1,760 karma · joined September 3, 2011
Ex: employee #2 at justworks.com
The value comes from: (1) tax advantages, (2) free money from employer benefits, (3) investment compounding, (4) increased earnings, and (5) fee savings.
We’re generally assuming our recommendations are implemented for 5 years and tax-advantaged retirement and health savings recommendations are totally invested until retirement at the age of 67.
For debt stuff, we’re assuming recommendations are implemented until the debt is paid off.
For everything else - switching credit cards etc - we’re assuming the change is implemented for 5 years.
We want to remove the barrier of entry for everyone to get access to financial optimization and we think this is the best way we can.
We're really committed to providing the best recommendations regardless of commission and we've love to prove it to you if you'd be up for trying us out!
Jk this is coming up surprisingly often - we'll make it happen as soon as we can - if you add your name to the list we can keep you posted!
Re: surpises: I think the #1 thing is that we can find optimizations for EVERYONE. Like even people who think they've got everything in place, we can find significant tweaks/improvements.
It's the difference between keeping it all in your head vs. having a database of all the best financial products out there applied to your situation.
Re: friends - just send them over to us! The magic really happens when we can get a complete picture of someone (which doesn't take too long - the form is about 15 mins), that way we're giving them truly the best recommendations.
For example, people have come to us saying, "Where should I invest?" not understanding that they're in high-interest debt and should really focus on getting out of debt vs. trying to figure out what crypto platform to use.
This is exactly the direction we're taking the product - not just advice but full-on implementation and management - the control panel for your financial life.
For example, if there a credit card that's better for you based on your spending patterns we'll alert you and let you switch over and link in one click.
We look at your entire financial picture for free and tell you exactly what to do with your money: which credit card to use; how much to save and where to invest it; how to optimize your taxes, and so on. We've fairly conservatively found an average $1.5M in net worth for our users so far.
We wanted to finally solve personal finance and we think we have the right approach: combining really powerful automation and tooling with a human expert in the loop to make sure our recommendations are actually good.
Note: we're US only for now and focused on single young professionals - we're optimized for this base case - so if you're married/with kids you'll get a notice that we'll reach out to you as soon as we can serve you. (Sorry! We’re going as fast as we can!)
Please write in “Hacker News” for "How did you hear about us?" and that will automatically bump you to the front of the waitlist. We’re scaling up, so if you do this, we should be able to get to you pretty quickly (depending on demand).
Feel free to send feedback/questions here! chris@uprise.us
Data security (SSNs, banking info) is difficult, but they're table stakes in the payroll and benefits space (ex., how do you securely share personal information across different benefits providers).
Honestly, my main takeaway is I'm happy our company built everything (payroll and benefits) in-house from scratch.
We worry less about integrations issues, and it helps with security when you have more control over everything.
It's been extremely difficult building everything from the ground up, and I've definitely questioned our approach (more than once I said, "Why don't we just integrate with X?"), but I think this validates the path we've taken.
This is a lesson I'm going to take away for whatever other software/service I may end up working on.
People talk about the fact that PEOs let you basically group-buy benefits (which is how you were able to get ~30% off your health plans), but the other nice thing about the PEO model is that it lets us bring everything (payroll/benefits/compliance) in-house, so we have full control over the entire experience and you don't have to worry about integrations.