September 15, 2022

#20 finance, baby!

1. Dear Denise and Tessa, I am very happy to have you and finance, baby! as part of our Female Founder Community. Please feel free to tell us a little about yourself and your company.

We have finance in August 2020, baby! founded with the mission to encourage women to take their financial future into their own hands. Because for a long time we didn't take care of our finances ourselves and, to be honest, we didn't know how and, above all, what was important. In our search for an offer that would help us, we unfortunately failed and decided without further ado: We would offer this offer ourselves. Because what we were missing on the market were financial offers that were approachable and that communicated on an equal level and made the whole topic exciting & make it attractive.

2. What motivated you to develop a financial learning app specifically for the life situations of women? Why is the vast majority of offerings in the financial sector still male-dominated?

We both come from the marketing/communications industry and came from personal situations in which we did not have amounts of money that would have given us security for the now and the future. So there we were in our mid-20s, didn't have much savings, didn't invest our money and had no plan for what our financial future would look like.

When the Corona pandemic came and jobs became unsafe, it opened our eyes to the fact that now is the time to change that. When we started to deal with the topic of finance, we noticed that the offers were very masculine and usually required basic knowledge. In society - even today - women are much less concerned with the topic of money, especially when it comes to investing. And there is still the gender pay gap, care gap, leadership gap and also pension gap. All gaps through which women have even less money or fewer opportunities.

The fact that women are still behind when it comes to finances and the fact that women are even less concerned with it because they have fewer opportunities leads to an enormous inequality of opportunities. That's why our vision, which we have with finance, baby! want to achieve a society in which women and men have equal (financial) opportunities.

3. How can I get the app finance, baby! exactly and what functions does it offer?

In our finance, baby! In the app, we offer holistic financial planning video lessons with topics ranging from investing, real estate to retirement planning and legal provisions. For this purpose, we work with our certified financial advisors, with whom you can also book a consultation directly within the app.

In addition, users can open a new account or their first depot directly via the app through a selection of partners. The app is relevant for every area of life: Students can get an overview of their finances, those starting out can make their first investments, and topics such as family planning, insurance or widow's pensions can also be found in the app. So it's always the right time to start with us.

4. Money for the start-up project: a topic that probably concerns every entrepreneur. Both before and during the founding. What experiences have you had with collecting money for your project?

At the beginning when we immersed ourselves in the start-up industry, we thought the ultimate goal was to get an investment. But we quickly decided that we didn't want to have anyone else in our company for the time being, as we were very purpose-driven and had to form our company first.

For this reason, we bootstrapped ourselves for a good 1 ½ years and looking back, that was definitely the right decision, so we were able to try out a lot of things and find our way. Because we were self-supporting, our pricing was relatively high (but still significantly lower compared to the competition), but we primarily wanted to appeal to women who really need help with their finances and don't want a course for 50 euros can afford. That's why we developed our app with which we can offer a subscription model that is significantly cheaper. But then it quickly became clear that we could no longer support ourselves and we made our first investment.

So far we've been really lucky to come across people who believe in us and our mission & trust us to make the right decision. Nevertheless, we also notice that it is difficult to collect investments for a company that not only aims for the highest sales, but above all has a mission and acts according to it. In the future, we would like to see more female investors and VCs investing in female founders and impact start-ups.

5. What has been your biggest success so far and what has been your biggest fuck-up?

Our greatest success was probably not a single thing, but the fact that we have managed to act on what our mission is to this day. On the way to starting a business, you meet many people who don't believe in the idea or who have a different (supposedly better) plan for the company. Remaining steadfast and always reflecting on what the purpose actually is can be a big challenge. But we can say with certainty that even after more than 2 years, in everything we do, we always have in mind what the mission behind it is and what our customers want in order to create exactly the offer that is really needed.

Our biggest fuck-up is probably true that we have sold ourselves below our worth in the past. Be it for remuneration for lectures, collaborations or when negotiating investments. We're doing all this for the first time and since we love doing it so much, it's easy to be tempted to do things for free, but at the end of the day we have to support ourselves as a company and if we add value, we should be fairly compensated for it. This is also something that we always tell our customers, but that we often still have to learn ourselves.

6. What 3 tips would you give to others who want to start creating their financial freedom today?

Tip no. 1: is always “just start” and yes, it’s not that easy at the beginning. But we probably all know that we like to put off such topics. That's why the tip is to plan fixed dates at the beginning where you spend at least 30 minutes on the topic, first get an overview and then set your own goals: What do I want to achieve? Where do I see myself in 10 years and where in my retirement? What does it take to achieve that?

Tip no. 2: to get started, read books, listen to podcasts, follow finance accounts on social media. The first book on finance that we read is Money Makers by Aya Jaff, which explains the world of finance in a super simple way. If you prefer listening to podcasts, you can listen to the Finanzfluss podcast. And of course follow us on Instagram, we explain a lot of terms in short information posts, report on what's currently going on in the financial world and show the community which tools and offers impress us in the financial sector. If you're ready to get started, you can download our app and tackle the topic straight away.

Tip no. 3: Find someone to approach the topic with, because alone you might give up more quickly if you don't understand something or your motivation wanes. Denise and I also started together and it definitely helped to have someone by our side who was going through the same thing.

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