Startup founder: at this point you need to overcome the stigma of fly by night fintech wrappers sitting on top of banking and the exceptional, outsized risk that creates for consumers a la synchrony and things like yotta essentially losing millions of customer money with no recourse because a discrepancy between those two layers. 1% higher yield is nowhere near juicy enough for me to literally bet the company on and that's close to what would happen if you lost my entire last round (or locked it up 6 months beyond when I need it). Starting with yc companies as a trust indicator is helpful although yc switching to a shotgun "fund hundreds of companies per batch" approach means the yc label carries a LOT less weight than it used to (since they are no longer paying much attention to any one investment).

I like smart finance plays and I hope you can do that and stand out from the glut of finance bros who have (and continue to) muddied the water (poisoned the well?) with this approach of "tech on top if actual finance companies".

Good luck out there!

Fair! Growing user trust is definitely one of the biggest challenges building in this space.

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.