There is no college course that teaches you how to be financially savvy. Impulse buys and credit card offers, which promise larger than life limits, can quickly become tempting. Monotto is all about taking the frustration out of saving money to help millennials choose smarter when it comes to their finances.
The process is easy. Connect your bank account (safe under their military grade security) and let its algorithm go to work. It will identify how much money you should be saving based on your financial history. It will make an analysis based on your debts, savings and investments. It might be jarring at first, but it’s totally worth it. Monotto predicts future savings and can passively make transfers into your savings or investment accounts, based on your designated amount.
Monotto all started as a school project in August 2015, at the College of Charleston, as founders Hank Stocker, Christian Ruppe, and Jared Kopelman attended an entrepreneurship class. They came up with a pitch to help college students manage and automate their finances. At the end of the semester, all companies in the class competed for a $10K prize to fund their company. Monotto won. Almost a year later, in May 2016, Monotto was accepted into the Venture Center FinTech Accelerator, powered by FIS Global in Little Rock, Arkansas. The momentum is now taking them into ATDC’s FinTech Accelerator Program. as they’ve pivoted into a B2B2C product.
Here, the team share with Hypepotamus about their rise as a startup in the FinTech community.
What’s your pitch?
Monotto enables banks and credit unions with the personal finance management tools necessary to capture, grow, maintain and de-risk millennial customers all while creating a stickier relationship with account holders.
What problem are you solving?
Account holders typically look outside of their institution for financial products driven by the startups unbundling banks. However, millennials are four times more likely to use a personal finance management solution from their bank yet most institutions don’t currently offer one.
Funding or bootstrapped:
We have received funding from the VC FinTech Fund through our accelerator with FIS Global. An ideal investor would be someone with experience in early stage companies and financial technology; money is valuable but expertise can be worth even more.
What is your market or industry impact?
Financial institutions spent $16.5 Billion on digital transformation efforts in 2015 and this is only continuing to increase to keep pace with the innovation occurring in the sector.
And your revenue model?
We are utilizing a SaaS model for our initial product offering. Since our pivot to B2B2C, we signed Bear State Bank (NASDAQ: BSF) as our first customer, a community bank with 48 branches in 36 cities and growing.
How’d you get the idea for it?
We formed the initial idea of Monotto in an entrepreneurship class to help college student manage and automate their finances. The company was founded at the College of Charleston in the Fall of 2015, in the Interdisciplinary Center for Applied Technology (ICAT) program. The idea started out as B2C but in our accelerator with FIS we pivoted to a B2B2C model.
Who are your competitors and how do you stand out?
Our direct competition includes Dyme and Meniga. Meniga focusing on European markets and Dyme a new app converting from a B2C business to targeting banks. Our indirect competition are the personal finance management tools that are B2C. However, we take a different approaching by enabling trusted financial institutions with the tools necessary to stay relevant.
How does ATL weave into your story?
Jared is originally from Atlanta, after we visited and saw the vibrant FinTech ecosystem that exists here, we knew where we would set up shop. Additionally, being in the ATDC Accelerate program provides us with great accessibility to the resources there as well as having a pipeline for acquire talent from Georgia Tech.
Hiring?
Currently we are looking for an API Engineer as well as an experienced sales person to come join the Monotto team. Monotto will be headquartering near Georgia Tech and is part of the ATDC FinTech Accelerate Program.
