of you are familiar selling into benefits, it is a very long sales cycle. It can take anywhere from 6 to 12 months, even longer. And so, we knew we couldn't go through the front door. We would have to go through a side door. And so, the way we broke into this space was we started selling into employee resource groups such as women's networks and tapping into their existing learning and development and wellness budgets and already pre paid expense. So, we didn't have to go to the head of HR saying, hey, will you approve this budget? We already had just to prove ourselves in that space. 

Kate: Super smart.

Kelsey: That's how we brought on 15 paying corporate partners in six months time. And as we were growing logo soup, I began to see this as an opportunity to shift this from pitching workshops to pitching pilots. And a pilot gives you the opportunity to sell a long term enterprise deal. I pitched a Fortune 100 partner a pilot. They told me they weren't the pilot culture. The only way they'll know if it works is a company-wide rollout of a minimum of three years, in which I was ecstatic -

[laughter]

Kelsey: How the heck are we going to do this? 

[laughter]

Kelsey: And what ended up happening was we realized we've done enough. We've proved this works. We no longer need to pitch pilots. Let's go for big deals. And two months later, after we won that deal, we won a deal, three times the size of that company. And we're, we're continuing on that moat ever since. The revenue we currently have is $830,000 in contracted revenue, of which we've already realized over $100,000 of it this year. 

Elizabeth: And so that's across the three years? The 800? 

Kelsey: No. That is annual. 

Elizabeth: That's impressive. 

Jesse: Yeah 

Elizabeth: And what is your burn rate? 

Kelsey: Very low. 

[laughter]

Elizabeth: I love it. 

Kelsey: I like to consider myself a succulent. I do more with less. Um, it is 40,000.

Jenny: Can you talk about the current raise and where that money and resources will go to? 

Kelsey: I'm raising three million. I have just under two million in commitments. That capital includes funds that are coming back in to exceed their pro rata and new capital, including a fund associated with the largest employer in the world, which as you can imagine I'm very excited about for strategic reasons.

Kate: Have they priced it? 

Kelsey: So, just going to be really honest. I went to market, not needing a lead. That was not my intention. I was looking to bring around the right stakeholders, and I priced it on a SAFE. All of those stakeholders have agreed to the price that I went to market with. I am in conversation with a number of funds, though, right now, to take the remaining million dollar allocation. And if they do come in, I would see them as a true and traditional lead. 

Elizabeth: What is the SAFE cap? 

Kelsey: 15 million post money.

Jenny: Well, good news and bad news on my end. I have looked at so many of these products, and I've really wanted this to work. I invest a lot in FinTech, and I think, you guys seem to have incredible founder market fit, which is epic. Sounds like you have really great traction. I haven't seen that many companies be able to get, 17 logos, and I love your acquisition. So, I would definitely be interested. My issue is that I'm a pre seed investor, and so I might have missed my opportunity. So we can continue the conversation, but the price is probably too high for me.

Kelsey: Thank you.

Charles: We have a conflict in our portfolio that you and I've discussed before.

Kelsey: Yes.

Charles: But I'm really impressed by the progress you've made and you've solved a lot of problems that have befuddled other folks who've taken on this this market. So congrats. 

Kelsey: Thank you.

Jesse: I have backed four or five companies that sell through HR and employee resource groups, and maybe this says more about me than them, but none of them have worked out. Um, so I, I tend to have a little bit of a negative bias towards that distribution. I'm not sure that I fully wrap my head around what happens if you're really successful and now all of your employees' finances are tied to their company. I think because of that I'm probably not the right fit. I, I just, I can't see myself getting excited about that model right now. You've done an impressive amount with a small amount of capital raised with an area that I frankly would have said a year ago, you're not going to succeed at and you would have proven me wrong then. So I'm looking forward to following the journey, but it's not a fit for me. 

Kelsey: Thank you.

Kate: I'm kind of obsessed with you. I think you're amazing, and I think you've, you've kind of got it. 

We’ll be right back

Kate: I'm kind of obsessed with you. I think you're amazing, and I think you've, you've kind of got it. You have an incredible amount of poise and hunger for the space, like you can feel the founder market fit, and the thing that you said that really resonated for me was selling into HR is hard, and we're gonna do it. And that's why we're gonna win. We're gonna figure out how to go to market. And I also think that there's a million products and no one's figured it out, right? And so the, the demand is there and I - consumers aren't gonna pay, right? And so I, I think figuring out a way to get the employers to, to pay for it and to thread that needle is really interesting. We typically lead pre seed. Our average check size is actually around 500k to 2 million. So one of my concerns is if you have only a million left and it's at 15 post, it's a little bit of a stretch for us. It's not kind of center of the target on model. And that raises the bar, right? And I - I work in a partnership of four people. So anytime we're raising the bar, I'm like, I really got to talk to my team. um I came in with so many of these fears of, oh, I've seen a thousand of these and it's never going to work. CAC's going to be too high, da da-da da-da. But I feel like you just really methodically laid out why you can and should win. And I think if you win, a lot of people win, and I love it when, when the startup wins kind of the culture wins, right? Like I want to be an investor in those kinds of businesses. So I, I think that the, the allocation price math, has me at a, a no, but I'm excited and I'm a champion and I want to, hopefully get on the phone next week and we can maybe talk to my partners and see if there's some flex in there. 

Kelsey: Thank you. 

Elizabeth: What did you do after Goldman?

Kelsey: So I joined a program called On Deck, which is a founder's fellowship all about going from zero to one. That's where I met my business partner, Courtney. And we had such shared values in what we wanted to see in the world around economic mobility. And from there Aura it was born. 

Elizabeth: Oh, so basically you went from graduation to Goldman and then more or less into this? 

Kelsey: I spent six years at Goldman Sachs. I mainly worked with hedge fund managers, pension funds endowments. And I also worked on a program called Launch with GS, which was their billion dollar fund investing in diverse entrepreneurs and investment managers. While embedding myself in that ecosystem, I felt very compelled back to entrepreneurship, which is actually my roots. My parents are entrepreneurs. I went to school to study entrepreneurship. I worked at three different start ups in college, including starting a kale chip company called Kaleries. 

[laughter]

Kelsey: But, um, when, uh - during college my family home got foreclosed on and I went from: you can take on the world and do anything to figure out how to crawl yourself out of an endless hole. And that was a real challenge for me. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. 

Kelsey: And so, while at Goldman, I was trying to heal my own relationship with money. I found there's a lot of other people out there like me. And if that's going on at Goldman Sachs, I couldn't imagine what was going on in the broader ecosystem. And so, I'm really here to build the digital Amy, because I think everyone should have that person in their pocket.

Elizabeth: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I'm very impressed by you. Obviously when most people start a company, things don't always go to plan. It's crowded, this issue happens, that issue happens. But I really - I've been very impressed by how you've navigated each challenge in figuring out through an experimental mindset of like, okay, we're going from consumers, now we want to try B2B, but the front door for HR is hard, and so where are these other pockets of money, and so all these things. So, you know, even though I have some of these concerns that Jesse shares around how do you pull your money out as an employee, I, I don't worry about that. I think you'll figure out every step of the way. I think to Jenny's point, you know, we're pre seed investors at Hustle Fund. So for us, like the valuation is going to be too high. but, um, yeah, I, I'm very impressed, Kelsey. 

Kelsey: Thank you all so much.

Charles: Thank you.

Kate: Thank you.

Josh: Kelsey. Oh, we can clap.

[applause]

Kelsey: Do I leave?

Josh: No, I was just gonna say, I know you're talking to different leads, but, this actually is in model for us. So, we would love to invest through the listeners of the show, 150,000. And then if there's more room potentially do a syndicate. So I don't know where you guys will land, Kate, but keep us in conversations with other leads if it doesn't work out with Kate.

Kelsey: Thank you so much. I'm really glad I came to Miami. It was so fun.

[applause]

Jenny: Wow. She was impressive. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. Very impressive. 

Kate: She's amazing. 

Josh: Charles. Gwyneth from Remynt introduced us to Kelsey. 

Charles: Yeah yeah. I have a company that's directly competitive. She and I have talked before about it. Our company actually went the opposite direction. Started off selling through the employer, and decided they could build a bigger business going to the consumer because, as she mentioned, the sales cycle to get to - when you do the math of like sales cycle plus penetration, plus like how many people do you get at the end, it gets hard to grow fast. 

Jenny: Yeah, but her affiliate is so smart, how she gets in there. She did those in - 17 in like less than a year. 

Charles: But if you listen, it's not a lot of people - the challenge that we found is you actually need people to give you Mint-like access to their data. Cause if, if all I know is your paycheck, I don't know your credit score - 

Jenny: You can't, yeah. You can't help -

Charles: - I dunno how much debt - you actually need people to give you a fair amount of information to make good recommendations. And what they realized was, wow, this is a lot of work in the six to 12 month sales cycle. Then you have to remarket the product to the employee. 

Jenny: Yeah. 

Charles: And the yield you get at the bottom, it just didn't feel like -

Jesse: We didn't really talk absolute numbers. 

Jenny: But she said she was getting 34 percent conversion. It's pretty high. 

Charles: Then she said 5% was the target for the -

Kate: The number one thing I want to look at is her funnel metrics. 

Jesse: Yeah. 

Kate: I'm curious about the - her mentioning that younger people were excited about it. I think it's a lot of friction. If you have your Fidelity account, like if you have your finances dialed, it is a lot of friction to translate things over. If you are - you're a W2 employee for the first time, you're just thinking about, I want to start an investment account. How do I even do that? Like, I think if she can figure out how to catch that young employee and, and teach them and train them - and I am really curious about AI agents, you know, having the capacity to support. Like even texting, can I afford this? 

Charles: Actually -

Jesse: That would be crazy. 

Charles: This is the other reason -

Kate: Like, I think that - so I'm curious about that younger entry point. Like I'm too old. 

[laughter]

Kate: Honestly, the price point is so high. I'm like shocked that she's getting that. 

Charles: It's 350 bucks a year. 

Kate: That's a lot of money for an employer to pay. 

Jesse: Oh, on a percentage of what they spend on like the 401k administrators? 

Jesse: for these types of things?

Charles: We've done a ton, we've done a ton in employee benefit - it might almost be -

Jenny: For healthcare. I haven't seen it for software.

Jesse: Oh, no, for 401k administrators, it can be -

Jenny: What's the price on that? 

Jesse: Oh, it can be a hundred to five hundred, on the - yeah, it's a lot -

Jenny: It's a lot of money. 

Jesse: No, but this is, this is part of it, though. It's like, you do all of those things to keep your employees. That's why you offer them. Or, legally, in healthcare, that became a thing. But you do it to keep employees. 

Kate: It's interesting if you can use the employers to bring down your CAC and then you can find a way to have, you know, consumer base for pricing where it becomes portable with you.

Jenny: 350 is a lot of money. 

Kate: Like it, it is a, a lot of money. 

Jesse: As a consumer, I wouldn't pay that. I don't, I wouldn't see them doing that. I think the employer is comfortable with it, but the consumer probably struggles. 

Kate: It would need different pricing. You would need employer pricing and, and consumer pricing. 

Jesse: She was impressive, like, no doubt about that. So like if someone's gonna crack this, I would, I would bet on her cracking it. But, yeah, I think that's the challenge. I don't do a lot of fintech nor consumer. In the last season, I actually backed a consumer fintech company.

Josh: I was gonna say, you did Future Money.

Jesse: Yeah, and so - and there, like if you think about getting in young, Future Money is about getting in pre-birth.

Kate: I looked at that. Yeah. 

Jesse: And so it's uh, you know, you're really young. And so I, I do think you're right, like, if you can get that generation coming into the workforce as they leave college, this is what credit cards, they can't do it legally anymore, but they used to do on college campuses, right? 

Kate: I feel like this is - I'm in part excited because my naiveté. Like I haven't - I've seen a lot in this space. I haven't done anything in this space. So it's one of those things where you just get, you know, you can put the rose colored glasses on and imagine a future where we're all financially well -

Jenny: Well, when you start digging in, you'll be horrified.

Kate: Yeah, I know. 

Jenny: So many -

Kate: Things have fallen apart in diligence in this space for you before, because of 

Jenny: So many. That's why I thought wow, she's figured something out here, because this is very impressive. I've looked at literally 40 of these.

Elizabeth: There are a lot. But I - I think this is where Mint, like, should have gone. It's like, they can see all my spend or whatever, and they could say, oh, you know, instead of, whatever, buying all these Starbuckses, like, just, go to -

Jesse: Get a Keurig.

Elizabeth: Yeah, yeah, exactly, right? 

Josh: Make your own coffee.

Elizabeth: And then they're just like sending you rec - like a concrete recommendation of like do this instead or her example of the checking -

Josh: Better than hearing it from your spouse for sure. 

Elizabeth: Right. And then sometimes people just aren't aware like you spent $5000 on this thing over the last six months. And so, I think we're in the, this day and age where they can do that technically. It's just building that out.

Josh: I just signed up for a tool like this, personally. I think it's a hundred bucks a year for it.

Charles: Monarch? Was it Monarch. 

Josh: No, it's a different one. I - Origin, I think.

Charles: Origin. Yeah, that's the one I'm in. 

Jesse: There you go. 

Charles: I'm an investor in Origin. Yeah.

Josh: You're an investor in everything.

Charles: I have a lot of companies.

Jesse: Not everything.

Jenny: I mean honestly I got the vibe from her that she's just not gonna give up and that was the most exciting thing. That woman seemed relentless. She's just gonna keep on going.

Jesse: Yeah.

Jenny: And I think she's gonna prove a lot of us wrong.

Elizabeth: And she has a story to back that up. 

Kate: And that's why I feel like the fundamental problem is, is real and the fundamental market is huge. And I do actually think this is a place where the AI inflection point might make a 10 X difference on the user experience and the cost structure. But number one, to me, it was like, the problem exists. It's really big. And she seems stellar. 

Jenny: Charles, how many of these did you look at before you went with one? I mean, weren't you getting pitched so many of these savings apps and financial advisors and -

Charles: I mean, I've met a bunch of them. I still meet them. I think most of them just, the products are fine. They don't actually understand the problem that the consumer is trying to solve. And Origin had a pretty strong point of view. And to your point about the AI, like they have some AI capabilities that work pretty well. But I think for all these things, you have to actually give the system enough data to make meaningful recommendations. And that requires like trusting the system enough to off a bunch of accounts. 

Josh: I think Mint really paved the way for that. Cause like I, I downloaded Origin. I'd never heard of it and connected all my accounts. Cause I was just like, I miss Mint. 

Charles: VCs have been chasing the ghost of Mint for 20 years. 

Kate: Resurrect it. 

Charles: For 20 years. 

Josh: Yeah. 

Jesse: Yep. 

Josh: We love pitches like this where it's just so clearly, it's Kelsey's life mission to figure out how to solve this thing.

Jenny: She was meant to build this company. 

Josh: So … 

Josh: Elizabeth, if this was lower priced, would you have cut the check? 

Elizabeth: Oh, yeah.

Josh: All right. Great pitch, guys. Thank you. Yeah. We've reset the room.

Okay… so this is an interesting one. Compelling founder, compelling opportunity in a big market. It’s just that the VCs either didn’t like the price OR had already invested in the competition.

Kate ended up talking to her partners at Baukunst, and indeed. This one was too far out of their scope, on two axes. Fintech, they do not do. And at a $15M price, they’d need to write a much larger check than the $1M Kelsey had available.

I don’t know y’all, I’m not ready to close the books on Aura Finance just yet. If we end up investing, I’ll let you know on the season finale.

No offer to invest in Aura Finance is being made to the listening audience on today’s show. But you can join our private investor community on Substack. Where you’ll get access to the deals we’re doing behind the scenes. 

So, if you’re an accredited investor, you can apply to join at thepitch.fund

Next time on The Pitch…

Luisa: We're using AI agents to help restaurant operators do their jobs and not get yelled at by customers. Toast is not gonna solve this for you. They'll tell you how to solve it yourself. 

Jesse: What is the relationship that you have with these platforms today?

Luisa: As far as we know, we're actually the only people automating processes in Toast right now. 

Jesse: Do you wanna replace Toast? 

Luisa: you might think restaurant operators want more dashboards and analytics, but they do not. 

Jesse: And how much had you raised previously?

Luisa: We've raised 4.5 million. 

Luisa: And sorry, were you asking valuation or? 

Jesse: Yeah, you don't have to say it. If I'm giving you advice, I wouldn't say it out loud. 

Mark: Why is no one else doing this? 

Luisa: Because restaurants are really hard.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. 

Will: Brutal. 

That’s in two weeks! Season 13 is available to watch on YouTube and Patreon, OR listen on your favorite podcast player.

Subscribe to The Pitch right now, and turn on notifications so you don’t miss it. If you enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to hit that like button. We’ll see you next time, in the PITCH ROOM.

This episode was made by me, Josh Muccio, Lisa Muccio, Anna Ladd, Enoch Kim, and Jackie Papanier. With deal sourcing by Peter Liu, John Alvarez, and Phoebe Sun.

Thank you to Gwyneth Borden from season 12 for introducing us to Aura Finance.

Music in this episode is by The Muse Maker, Breakmaster Cylinder, Imagined Nostalgia, Greg Jong, Memory Palace, Onders, Peter Jean & The Runaway Queen.

The Pitch is made in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.