46 karma · joined October 25, 2025
And it'll get even easier once we add our auto-sweep features in the next few weeks, and you'll be able to just set it up once and truly never have to touch it again.
We certainly don't claim that Palus will transform your startup. But it's a worthwhile piece of very low-hanging fruit.
Even for a Series A company, putting $5M into Palus should yield an extra $50k-75k per year, just for having your money sit in a smarter place. Put another way, it should cover six months of a junior engineer's salary for free.
For five minutes of setup, we think most founders will find it worthwhile.
We ultimately decided against implementing it for our initial product, since we're specifically focused on companies' long-term cash reserves which by definition shouldn't require immediate liquidity. But in the future, if our customers want it, it's definitely something we can build.
The active business asset test is about "intent and substance" and not balance sheet line items. I think it's very clear in this case that you'd be using it as a cash equivalent, since floating-rate agency MBS have a comparable risk profile to money market holdings (short duration, government-backed, highly liquid). And economically they're serving the same function: parking working capital safely until your business needs it. And frankly, I think accessing those assets through a treasury management platform, rather than a brokerage account, helps establish intent and substance.
That's my view on it at least, and I know many companies use these assets for long-term cash without issue. But I'm not a tax expert.
I do really appreciate you bringing this up though, and I'll reach out to our tax lawyer to get a proper written opinion we can share with our customers. Of course it's not a replacement for getting your own tax advice, but I think it'll be helpful regardless.
They're more of a traditional banking product. They seem to have a great high-yield checking account (3%), which is a great place to keep short-term cash. But for long-term holdings that you won't touch for months, a higher-yield product like Palus makes more sense, earning closer to 5%.
For what it's worth, we don't try to replace products like Crescent (or Mercury, Brex, etc.) at all. They're great for day-to-day banking. Instead we connect to your account there and optimize for really simple UX. We're working on setting up automatic sweep to/from Palus to make it even simpler.
I'm curious about your experience dealing with your board. We haven't heard that issue from our customers yet, but thus far we mostly just target up to Series B (mainly since, once companies are taking venture debt, they're typically required to hold their money at specific banks).
What were you trying to invest in, and what did they push back on?
However, this tax exemption is usually priced in: muni bond funds, and MMFs that hold lots of tax-exempt assets, tend to return less than funds which are not tax exempt. For the majority of startups that operate at a net loss, tax-exempt funds are probably a bad choice, since you're earning less yield and the tax exemption likely doesn't affect you.
[1] The rules around this also varies from state to state; for instance, in CA, CT, and NY, you can only get any tax exemption if a fund is at least 50% tax-exempt in each quarter of a given year.
We've had discussions about offering products in the future with higher yields that carry more risk. Most founders we've talked to are very risk-averse on their company treasury, but if our users tell us they want access to different instruments with different risk profiles, we're happy to meet them where they are.
Your company gets classified as a PHC (and is subject to additional tax) if investment income, including interest, is more than 60% of its revenue. This isn't something most startups need to worry about if you have any revenue.
QSBS is based on intent, if the IRS thinks more than 80% of your assets are used for investment purposes and not for actively running your business. Basically it's so people don't use a small business tax exemption as a loophole for their investments. But the IRS absolutely considers idle cash in your company treasury as part of running your business, or else any startup that's raised money and didn't immediately spend it all would be considered an "investment vehicle," which they obviously don't.
Moreover, any of these potential issues would apply equally to a startup doing anything with their treasury, including putting it in a money market fund as most startups do. So we're not introducing any new tax risk. But of course, if any startup thinks these might be an issue for their business, they should talk to their tax advisor.
Honestly this HN post has been really insightful in knowing what questions founders will want us to answer.
Short-duration floating-rate MBS, like the ones we use, were fine. And since regulations have gotten much stricter as a result of 2008, that was very much a worst-case scenario.
We specifically chose agency MBS because their yield and risk profile fits startup long-term cash needs very well (no credit risk by definition, stable NAV preventing principal risk, consistent premium over money market, and easy but non-instant liquidity). Essentially their safety reduces the need to diversify across bond types. It's also worth pointing out that MBS already are quite diversified, since each one is a pool of thousands of mortgages spread across different locations, borrowers, and property types.
We might offer non-MBS options in the future, if customers ask for it, but we're not there yet.
Our goal is to make sophisticated treasury management easy for startups. With Palus, they don't need to manage a brokerage account, or handle treasury ladders, or anything like that.
All that is to say: businesses shouldn't treat all their cash the same way, especially when they have significant runway. The exact breakdown depends on the business, but typically you can think of it as three different buckets:
1) You have short-term cash, which you need immediately. This is where you'd use a checking account. This pays very close to 0% but you have immediate access. Most businesses might keep a few weeks' cash here.
2) You have short-term reserves, which is what you'd use in the next couple of months. This is where most companies might use a savings account (or even put it in a money market fund), where you know you can get the cash into your checking account in ~1 day. This pays between 2.5% and up to maybe 3.75%. Each business will structure their cash differently, and some might not even bother having this bucket.
3) Long term reserves, which you won't touch for months. This is where companies try to optimize yield, and where Palus is valuable. Even here, your money is safe, and in Palus's case can usually be in your checking account within a couple of days, but getting extra yield on long-term reserves can be super valuable.
And yes, SOFR + 1.5% isn't very sexy, but we're competing against existing treasury product that use money market funds and pay SOFR (or less, after fees). So that 1.5% is meaningful.
That's why we designed Palus to be as simple as possible to use. If you check out our demo video, you'll see it's super straightforward. Setup takes <5 min and then you don't have to think about it anymore. We're also building out automatic sweep functionality, so then you REALLY won't have to think about it.
Given the significant increase in returns on a large treasury, we think it's worth the small amount of effort.
For what it's worth, we don't hold users' funds ourselves; we use an SEC-regulated custodian (Alpaca) with the assets legally held in your name. And we're working on building transparency measures, like detailed views into your account's specific holdings of underlying assets with verifiable attestations, third-party auditing, and frankly any other measures that our customers would want us to.
I know putting company money into a new product requires a lot of trust. Like any product you're still exploring, I'd encourage you to start small, try us out, and grow your position over time as we earn your trust. And if it helps you trust us, I'd be happy to get on a Zoom call or meet IRL.
We're competing against long-term cash held in a money-market fund (an instrument optimized for short-term use with same-day liquidity) earning 3.5%. In that context our yields definitely are competitive.
Functionally speaking, short-duration floating-rate agency MBS trade at such a stable NAV that they're perfectly sufficient for long-term cash, and many large companies trade these.
MBSF is complex in the way that basically any fund is complex, but the strategy it employs is actually quite simple since it only trades a single asset class. Yes the expense ratio is higher than some other funds but the additional yields more than make up for it.
ICSH and SGOV are great funds too, and make sense for shorter-term cash, but they pay significantly less than we do.
Broadly speaking, our product is meant for exactly the kind of cash strategy you're thinking about: multiple buckets with duration spread accordingly. At the moment, our platform is just for the long-term bucket. But in the future, we might add additional shorter-term buckets too (maybe even with ICSH or SGOV).
On the government backing: it's a fair nuance to point out. In a technical sense, Ginnie Mae has the explicit full faith and credit guarantee while Fannie/Freddie are GSEs with an implicit one (and are under government conservatorship). But in practice, the distinction isn't really meaningful. In practice, the federal government has always guaranteed these loans (even in 2008, when they were under the most stress they've ever been, and there have been significant reforms as a result). There's no reason to think they'll ever stop. The scenario where the GSE guarantee fails is essentially the collapse of the US economy well beyond anything we saw in 2008 (in which case frankly we all have much bigger problems).
On the risks you mentioned: 1) Principal loss: given the guarantees re credit risk, and the fact that we use short-duration floating rate instruments to protect against price risk, this shouldn't really be a concern. 2) On spread risk: there can be slight variation in spread, mostly affecting yields; this is why we say "4.5-5%" yields given there's some variability in that range (but all far above money market). 3) On liquidity: agency MBS is the second most liquid fixed-income market in the world after Treasuries. In nearly all circumstances, liquidity is 1-2 business days. This product is really meant for long-term cash reserves; our idea is that companies should stop treating 6+ month cash the same as next month's payroll.
Ultimately we encourage founders to do their own research and understand what they're doing with their money. We wouldn't ask anyone to put short-term cash in a MBS portfolio (in the future we'll probably offer some other options too). But for long-term cash they're sitting on, the extra yield can be meaningful to the business: on $5M, it's an extra $50k-75k per year, or half a junior engineer's salary. Given the minimal risk, I think it's worthwhile for a lot of companies.