How to Actually Use Money Apps the Right Way (According to FinTech Pros) SB1764

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How to Actually Use Money Apps the Right Way (According to FinTech Pros)"

The Stacking Benjamins Show | Episode SB1764 | Nov 21, 2025
Host: Joe Saul-Sehy | Guests: Peter Paulsen (Tiller), Aaron Froeg (Griffin), Ryan Ruff (Array)

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Episode Overview

This special panel episode of The Stacking Benjamins Show explores the world of financial technology (fintech) apps and how to actually use them for better money management, budgeting, and investing. Host Joe Saul-Sehy is joined by three top fintech insiders—Peter Paulsen (Tiller), Aaron Froeg (Griffin), and Ryan Ruff (Array)—for a wide-ranging, candid conversation on app design, automation, security, building positive financial habits, and the impact of AI. True to the show's signature tone, the discussion is upbeat, down-to-earth, and packed with stories and memorable analogies.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Meet the FinTech Pros: What Do Their Apps Do?

[02:23–11:08]

• Tiller (Peter Paulsen):
  Tiller consolidates all your financial accounts into a private spreadsheet (Google Sheets/Excel), auto-updating daily without ads or snooping (“Your data is just that, no ads. We don’t look at your data… into your sheet where it’s helpful and insightful to you”—Peter Paulsen, 04:31), focusing on privacy and user control.

  • Notably, Microsoft Money directed users to Tiller after discontinuing “Money in Excel” (05:05–06:16).

• Griffin (Aaron Froeg):
  Griffin auto-invests in the companies where you spend, “bringing joy and fun into investing.” If you buy coffee at Starbucks, you invest in Starbucks; shop at Whole Foods, you invest in Amazon.

  • The inspiration came from a sister’s joke at Starbucks: “I should own stock for how much I shop here” (07:00).
  • Dollar amounts per transaction are user-customizable: “A dollar just felt easier… you can set it to $5… $10… or 10% of a purchase" (08:46–09:29).
  • Focus on psychology—making investing accessible and less intimidating.

• Array (Ryan Ruff):
  Array builds “white-label” fintech tools (e.g., credit reports, subscription tracking) behind the scenes for banks, credit unions, and even podcasts/content creators—hugely expanding reach but often invisible to end-users (11:08).

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2. Designing Simpler, More Human Money Apps

[13:07–19:35]

• Simplicity is a competitive advantage. Track everything in one place for awareness and control.
  • “Simply seeing all your data in one place is an enormous win for a lot of people.” —Peter Paulsen [15:56]
  • Tiller counts “clicks” to reduce friction: “Each click is a potential failure point because people… get decision paralysis.” —Ryan Ruff [18:32]
• Automation helps build habits; friction/bad UX hurts outcomes.
  • “The simplest idea is usually the best with everything, and how to just… make it feel real and human and like real life." —Aaron Froeg [16:14]
  • Positive automation = less abandonment, more participation.

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3. Security, Data Friction, and Linking Accounts: Why It’s So Messy

[21:00–32:07]

• The Plaid Problem:
  • Fintechs use data aggregators (notably Plaid or Yodlee) to connect with banks. Banks have inconsistent or outdated tech, causing account linking to break—often erroneously blamed on the app:
    • “No matter what goes wrong, it’s Griffin. It doesn’t matter any third parties…” —Aaron Froeg [22:14]
    • “Chase… will start adding fees if aggregators want to access Chase banking data. It’s really upsetting.” —Peter Paulsen [26:24]
• Consumers lose out due to banks’ protectionism:
  • “For JP Morgan…to add fees and friction… for customers want their data on their money, I think it’s a huge step backwards.” —Peter Paulsen [27:44]
  • Some banks are “playing nice” with open banking; others are blocking access (30:45–32:07).

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4. Sticking with Apps: Engagement, Motivation, & Community

[35:39–47:03]

• Common user mistakes:
  • “The biggest mistake is not staying engaged… let a week turn to a month… You get to the end of the year and you don’t actually know where your money’s gone.” —Peter Paulsen [36:07]
  • On the problem with notifications: Too many = annoyance. Solution: batch financial tasks for routine check-ins (39:23).
• Small steps matter:
  • “This is a dollar at a time… I’ve been able to put away $19,000 for myself.”—Aaron Froeg, showing his Griffin account [39:45]
  • Education is underused! Griffin’s 16-day email onboarding and knowledge base are often ignored—users should leverage these resources (42:24–42:53).
• Community is a game-changer—especially for habit-forming apps:
  • “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”—Jim Rohn via Ryan Ruff [45:29]
  • Fintech communities (like Ynab’s “cult”) drive success; creator “trusted voices” help new users pick trusted apps [46:15–47:03].

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5. Gamification: Ethics, Intent, and Engagement

[47:03–54:55]

• Positive gamification teaches and motivates; negative can encourage risky behavior:
  • “We only try to do positive things… if you invest for yourself this week, you earn a streak.” —Aaron Froeg [47:27]
  • Intent is everything:
    • “Whether we do this or not, however the product is designed, it’s going to trigger people’s biases. If you have good intent and you’re building your thing to gamify towards the goal that’s going to help a stacker… that’s the important thing.” —Ryan Ruff [49:18]
  • Gamification should reward small wins, not risky or destructive behavior.
• Ownership and financial identity:
  • “The concept of owning the world that you’re helping build. You’re putting your money towards there every single day. Why not be a part of it?” —Aaron Froeg [54:00]

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6. AI in FinTech: Hype, Reality, Limitations, and Hopes

[58:35–67:37]

• How apps use AI:
  • Tiller: Uses AI for support, transaction categorization, and helping users feel “savvier when they feel stuck” (59:46–61:24).
  • Griffin: Building an AI support bot limited to their own compliance-reviewed knowledge base (64:15).
  • Array: Uses AI internally for tool-building, but nothing customer-facing—too early/trust issues (65:43–66:34).
• AI’s promise: rapid support, tailored insights, and democratized advice—but with caveats
  • “It’s an incredible way for people to feel savvier… but you have to treat everything with a grain of salt.” —Peter Paulsen [61:49]
  • Everyone warns that AI can confidently give very wrong answers—user vigilance is crucial (61:49–62:07).
• AI also increases consumer risk for fraud and scams.
  • “The opportunities for fraud are easier than ever… It’s increasingly challenging for consumers to know what they can trust.” —Peter Paulsen [67:06]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Simplicity:
  • “Even seeing it all… precedes tracking and even budgeting… that awareness is going to make them a more thoughtful agent of their own money.” —Peter Paulsen [15:56]
• On Real-Life Ties to Investing:
  • “Why can’t investing just be connected to real life and fun and makes sense?” —Aaron Froeg [07:00]
• On User Motivation:
  • “If you do nothing else but just stay engaged and get into their data once a week, they’re going to make progress.” —Peter Paulsen [37:11]
• On Intent and Gamification:
  • “Are they gamifying with my success in mind or are they gamifying with their success in mind?” —Peter Paulsen [55:04]
• On Community vs. Going Alone:
  • “The community teaches you how to use the tool… I think the real future is a trusted voice… that partners with cool apps that help their community get from point A to point B.” —Ryan Ruff [46:26]
• On Banking Friction:
  • “For JP Morgan… to add fees and friction… for customers who want their data on their money … it’s a huge step backward.” —Peter Paulsen [27:44]
• On Ownership:
  • “The concept of owning the world you’re helping build…” —Aaron Froeg [54:00]

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Key Segment Timestamps

| Segment | Description | Timestamps | |---|---|---| | Introductions & App Overviews | Meet the founder-guests, their origin stories, and product focus | 02:23–11:08 | | Simplicity & User Experience | Why design matters and the importance of reducing barriers | 13:07–19:35 | | Connectivity & Data Friction | How banks and aggregators complicate the user experience | 21:00–32:07 | | Building and Keeping Financial Habits | Common mistakes, notifications, the role of community support | 35:39–47:03 | | Gamification, Ethics, and Intent | Good vs. bad gamification, outcomes, and user motivation | 47:03–54:55 | | AI: Opportunities and Cautions | Support bots, personalization, fraud risks, and trust challenges | 58:35–67:37 | | Product Updates & Future Features | Coming soon for Griffin, Tiller, Array—incl. wrapping up and takeaways | 68:02–end |

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What’s Next for Each FinTech?

Griffin

• Weekly investing quizzes via email (68:15)
• Building family plans for parent/kid investing conversations
• Holiday features and a “Spotify Wrapped”-type year-in-review for spending/investing in the works

Tiller

• Better bank data connections, mobile tools, new beta features
• More community-building webinars/educational content—especially for new year’s resolutions
• Emphasis on comparing year-over-year spending trends [71:00]

Array

• Tools to help Stacking Benjamins listeners understand their credit, shed subscription waste, and protect privacy (in partnership with the podcast) [72:37]

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Final Takeaways (per Doug)

[74:57]

1. Take advantage of new fintech tools for easier financial management.
2. The pace of change, supercharged by AI, means you should regularly re-evaluate your apps.
3. And most important: Don’t tell Joe’s mom about these fintech innovations... she’ll claim it was a comedy act from the 60s.

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For Listeners:

• Try Tiller for budgeting via spreadsheet: tiller.com
• Explore Griffin for fun, real-life investing: griffin.com
• Get access to Array’s tools via Stacking Benjamins: stackingbenjamins.com/vault

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Show Tone:
Light, humorous, practical—focus on making money approachable and fun, with expert knowledge delivered in a relatable, fast-paced style.

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(Summary by AI for listeners who want the full inside scoop without the ads, promos, or waiting for punchlines!)

Transcript

[Kevin Harlan]

This is Kevin Harland. Tonight, the NBA on Prime crew and I are back with another exciting Emirates NBA cup doubleheader. First, Pascal Siakam and the Pacers square off against Donovan Mitchell and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Then it's Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets facing Kevin Durant and the Rockets. If you're not a Prime member, just sign up for a 30 day free trial. Pacers, Cavs, Nuggets, Rockets coverage starts tonight at 6:30pm Eastern only on Prime. Restrictions apply. See Amazon.com Amazon prime for details.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. We're proud to serve over 2 million veterans and their families because your service inspires ours. And your service opens the door to membership, which means you get access to exclusive rates, discounts and financial tools that you can share with your whole family. Become a member@navy federal.org veterans and from all of us. Happy Veterans Day, Navy Federal Credit Union. Our members are the Mission Navy Federals, insured by NCUA.

[Joe Crane]

You heard of this thing, the 8 Minute Abs?

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Yeah, sure.

[Joe Crane]

8 Minute Abs.

[Aaron Froeg]

Yeah, the exercise video.

[Peter Paulsen]

Yeah.

[Joe Crane]

Well, this is gonna blow that right out of the water. Listen to this. 7 minute abs.

[Doug]

Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and on today's show, you know all those cool gadgets on your phone that make your financial life easier today, while those other shows bring you one, we'll bring you two.

[Joe Crane]

What?

[Doug]

We're going bigger. This just in will apparently bring you three fintech insiders to talk about the past, present and future of those tools we all increasingly rely on to make better money decisions. And let's say hello to the captain of this special episode, it's Joe Salci.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Hey there, stackers. And Happy Friday. Welcome to the weekend before big Thanksgiving week. Which means while you're getting ready to go spend money on Black Friday stuff, we're going to help you keep some of that money in your pocket and know exactly where it went. Because we've got three big names in fintech who are going to help you do that today. So let's meet the people that are going to be on this special episode. First of all, let's start with this guy. He's a spreadsheet fan guru who believes that tracking beats guessing from Tiller. Mr. Peter Paulson's here. How are you, man?

[Peter Paulsen]

I am good, thank you, Joe. It's great to be in your mom's basement again.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Glad you have It's Been a while. We haven't done as much stuff lately about fintech, but when I thought fintech, I thought Peter. So thanks for joining us.

[Peter Paulsen]

Glad to be here.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

And then second, the guy who says you spend so wait a minute. Instead of just wearing it, why the hell wouldn't you invest in it? Aaron Froeg is here from Griffin. Griffin with one F, by the way. How are you? Aaron?

[Aaron Froeg]

Good. I didn't expect the joke from Peter. So that was funny. That was good. I'm glad to be here.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Aaron, have you heard the show? I mean, come on.

[Aaron Froeg]

Yeah.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

And then rounding out our triumvirate of fintech insiders, this guy's the bridge builder between fintech tech and real people's habits, between banks and fintech. From Aaron. From Aaron. What am I talking about? Aaron? He's not.

[Peter Paulsen]

From you.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

From Array. Ryan Ruff is here. How are you, man?

[Joe Crane]

Doing great. Doing great. Glad to be here.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Well, let's talk about what all three of you do. First, to give people a scope of really the three things I mentioned. Peter, getting back to you, I mentioned that you're all about tracking. But for the three people here that don't know about Tiller, if they go to tiller.com, what are they going to find?

[Peter Paulsen]

If you come to Tiller, you're going to find our service which connects all of your financial accounts, credit card, checking account, mortgage, 401k, student loan, and brings it all into your own private spreadsheet, be it Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. And it keeps it updated every day where you can see all your transactions and balances in one place. We have a community where you can engage with others. We have helpful templates and our community does, too. And it's all wrapped in a subscription policy and a privacy posture that ensures that your data is just that, no ads. We don't look at your data. We don't see your data. Your data goes into your sheet where it's helpful and insightful to you. So that's what Tiller is.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

We're going to talk about tracking and about security today and really what's important there. Peter. But what I find really fun is that when Microsoft Money went away, didn't they kind of point people toward you going, hey, hey, if you love Microsoft Money, go use Tiller?

[Peter Paulsen]

Yes, yes. Well, the original Microsoft Money was a competitor to quicken in the 90s. I was actually an intern at Microsoft back then. And then the new Money in Excel was their second foray into personal finance. And it was a way to get your banking data into Excel. And it was a competitor for a few years and had us shaking a little in our boots because Microsoft is known to be a serious competitor. And then they called one day and they said, you know what? You're doing a better job than we do. We're going to stick to our knitting with Excel. We'd love to send our customers to you. If they want their bank data in Excel, would you be our partner? And that was, that was an incredible, fortuitous partnership for us. And we continue to have a ton of customers that we've won through Microsoft's promotion who have come to love Tiller.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

I can just imagine when you got that, was it an email or a phone call?

[Peter Paulsen]

It was an email that led to a phone call. And I went into it honestly, I usually presume good intent. And so, and I have a great history with Microsoft, but I will be honest, I didn't necessarily presume good intent. And I said, I'm not sharing a single detail about Tiller. Our operational model. There's no way that this can go well without thinking about it. They can mistakenly, as an elephant, like, squish us.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Sure.

[Peter Paulsen]

And I was suspicious until maybe the second or the third call. And then I realized that they actually, they say what they mean and they've been great partners and they continue to help us as partners with Excel and to make sure that our services kick tail and works really well for Excel customers.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Aaron, one of my favorite, one of my favorite of all time Tick Tock videos is this minister standing in front of his church and he's talking about, you know what, you're bragging to your friends about your Air Jordans. You're bragging to your friends about your coach purse, you're bragging to your friends. He goes, you know, it's real money. Not wearing that stuff, but actually owning it. And then to see that that's exactly what you guys decided to do when it came in investing. Where did the idea originally come from for Griffin?

[Aaron Froeg]

Yeah, I just want to say also with that point of that view, it's always give up this to have this. I definitely think it's a lot more positive. You can say, like, hey, you can have both and yeah, and instead of. Or I want to take credit, but a lot of time I give credit to my sister. So that we were at a Starbucks and the barista said, that'll be $12 for two cups of coffee. And she laughed and said I should own stock for how much I shop here. And I think that's kind of where the light bulb went off of, like, why can't investing just be connected to real life and fun and makes sense to people? And so, yeah, that's really. We would try to do a bunch of different ideas before. And so it kept changing, and that's how it came to this one.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

You know, how cool. I've done that before when I've been shopping, though, Aaron. I'm like, I didn't want to buy the freaking company.

[Aaron Froeg]

Right.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

But really, maybe I did want to buy the company because I want to be on the other side of that transaction. So for people that don't know Griffin, how does Griffin work?

[Aaron Froeg]

I guess I'll just give, like, a quick 30 seconds. So Griffin stands for the greatest revolution in finance is now we built an app that automatically invests people where they spend their money. So if you go and buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks, it invests you in a Starbucks stock. If you shop at Whole Foods, it invests you in Amazon. Our whole purpose is there's 180 million people who are still uninvested. We believe it's mostly due to psychological reasons. Like, money's tough for a lot of people. And so things like this, like, I'm glad to be on this podcast. It helps people. You know, we want to say you're good enough, smart enough, confident enough in your own skin. Like, what if we brought joy and fun into investing and just connect it to real life? The simplicity of how it works is it just. I don't know. You download our app, you connect your favorite cards that you use every single day you go about live your day, and then our app automatically invests for you in the background. You can set a dollar per transaction or however much you want.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

That's. I was going to ask, could it be even roundups?

[Aaron Froeg]

So we went around and we interviewed a bunch of people, and we found that setting it at $1 per transaction was actually a lot more comfortable for people than doing spare change.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Yeah.

[Aaron Froeg]

Which I was surprised by.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Yeah.

[Aaron Froeg]

But it was like, oh, okay, I made five or ten purchases today. I'm. I mean, this week I'm putting away five or ten dollars. And so at least, like, at that, one dollar just felt easier. And so we allow people to. It's called multipliers. So you can say like, hey, I want to spend $5 every transaction, or $10 or 25. But one of the things that we are hoping to release probably earlier next year is sort of a. If I want to put away, like, 10% of my purchase or If I want to set like $25 per week and allow people to customize more, or I really, really like this company and I want to set a certain dollar.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

But it's interesting what you're saying, because I remember, like, you know, often as a creator, somebody creating something new, we think, well, this is what I like, or this is what I think is best. And I remember the. I remember hearing some guys at Google talking about this. Who cares what you think? Go test it. And you actually did that. You went and tested it and saw that people rather do a dollar.

[Aaron Froeg]

We've been wrong a lot. So unless it's. It's very interesting that, like, go interview, ask your customers questions and it makes it wild.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

I was gonna say, I think that's all of us. All this stuff we do.

[Peter Paulsen]

For sure, we're shocked how often we a b. Test something and it's. I think I have great intuition and I'm proven wrong all the time.

[Aaron Froeg]

What is it? It's. It's like. But I think intuition's great and it's positive and like, lean in with that and to just validate with data.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Yeah.

[Peter Paulsen]

I was looking at Peter lynch because you reminded me that Peter lynch said, invest in what you know, and that feels like it's at the heart of what Griffin does. And, you know, he was the famed money manager who helped everyone feel like they could be an investor. And he said, if you. If you're shopping at Toys R Us, because your kids are buying toys there, and this is, of course, back in his era, then you should invest. And I love it, Aaron, because that's what Griffin's doing.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

I was going to say, good analogy there, Peter. With a company that went bankrupt, by the way.

[Peter Paulsen]

I know that's a bad.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Okay, what do you do? What are you doing here?

[Peter Paulsen]

If I. If I had doubled down and bought a Apple stock with every iPhone I bought, I would have more money in the account. So there we go.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Absolutely. Ryan, let's transition to you. Where people have heard of Griffin or they have heard of Tiller, most of our stackers will never hear of Array, and yet you're in the background a lot.

[Joe Crane]

Yeah. So Array is, like you said, in the background. If you ever go into your mobile banking app and you can check your credit score or manage your subscriptions and things like that, a lot of times, that's Array. Array builds these tools that helps extend the reach of credit unions, banks and fintechs, and even podcasters and content creators.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

We may have an announcement about that later on in this particular episode, something that we'll unveil here today. But let's not do that. As you guys can see, Stackers, we've got Peter, Aaron, Ryan doing three totally different things in this beautiful area of fintech helping you manage your money better. We're going to dive into exactly how to use the fintech that you use better today. What's the future of fintech? Where do they think that we're headed? We're going to talk about all that more, but we have a couple sponsors who make sure that we can keep on keeping on. And you don't pay a dime for any of this special episode. So let's hear from them and then we'll be back with Aaron, Peter and Ryan in just a minute.

[Kevin Harlan]

This is Kevin Harlan and tonight the NBA on Prime crew and I are back with another exciting Emirates NBA cup doubleheader. The night starts with Pascal Siakam in the Indiana Pacers meeting Donovan Mitchell and the Cleveland Cavaliers in a battle of familiar foes. Then it's off to Texas as Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets take on Kevin Durant and the Houston Rockets for the first time this season. It all comes your way on prime, and if you're not a Prime member, that's not a problem. Sign up for a free 30 day trial to get started today. The Pacers and Cavs, the Nuggets and Rockets coverage starts tonight at 6:30pm Eastern only on Prime. Restrictions apply. See Amazon.com Amazon prime for details.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

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[Peter Paulsen]

Simplicity is at the core, and you're absolutely right. There was a day where our financial lives were much easier, say even before we use credit cards and maybe when we used checks or checks and cash and there was a checkbook register and there was cash and it would be really easy to keep track of it all. But now the average financial life is a bit more complex. There might be a few cards, there might be a few banks, or money's in a few places. And so keeping it simple by bringing all that information into one place has been a core part of Tiller. Because if you can see it all, and this is even, this precedes tracking and even budgeting. And there's so many things you can do once you have it in one place. But simply seeing all your data in one place is an enormous win for a lot of people. They haven't had that before. And that on its own creates a level of awareness that makes everything else easier. And even if that's the only step, that awareness is going to make them a more thoughtful agent of their own money.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

It strikes me too that simplicity is kind of at the heart of Griffin.

[Aaron Froeg]

AARON yeah, I think that's super important thing as well. It's actually funny even hearing Peter, you talk about the importance of budgeting and like making sure you can see everything out there because it gives like a sense of, I don't know, it's like, it's stabilization, it's, it's very cool what you do as well. And I think for us it's, it's The Occam Razors concept, like the simplest idea is usually the best with everything and like how to just. And I think for us, everything that we do and build and design is also like trying to be really, really connected to real life. And so there's a, I think the highest paid role at Apple is like the VP of human design. And that's because it's like, how can you take technology and make it feel real and human and like real life? And I think money is the probably the most human thing that we like all deal with every single day. I've met people with the most amount of money and like other the least and everyone still has problems and how they connect to it. So anything that helps make people's lives financially better.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Yeah. And I want to ask both of you guys and Peter, I guess I'll start with you. You know when you're, when you're designing, are you sitting like Aaron's talking about just working through. Okay, somebody sits down with a cup of coffee, what do they do next? What do they do after that? What do they do after that?

[Peter Paulsen]

One of the design principles I have is counting clicks. And I count clicks as customers sign up as, as they go through their first journey. And how, because a click, not all clicks are equal, but a click reflects some decision, some action, there's usually some processing that they have to do. And so how can we reduce the number of clicks to get a new user from the motivation. I'm coming to Tiller and I want to get started to the AHAs and the insights, that's one of the fundamental principles we think about a lot. Because you're right, people are busy. And also when it comes to money, as they get into it sometimes there's a lot of things they'd rather do. You know, suddenly that laundry, they'd rather fold, which is insane because they're like, I, I, I do. I really want to see it all. Do I really want to take this next step. And then once they do, they feel incredible satisfaction and success. But helping them through that, which means let's keep it simple. Let's just get you, let's get you through this and let's help you book this win.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Yeah. How many people, Ryan, in your experience, quote, abandon the cart halfway through signing up for apps, are you guys able to track that?

[Joe Crane]

Yeah. You know, I really like how Peter talks about these clicks. Each click is a potential failure point because people, you know, when they have to make a decision, sometimes they get decision paralysis. They don't know if they Want this or they want that. So if you can make it super intuitive, you know, automate things like, I really like how Aaron automates the fact that, like, hey, every time I swipe my card and automatically I'm getting access to stock in the places that I love. That automation and reduce of clicks is very, very important because every point that you have to make a decision is a possible failure point. So this isn't just for apps, but just in your own lives. You can be looking at it and saying, okay, how can I reduce my potential failure points? Right. Like 401ks opt in versus opt out. The companies that say, hey, you're enrolled in the 401k unless you opt out, that reduces a click. Right. That's not a decision that you have to make. So I think it's fundamental, it's the most important thing.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Yeah. It strikes me, Aaron, that this is happening on both sides. While you're helping people by reducing the number of clicks to become investors and think about themselves as investors. You've got Klarna on the other side. You've got sports gambling apps on the other side that are also making it easier for people to lose money out of their wallet.

[Aaron Froeg]

Yes. You know, it's interesting because that ends up being a tougher conversation because you look at companies like Klarna, I guess, has helped people make bigger purchases in some ways and break that down into smaller increments. But the question is how much debt is that increasing on people's side? So, yeah, I don't know. I think for us too, it's one of the tough things is like, you're opening up a brokerage account and you're linking your bank and your credit cards as well too. And so as much as you try to make as little clicks as possible, it's like, how do you think of like building a good user experience? Like, it's a real financial app that like requires a lot of information for the government to protect people and so to make it feel trustworthy, but at the same time to make it fun and connect to people's lives and do good things. So I don't know. I also, like, I think, Peter, you said like earlier about like, assuming good intent with a lot of these things. I struggle when it comes to apps that I view as gambling and I don't think that that helps people at all, but they've gotten really good at converting people, so.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Good. I want to talk about gamification a little bit later, Aaron, but you brought up something because I think gamification is a huge piece of this. Right. Whether you're helping people save or you're helping people spend gamification. Just that that user experience is huge. But you mentioned the idea of, you know people when they use Griffin or Tiller or any of the array products, they've got to trust you enough to take out their credit card, their bank statement, their whatever and hook this thing up. I know talking to other people. I talked to Jesse, Mecham Peter, a guy that you know over at ynab consistently he worries about something. I'm sure that you, Aaron and Ryan all and it's Plaid kind of sucks and it makes your life hell according according to Jesse. And I know as a guy that uses your platforms, you know you'll go on and all of a sudden it's been unhooked and then people get mad at you Aaron, because it unhooked and, and it's not. It. It isn't necessarily your fault. Like what's, what's going. Can you explain to our stackers what's going on in the background when you're trying to work with these third party providers to get money? Where I wanted is a stacker and you wanted is the guy trying to help me invest but these middle people are driving us crazy.

[Aaron Froeg]

Yeah, it's one of those like I don't know if double edged sword is the right answer there but it's sort of the thing where it's a. We are heavily reliant on it. Especially like when you're a startup in a tech company and trying to grow like for example to, to do what Plaid is doing and then to do what our broker, dealer and clearing firm does in the background. We need to have hundreds of millions of dollars and be a multi billion dollar company. And so a lot of companies in the world, even if you connect to Vanguard nowadays you can use Plaid to like connect to your accounts to fund it. But we have definitely learned that no matter what goes wrong, it's Griffin. It doesn't matter any third parties that we have. But Plaid is like basically a large institution that genuinely has built their business around being able to connect to bank accounts to get transaction information and to link banks and sorts. But they have to build a solution. Let's say there's like 7,000 credit unions and banks. They have to build a solution. Every single one of those banks has a different technology and that bank can say I want to make sure that this connection for like purposes of protecting data because I don't trust this connection. It's going to Delete and delink after six months. And another bank could say two years, and another bank could say one month. And so then that ends up happening. And then Plaid has to send us information that says, this Delinked. And then we have to go to our customers, be like, hey, this delinked. You have to reconnect it. And then the customers say, why doesn't your app work the way that it's supposed to? And it's.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

You're saying it's not even necessarily Plaid's fault. It could be the institution on the.

[Aaron Froeg]

Other side's fault, 100%. And a lot of them are, I'll say this nicely, very outdated in their technology. And most banks don't want to have in the US Open data and transaction. They don't actually want to give data back to the users or for other third parties like ours who are trying to help people get invested. I'm not trying to talk poorly about it. It's just true. I've been to conferences, and that's all that they talk about is, like, how scared they are. But then you also have to think about it from another end, that those banks are scared that if their data comes out, that the larger banks, like Eva Peter was saying earlier about, you know, building a product that's. That could be competing with Microsoft, that the larger banks get access to that data and then they steal their customers. And these small community banks that are trying to. So I think everyone's just trying to survive. But the problem is, is that, like, the things that we are reliant on. So, example, like our broker, dealer, and clearing firm, if, let's say a user has an ach return, and our broker, dealer, and clearing firm decides that that's a risk, then they will limit an account. And then we have to go and then say, like, hey, let's unlock this. And, like, make sure it's not a risk. Because they're like, oh, but what. But is this return because there's fraud? And so you try to protect people.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Yeah.

[Aaron Froeg]

So it's a lot.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

I wanted to find a couple of these terms because I realized even before I asked you the question, Aaron, I realized I didn't tell people kind of what's going on in the back end. So Stackers, there's this. There's this company called Plaid whose job it is to connect Peter's, Aaron's and Ryan's products to your app. And so, Aaron, you said it nicely. You know, all these thousands of banks, and Plaid is one company trying to get them all to Interface nicely with the solution that you're trying to use on the other end. And so you've got all these different moving parts because of that. And then when it comes to the broker dealer, which is these are the people that actually hold your stocks or your funds for you, when it comes to them, they've got a bunch of rules they have to follow. So when Aaron said ach, which means if they go try to get the money, the money's not there and it bounces, they freak out that this is a fraudulent account. And so everybody's protecting thems from the bigger banks and their competitors, but they're also protecting the Stacker from other fraud outages. I know, Peter, you guys decided to go kind of next level with your security. Was that just to try to get around this whole mess or why the move hopefully away from Plaid if at all possible?

[Peter Paulsen]

That's a great question. Yeah. At the core, we want our customers to have really easy access and getting all their data in one place. We realized it was so important. We actually support two aggregators. They're the two leading aggregators. We support Plaid and Yodlee, so we give customers a choice. And we also support CSV imports. So if they have a bank that's not supported by either Plaid or Yodlee, they can download the CSV and throw that into Tiller and we make that easy. There are a few things going on for Tiller. We have read only Access, so we can't move money. We don't want to move money. We just want to show you what is happening with your money. There's a move afoot that JP Morgan started this summer and they announced that they were going to start adding fees if aggregators like Plaid and services like Tiller wanted to access Chase banking data. And it's really upsetting because it is certainly reflects the banks having a fear that if there are apps that have easy access to that data, they're going to be disintermediated. The reality is Chase is a great bank. They do a great job holding customer money. They have their own apps and services, but customers sometimes want other apps and services. You know, when we have our phones and we take a photo, sometimes we want that photo just in the photos app on our phone, but sometimes we want to share it. And sharing with your iPhone or your Android phone is simple, it's free and it works effectively with thousands of apps that can take those photos and do cool things with it. And Apple and Google do not add surcharges. If you want to Take your photo out of their ecosystem and share it with another. And so for JP Morgan, the largest bank in the country, 800 billion market cap, for them to say we're going to start adding fees and friction if customers want their data on their money, I think it's a huge step backwards. And it's concerning because it is not in the interest of customers. Ultimately customers are going to be served by easier access and more transparent information. It's a step backwards. It remains dynamic and we are pushing hard to make sure customers have access for their data on their money.

[Aaron Froeg]

I just, I'm sitting here, my body's getting hot. I, like, I. It's literally, it's your data also. The biggest thing to me is like I'm putting my money in a bank where that bank is federally protected of how they loan out my assets that they make money on that when I, that I'm earning zero interest on, when the federal funds rate is high enough that I could be earning a few percentage points on the money that I'm saving. And I think that's one thing with our app as well too. We are, I feel very, very fortunate. So I'm a show off a little bit. But by the end of this year we should have like over one and a half million installs on our app. And like, to me though, that's an indication that this is genuinely something that people want and can like help them. And I think like the same thing, Peter, with like what you're doing as well too. And Ryan, like powering the back end of all of these financial apps is like in taking away the power of people to get help, to manage their own money, to feel invested, to feel safe. Like at a time when we all need to feel safe financially, it shouldn't. In like, I think in like many other countries, there's open data when it comes to the financial institutions and that's like a really big thing for people. I don't know, I don't know why that gets me so bad. I just feel like people deserve better and all of this, you know, I.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Mean, this is nothing new, right? I've said for a long time that when I was failing with money, my bank, bank of America was there handing me a shovel so I could get even, even worse trouble. Like, hey man, you can dig faster than this. Not dig my way out, but get in even worse. There's something else, Ryan, let's talk conspiracy theories for a minute. We were joking actually. Before we, before we start talking about a different conspiracy theory which will not make the air, unfortunately, although it was a lot of fun, this one was something, Peter, that you said. And Peter, you said this nicely, but I'm going to put some snark on this. All right? I'm going to put a little tension on it. You said that Chase is great at holding your money. And I'm wondering, Ryan, how often is this really protecting the customer as much as it's messing with Plaid? So that. And unhooking these apps on purpose so that maybe Chase gets people to stop using them so much?

[Joe Crane]

I mean, one takeaway that I would have as a stacker is how am I evaluating the bank that I'm banking with? And it used to be that you evaluated your bank by, oh, it's down the street from me. And, you know, they have this checkbook program or whatever. But one of the things that people that are smart are looking at when they decide where they want to bank is how well does this bank play with other tools? Like, are they promoting open banking? Are they detractors from open banking? Because there are other banks out there that are saying, hey, we play nice. They're directly connecting with Plaid, they're directly connecting with Yodlee, and they're making it easy for their customers to get the data out. So they've taken this different approach where they're saying, hey, we want our customers to have access to their data. And the banks that are doing that, the play there is if we make our clients happy and provide these other tools, they can potentially build goodwill and have better relationships with their customers. So it's absolutely true that this is a big problem. And I'm just as frustrated as Peter and Aaron that some of the banks are dragging their feet and trying to add friction. But the silver lining is there's other banks that are taking an opposite approach. And you can really get ahead when you're working with a company or a bank that's going to help you connect to other apps.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Yeah, it seems very short term and obvious. And a mentor of mine told me a long time ago, guys, he said, always think long term and not so obvious. Don't think short term and obvious. And that is paid mightily. And hopefully over the long term, we stick with these partners that actually respect us. All right, the second half of today's discussion, we're going to focus on investing and really habit building, which also goes for what Ryan and Peter are focused on. But I want to talk about this, this idea again, that every little bit matters. Does a dollar matter? How do you convince somebody that Saving just a dollar is going to help them move forward when we know as people have been in this for a long time, it helps a ton when you help people change these little behaviors. We'll also talk more about behavior Sciences. We're going to talk about AI. How's AI changing the game for all of you? We're going to hear that one more time from our sponsors than the rest of this podcast is sponsor free. So we'll hear from them and we'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

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[Joe Crane]

Hey, this is Joe Crane, host of.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Veteran on the Move podcast.

[Joe Crane]

And when I'm not helping veterans transition to entrepreneurship, I'm stacking Benjamins.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Well, now that we talked about security and locking down your money. Actually, Peter, before we move into investing, I want to ask you one question that I had in my docket here that I really need to ask. You get to see lots of data. You said it's read only, but you get to read and look at the data. How are people using not just Tillarong, but when they're either trying to track their expenses or they are setting up a budget? Where are they making a big mistake that we could help them fix?

[Peter Paulsen]

Right now, when you say you see the data, that's really, you're referring to the customer. Because again, at Tiller, the team at Tiller, myself, the rest of the team, we don't see our customers transactions and balances. But when a customer sees their data, that's when the magic happens. Of course, the biggest mistake is not staying engaged. And it's really simple. But the biggest mistake is letting everything else in life get between you and an awareness of what's happening with your money. The fact that that subscription is renewing this week, the fact that that you're spending is light or is heavy, just an awareness of what is happening. And it's so easy to just get distracted by everything else and check out for. And a week turns to a month, and a month turns to several months, and you get to the end of the year and you don't actually know where your money's gone. You know actually very well what you've made. Most people have a very precise sense of what they've made. But then at the end of the year, you're like, why is there not more in my account? And why have I not made progress towards my goals? If they do nothing else but just stay engaged and get into their data once a week, they're going to make progress.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Back when I was a financial planner, I'd have people guess, how much money do you think you spent on restaurants last year? And then we'd go and we'd look at the number and it was often 3x what they thought they spent. Even better yet, I would ask them, how much money do you think you paid in taxes last year? Because you can see that, you know, right at the year end, and that was generally they would guess about a third of what they had paid in taxes. That's interesting. You know, Ryan, that brings up for me the idea of notifications. Right. Like as a provider. Then I hear what Peter says and I think, okay, if I'm a creator who's doing my job, I'm gonna notify my end user to say, hey, you know, it's probably time for a good check in. And yet I know in my life more I turn off notifications, the better, the better. My life is like the interrupting pattern. How in fintech do we get around the annoyance of notifications but still set up reminders to check in? Assuming you agree with what Peter's talking about.

[Joe Crane]

Yeah, I do agree with what Peter's talking about and I think that with technology and we'll get into AI and some of these other things later. But I think batching is really important when it comes to behavioral psychology, like setting aside a certain time each week that you're going to do X or certain. And you talked about even just investing a dollar. I think that works in a lot of things. Like in health and fitness, if I tell myself I've got to wake up and run five miles, I'm probably not going to do it. But if I've committed that I'm going to run 100 yards, I can do that. And then that first hundred yards, when I get done with it, I'm like, okay, I can keep going. But to address your specific question here about notifications, that interruption, it is difficult, but I think if you batch these things and it depends on, you know, we talked about reducing clicks, but when the clicks do have to happen, if you can batch them all together, I'm going to make this decision, this decision, this decision. And then I'm going to automate a couple of things here so that it's going to, over time, it's, I can start automating some of these processes and I make these decisions once a week or, you know, every few days.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

So important to have that type of, to just think about our own anatomy and how switching tasks is such a bear. So badging. I'm a hundred percent love that. Aaron, let me ask you the question. You must hear it. Griffin. Okay, so I save a dollar, I invest a dollar. That can't be that big a deal. What do you say to that?

[Aaron Froeg]

Yeah, so I'm just going to show my own account. This is a dollar at a time. I've been using our app for like three years now.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

And by the way, for people that are audio only, $19,095.69.

[Aaron Froeg]

Yeah. So I've been able to put away $19,000 for myself. I own 137 companies and I'm at a 320 weekly streak. It adds up. You can see like the transactions that you use all the time and the places that you're shopping at. I'll say you asked a question earlier of like sometimes what can get people confused. I will say the biggest thing is one of the differences, like especially when you're using the app as well is I use Chase as my funding source, but my main card is an American Express. So a lot of times we'll see that like customers will only connect Chase on our account and then they'll be like, why is Chase not working? And it's. But they realize that like well, you know, later on American Express is the main card. So it's to making sure that it's like to use an app to the best of the ability is, is to connect the things that you use every single day. But it adds up over time. And also for a lot of people it just feels good to like set money aside. And some people use it for, I mean my hope is long term investing. They use it for like long term and life events and those sorts of things. Like that's sort of the intent of this. But I don't know, you're putting away $25 a week. That can add up as well a lot too.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

You bring up something to me that's something I think that a lot of people avoid. While you guys are helping people reduce clicks, I often have gotten then into the, the spirit of okay, I'm going to do a couple clicks and then Aaron, your app is just going to work marvelously on its own. But this American Express versus Chase point, I don't even realize I haven't hooked up the account where I'm spending all my money. So nothing's moving the way that I, that I wanted to move. How important is it for somebody who's using Griffin to go in and use. I noticed you have a whole education area on your website. I would guess that's hellishly underused.

[Aaron Froeg]

Yeah, a lot of the times it is. Yeah. So I know we're going to talk about like AI and stuff, but I think we've made like over a hundred plus articles help articles on through our entire website that people can use. And we have a, we have like a 16 day educational campaign when people sign up and you get emails coming in. One of the jobs that we need to do better at also is to put this information within the app itself, the educational app, because not A lot of people reach out and we're looking to create a customer service AI and a chatbot AI so that you can just call in and instead of having to read through a hundred articles, just ask it questions. It'll read through the a hundred articles for you and like, help give out the answers. But it's really underutilized.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

But if my goal, Aaron, I mean, I understand you're taking responsibility and your goal is to reduce friction, but I don't know, having the other side of this. If I've decided that I want to use Griffin in my life, I mean, let's actually use it. Let's open up the 16 emails and figure out how the hell to use it best for the people that make it. Whose goal is the same as mine? Your goal is the same as mine. I want more money in my account. You want me to have more money in my account. Let's actually use the things that creators put out there.

[Aaron Froeg]

It is very underutilized.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

It's so frustrating. And I know Peter talking to Alice from your team at fincon, who's a badass, by the way, one of the newer members of the Tiller family. Talking to Alice. Her job is kind of to hopefully get more people involved in the Tiller community. Not because, I don't know, sell them more stuff. It's. It's because you're going to use Tiller better if you're surrounded by people that are using the product.

[Peter Paulsen]

Well, no, it's true. And if you share stories and you share templates, you share ideas, you help each other. A lot of people feel alone. They have a lot of emotions around money, and they also feel like they don't know as much as they should, even though they actually are likely better than they've assessed. I was thinking of a story that actually connects Tiller and Griffin because our son was. Has been saving money. And so we check his Tiller sheet, we meet each week and he's been seeing his balance grow. And then he recently. And I've been, I've been enjoying the satisfaction of seeing him grow as a saver. And then he recently he said, I'm going to make a purchase because he was at a friend's house and his friend had a one wheel, which is a $700 electric little, little scooter thing. And I'm like, oh, boy. First we have a waiting period. If it's $50, you wait a night. If it's so $700, you're going to wait 14 nights before you spend it. His money he can spend it. He went through the waiting period and then I was trying to throw more friction into the process. So I'm like, hey, do you know what this would be when you're my age if you spend that $700? And he actually, to my surprise, he guessed it, it would be $10,000 at a 7% annual return. And so that was more friction, more conversation. He ultimately made it. It's given him a ton of joy and I see that. I think for him this was the right purchase. But I love what Griffin's doing because it is that. It's the corollary. I have my money to spend, I have my money to invest. I can do both. And how do I want to spend that next dollar? Understanding the trade offs and how we think about our money is a huge unlock. We have choices. And I can not only spend on something differently, I cannot spend entirely. I can put it in a savings account, in an investment account and you have that money grow in 10 years or 20 years or more.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

It's funny, Ryan, we're talking about these little things, but truly as a creator, how do you get people into the community if you're a creator, how do we convince Stackers that you know what these people that don't want. I don't have time to go to any meetings. I'm thinking about the comedian talking about I don't have time to join a club. And yet if we actually use it, I feel like to some degree what you guys do separates people. It doesn't naturally build community because I feel like I could do it myself with my thumbs. How important is it for you to build community?

[Joe Crane]

Community is huge. It's everything. Jim Rohn said you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. People have said, you know, the suit makes the man. Right. The thing is if you have a community of people that are all doing something, you're more likely to do that thing. I think that that community doesn't necessarily need to be homegrown within the fintech. Like right now we have the Stackers community, right? And we're learning things about how to use Griffin, we're learning about how to use Tiller better. This is the community. And you look at companies like you mentioned, Jesse Mecham with Ynab man, they've got a great community of people that.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Are just, I think it's called fanatical about why it's called a cult.

[Joe Crane]

You know, cults aren't all bad. That's my hot take, right? You know if you join the right cult.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

But no, that's what we're going to call this episode. Cults Are All Bad Just to Get Clicks.

[Joe Crane]

That's a good title. But no, I think that you look at companies like Monarch have done a great job of partnering with coaches and, and content creators to have this community. And the community teaches you how to use the tool. So I think that, you know, you're doing it right. And people are joining their favorite podcast. They're getting LinkedIn. And I think that the real future is somebody that's got a trusted voice that builds a community like the Stacking Benjamin's community, and then they partner with cool apps that help their community get from point A to point B. I.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Want to switch over to talk about gamification, which, Aaron, you brought up a little bit later. You know, Robin Hood got in big trouble for gamification by having confetti come down every time people did the wrong thing by putting more money on margin, which was. Just drove me crazy. But how much, Aaron, do you think about if my app is more fun, people are going to use it more often? How does a creator think about gamification?

[Aaron Froeg]

Yeah, so I'll kind of give an example of some things that we try to use, because I think what I was talking about earlier on was that we try to connect a lot of things to real life. I think gamification can be very positive when it's like you learn through action. Because that's one of the biggest things I always say is that, you know, when I was younger, my dad would always try to tell me every single way to ride a bike. But the one way you learn how to ride a bike is you ride it and you figure out how you do and you make mistakes. And that's sort of how all of this happens. It's. And so, like in our app itself, for example, the stock market's closed right now, and that's why it's night mode and there's stars in the sky. So, like, you can learn about things through real life. And when the stock market's open, you know, it's a bright blue sky with clouds and everything. And the gamification of the weekly streaks, like, we. We only try to do positive things. If you've invested for yourself this week, we take that off of Snapchat or Duolingo. Things that people already recognize, like, you earn a streak. A lot of this comes back down to intent. And so, like, if it is to get people to put and invest a ton of money that they don't have. I'm a big, big believer still that that's our whole thesis is like if you're going to be spending anyway, at least take care of yourself a little bit. But the incentive of gamification and for this is to create long term investing. How do you reward good behavior? But it is important because it's what makes things more engaging and connecting and educating. Like even if you do a walkthrough in the app at the very beginning, that's gamification. But that teaches people things like we're trying to record a video that's like a. I don't know if you've ever seen the, like the safety videos. When you get on a roller coaster, we want to do something fun like that and then like gamify the process of setting up your account the right way. So I don't know, it's a word that to me it's based on intent.

[Joe Crane]

I want to second that and I want to say so I spent some time at Duke in their behavioral psychology research lab and I got to an incredible experience. I got to work with Dr. Dan Ariely, one of the world thought leaders, specifically in this space. And I asked him point blank, I saw how powerful gamification really is. I said is this ethical what we're doing? We're basically manipulating people. And I said is this ethical? And he said whether we do this or not, however the product is designed, it's going to trigger people's biases and it's going to trigger them one way or another. Coming to Aaron's point, he said it's all about the intent. People are out there in the world and they're being manipulated by the way the government's structured things. They're being manipulated by the way the marketers are structuring things. And if you have good intent and you're building your thing to gamify towards the goal that's going to help a stacker or help someone to, to get to their goals. That's the important thing. And so I want a second one, Aaron saying about the intent. And so if we, we know what that intent is and we know what that gamification is leading us to, that's the important thing which is a struggle.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Then I mean knowing what the founder's intent is, are they helping? Are they not helping? What you're saying, Ryan, is, I mean Klarna is out there gamifying how to spend more money more quickly. The sports betting apps are helping us. I mean my relatives. I was saying on Peter's podcast that we recorded a few days ago. I'm watching my relatives bet on how long the Star Spangled Banner is going to go. They're betting on the coin flip. Like, stuff that just drives me 100 crazy. I'm like, are you just trying to give money away? What are you doing with these bets? And they think it's really fun because, you know, DraftKings has gamified it so much. Seems like a blast. It seems like a great time.

[Joe Crane]

And the way we think about that at Array is it all comes back to we don't even call content creators content creators anymore. We call them trusted voices. That's what we're calling the podcasters and the content creators because that's, we believe is their job and their role in the ecosystem is to be that trusted voice and to be. Someone says, hey, here's a cool app.

[Peter Paulsen]

Here's.

[Joe Crane]

I've vetted it for my community and this is what it does, and here's why it's great, right? So that's where we believe that the content creators come into this space, is being that trusted voice to help the community know. Try this app, not this one.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

How did we pass that test, Ryan? Like, what the hell happened there? Did you have to get, like, an exception?

[Joe Crane]

I think it was one too many drinks at fincon. And then we just kind of. I don't. One thing led to another.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

What the hell, let's let them in, too. All these other people are trustworthy. Aaron. I asked Peter this earlier about budgets and about tracking and where people get it wrong when it comes to investing and what you do at Griffin, you get to see a lot of data where people getting it wrong.

[Aaron Froeg]

I think after seeing this for a really long time, I'm going to go maybe a little bit deeper here. I believe a lot of this is systemic. It leaves a whole lot of people out. And when you're already starting off with not feeling good about something, that's why a lot of the time people don't want to be connected to it. What I've had to realize, even for myself, even for our company, is like, knowing where you stand, as scary as it is, is really helpful. And so, again, like Peter, like, what you're doing, I think that's really, really great for people because it allows them to know where they stand. Because at least when you know where you stand, it makes a difference. So I'd say, like, what we're trying to help with, and that's why it's like bringing joy and fun into it. It's like, and it's not really gamification or negative. It's just like, can you enjoy something that normally sucks? Because if it's fun and it's positive, then maybe you're more willing to spend more time with it and then allow it to see, have a different feeling about it. And so a lot of people use our app to just set it and forget it. It is true. Our app is fully automatic. It's connected to the lives that people live and they're automatically investing. I would say people will be more successful in their personal experience if they are able to like be more engaged and learn and read the articles. But the question is, is like how to build that positive relationship?

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Well, that's interesting because I love how your answer models Peter's or is really similar to Peter's, which is the check ins. The check ins are important. And, and I can imagine for a lot of people, Aaron, just saying, no, I am an investor and letting people go from this is all bad or this doesn't connect to me or my community. And, and the fact that it's a dollar at a time can make it so easy for people to change that.

[Aaron Froeg]

One of the things that we're trying to do is communicate ownership and what ownership means. Like, you're already spending money. Somebody once said to me that it's the concept of owning the world that you're helping build. Like, you're putting your money towards there every single day. Like, why not have a benefit and be a part of it as well too? And so we're trying to create some AI videos right now. We're trying to keep it human. We're trying to do both. But where it's like we have somebody walking into a McDonald's and they're given a robe and some slippers and they're getting a massage and they're saying, you know, thank you for being an owner, but I genuinely hope we create that world. I want one day like somebody sitting in 35B at the very back of an American Airlines flight in the middle seat and they get a blanket because they have stock that like, we are all treated better because we are all helping moving this world forward.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

That's so fun. That's so.

[Aaron Froeg]

Yeah, it just comes with it all.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

That's so, so fun. I think AI is definitely helping brands make their points better. We've had some, some real fun brainstorming with AI's help.

[Peter Paulsen]

Ryan, I appreciated your, your inquiry when you were in the lab at Duke. It goes back to the question too. About which bank are you using and does this bank have my interest in mind? I think as operators, as founders, I think we have to ask ourselves deeply, what are we trying to do here? And I know for Tiller, that's crystal clear. We're very mission driven. Everyone on the team is very mission driven. We wake up and think about our mission and that ends up being a superpower for attracting the right team, but also for serving our customers. But I think as a consumer, you've got to make that decision yourself. If you're a stacker, you've got to look at each company and each bank and say, what is their mission? Are they gamifying with my success in mind or are they gamifying with their success in mind and you ultimately. And that's. That's something I actually think a lot of stackers are pretty well equipped to do. And it's increasingly important because if you're playing someone else's game, you better opt out. But if you're playing a game that's helping you succeed, that's pretty powerful and you have to make that call yourself.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Ryan, let's focus on a couple of things that I think because you get to see. While Peter is hyper focused on Tiller, Aaron's hyper focused on Griffin, you are focused on a lot of different companies stuff. What are some of the red flags that you'll advise people to watch out for when it comes to either downloading fintech apps or diving into the next product in their browser?

[Joe Crane]

It depends on the person. You know, if you're an early adopter and you're looking to try the coolest new thing, you can maybe try out a new app that is not as proven. But what I would do is I would look at the reviews in the app stores, look at those, but then also piggyback off of somebody else's trust. You know, to me, it always kind of comes back to community. And so I would say join a community, be engaged in that community and see what apps that they're recommending and using and having success with. That's if you're a general person, but if you're a pioneer and you're going out and trying new apps that are a little bit out there on the cutting edge, you need to make sure you got to read the fine print, make sure that they're properly following the SoC2 compliance and some of these protocols.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Is there something specific we're missing in the fine print?

[Joe Crane]

That's a tough one. That's why I push back to the community, because There are a lot of fintech apps out there that are operating kind of in the wild west and they just haven't gotten caught yet. And to some degree that's okay. You look at early startups like Uber, in the very beginning, they were breaking rules around having these crazy taxis out there that weren't regulated. You look at the founders of Venmo, they were having massive, massive fraud problems in the beginning. And they ended up getting bought by a company for 25 million. It's called Braintree was the company. Brian Johnson, he started Braintree. They got bought for 25 million. He cleaned up their whole process, all their fraud and compliance issues turned around and sold them to PayPal for 300 million like a year later. Right, because he had cleaned up. So there's not one thing. You got to trust your community and probably not be an early adopter of things unless you are familiar with the space.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Let's talk about that big elephant in the room before we say goodbye, which is this idea of AI. I'd love to hear how are you using AI to change the game? And Ryan, since you're, you're front and center, let's just stick with you. Where are you using AI and kind of where do you see it headed in the fintech space?

[Joe Crane]

I think that AI is going to make huge changes in the space, but I think that because this is such a regulated area, it's more going to be in personalizing tools rather than completely reinventing tools. So, like, you know, if you're trying to understand how to use a tool, things like that maybe like chatbots and things like that, that are going to get smarter about answering questions. But I've vibe coded, I guess you call it three or four apps myself, that you can complete an app in a weekend. But these apps are not compliant. They're not going to could really change the game. I think where I see AI, it's just an information tool that's going to make it quicker and easier to get up to speed in using apps.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Peter, how are you guys using AI at Tiller and where do you see it headed?

[Peter Paulsen]

We use AI extensively to just allow us to do our work faster and better internally. We use it with our customers. If you call in and write in for support, AI is often going to give you a faster answer. And if you are categorizing your transactions, a big thing about Tiller is we want you to categorize your transactions your way based on your unique categories. And AI has been really helpful for that. So there are a lot of future unlocks for us. AI is an incredible way for people to feel savvier when they feel stuck. So if they are deeply in debt or if they're figuring out how, where should they invest their money now that they can start investing? Or if they're wondering, should I be paying off my mortgage faster or should I be putting that money into an investment account? An AI is actually one way to democratize some personal finance information and to give people some good, sound advice based on generally sound principles. You have to treat everything with a grain of salt because you're not always going to get a great answer and you need to be suspicious if it's not. But in general, for people who want to get smarter, whether you're a really confident learner or whether you don't feel very smart about money, I think it's also a big enabler there as well too. And we're continuing to look at ways to connect those dots as our customers are looking to get smarter. And we have, we're a trusted partner with their financial information, so we have lots more planned with our roadmap.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Does the customer see AI on the front end? Like, can you ask a tiller AI tool to look at your spreadsheet or look through your data?

[Peter Paulsen]

That can happen in a few ways. So Google and Microsoft have both built AI in alongside spreadsheets. That's of some value. It's not a home run yet. And then again, if you're reaching out to support and you're on our website and you're using our chatbot, you will see you have an option to engage with AI and you'll get an instant answer that, if it's helpful, sends you on your way. And if it's not, then we have a live, real person who will follow up when they're available.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Yeah. The thing I worry about now, and I'm sure that you guys worry about, is Robert Farrington at the College Investor Big Personal Finance website. They did a study on AI with personal finance, and the number of answers that you get that are wrong are just still really disturbing. Like super duper, duper disturbing.

[Peter Paulsen]

Yeah. Again, I think there's definite caution advised. But if you're looking at it not for the definitive answer, but you want to start having a conversation because a lot of people don't have someone that they trust to sort of share their details with. And so if you want to start having that conversation, you can. And then, yeah, you should track down and do your due diligence before you actually follow that advice. But it can generate insights and questions that you should then verify, which is a great point before you put them to work.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

That's what I like the brainstorming partner, Peter. Like what can I do with this? And give me five options or whatever. That's right. Huge at Griffin Aaron. What are you guys doing with AI and where do you see ahead in the future?

[Aaron Froeg]

Yeah, I'm also a firm believer right now that it can be wrong a lot of the times and especially if it's coming to investment advice. Like we're not there yet.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

I've seen some painful investment advice.

[Aaron Froeg]

Yeah, there's got to be like regulation or something there. But I will say if you can upload a knowledge base into it and that's where it's basing. So like for example, the thing that we are building right now is we have the hundred articles that we wrote that we ran through compliance, that we did this entire thing that if you can take those hundred articles specifically say this goes into a knowledge base that then somebody can call a conversational AI tool with when they're setting up an account, say, hey, what is plaid? Why do I connect my funding source? Or why do I connect transaction accounts? What is, you know, SIPC insurance? Like giving an ability to at least have some context around it and confidence and people. I would love to have a 10,000 person customer support team that people can call. It's very, very expensive. I think also when it comes to investing in tools, you know, we charge $5 a month or $36 a year for our service. Obviously like it's. I don't know, I'm trying to say it's not saying because I know for a lot of people that can be a lot of money. At the same time it's a very, very little amount of money. And so to like be able to hire a ton of people and to offer the service that we are like buying one share of stock back then and paying a brokerage fee of 5 plus dollars for one share every time, buying thousands and thousands and thousands of shares for like micro shares for people like in a year and automating a full service and connecting their accounts and we're paying for all of this. Like it's a. I'm trying to say this the right way, but it's to be able to offer these things, we have to be sustainable as a business. And so I think that what AI in some way is helping is giving people support and access to a potential knowledge base in a way that's easier in the way that they Want to receive it. While again, I'm still saying be cautious about it, but I think it's allowing companies to accelerate their ability to help people in unique ways at the same time internally as a business. Like I use it all the time. Yeah, obviously, like, you know, I, I get concerned about my, my data and stuff being pretty protected, but it's been super helpful. There's both sides of it.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

I love the idea though of limiting the knowledge base. You know, if it's a knowledge base that you put together, a tiller put together, a ray put together, and, and it's just crawling your stuff to get the answer quicker. Like that's a beautiful tool that bridges the gap between, you know, more of a company the size of Griffin. And you know, we talked about Chase with bajillion people. I think the numbers of bajillion people work for Chase.

[Aaron Froeg]

That's, I think that's what I, that's what I've heard.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Yeah, AI told me that number. Ryan, how about you?

[Joe Crane]

How are we using it at array? Yes, we're using it internally quite a bit. Externally, we're not using it yet. We're kind of allowing our partners to use it in the way they want. But yes, we're not using it.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

There's nothing customer facing, just building the tools quicker.

[Joe Crane]

Yeah, it just kind of helps with writing code for some of our newer stuff and then we'll obviously have a person to come through and check it, but it just helps them go a little bit faster.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Do you see that becoming customer facing?

[Joe Crane]

I do, but it's just too early to make predictions on this. I think AI is such a wild card right now. I think it's super helpful for me in certain places, but it's also, it's just not reliable enough and others and so it's too hard to know. I think it's too hard to predict right now.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

I think it is the Wild west and that's kind of the, kind of the fun of AI Right now I'm watching these videos that look like they're real people talking to each other and then you halfway through the video like, oh my God, none of this is real.

[Aaron Froeg]

You realize it. Yeah, there's this like very viral video, I think of something of like rabbits jumping on a trampoline that no one had any idea was AI.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

It's so sad.

[Aaron Froeg]

Like 60 million views. I think like that's also where one day like not being able to discern between like what is real and what is not real. But I guess we'll get there.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

We'll see. We'll see what happens.

[Peter Paulsen]

I think that it also, and this is a topic for another show, but I think it's increasingly challenging for consumers to know what they can trust because the opportunities for fraud are easier than ever. And so you can get a phone call that sounds like it's your relative and it sounds convincing and it's their voice, and it's not. That's just one of many different variants that is way easier now. And so I think we all have to just be also on guard. And that's something stackers know, but it's never been more true.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

I think that's a great place to leave it because the fraud problem is huge and coming, coming faster. It's weird. We put all these size safeguards in place. Right. And yet the people trying to tear them down move. Everybody's just this arms race going on.

[Aaron Froeg]

It's intent. It all comes back down to that. Like, there's beauty in, like, what AI is creating. @ the same time, we have to be aware of the other side.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Yeah. You can't not play what is the intent.

[Aaron Froeg]

Yeah.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Let's find out what's happening at all of your companies. What's going on? What's kind of on your mind, Aaron, what's going on at Griffin? Anything cool that our stackers should know about? As we move into the holiday season.

[Aaron Froeg]

I'd say there's two things. Recently, we started doing quizzes that are doing really well. So people are, like, really engaging in the quizzes. Like, we want to teach. I think that's positive gamification. We're teaching people about investing through quizzes, and we're having super high engagement there. Second, we found that a lot of our customers are our parents.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Well, wait a minute. Where do we get in on the quizzes? Tell us about getting in on the quizzes.

[Aaron Froeg]

Oh, it's coming every week through email. So if you're a Griffin user, even if you just, like, register with us and you're like, not even, you can just learn about investing through our quizzes every week. So it's been. It's been fun. We're looking to build that in the app. And then I think the second thing is a lot of our customers are parents. It's close. But a majority of our users are female as well, too. Parents, grandparents, they get excited about this and are wanting to share it with their kids. So we're building family plans so that, like, the whole family can use the app and have a conversation, be like, hey, where do we shop today and, and get to have those conversations. So we're super, super excited about that. And we're also, I can't like announce this, but we're releasing some pretty cool features soon over like the next month or two. And we do want to do some cool things with like the shopping and the holidays as well.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

The number of times I've talked to fintech founders over the years that have said, I got something else I really want to tell you about, but I can't.

[Aaron Froeg]

Yeah, you'll see it.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

That is awesome.

[Aaron Froeg]

Yeah.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

And you find [e-mail] we will link to it in the show notes@Stacky Benjamin.com as we will Tiller. Peter, what's coming up at Tiller? What do you guys got going on?

[Peter Paulsen]

One of the things I just mentioned earlier in our show is continuing to work to make it easier, more reliable, more robust to get all your data into your spreadsheet. And that we've made some awesome advances this year with multiple aggregators and other tools. We also have made some really exciting innovations around using mobile with your spreadsheet and not just through the spreadsheet app on your phone, but through a Tiller web app that allows you to see in a really simple way your transactions and your balances. And that's something that we have in beta and we're continuing to refine and improve. And I'm really excited about because it means you can have access to all of your trusted, secure information when you're not at home and when you're not at your computer. And we also coming up, the holidays are a huge time for us. It's specifically New Year's actually, because for many people that gives them the unlock to say, all right, the new year is a time for me to get into my finances. So we're, we're heads down getting ready for that. And we're working on some new webinars and new educational opportunities to help people. That hits on some themes we talked about earlier, but we know customers are thirsty for help and thirsty for feeling community with others who are sharing similar goals. And so that's something that we are developing as we speak. And we'll be sharing more around the holidays as well.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

My favorite Tiller activity at the end of the year is almost like, you know, Spotify. I use Spotify and it gives me my Spotify unwrapped. I like at the end of the year, open up my spreadsheet and I compare it this year to last year. Ooh, restaurants won, Joe lost or travel increases. To take more of the budget gasoline pump, not so much. You know.

[Aaron Froeg]

Can I say something?

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Yeah.

[Aaron Froeg]

That is something we're building. So I think it's super cool for people to be able to see like, hey, here's all the brands that you invested in this year and here's where you shopped at the most and the things that you've done. I love Spotify wrapped so much, Aaron. More complicated than people think to build. We are trying to create that.

[Joe Crane]

Yeah, it is.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

It is really super fun though. I love it. Yeah. Doing that with my spreadsheet. But I don't know, Aaron, do I want to see Taco Bell like that much on the. I'm joking.

[Aaron Froeg]

I had that one for you.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

You mentioned McDonald's. I'm like, oh, your number one spot that you bought stock in McDonald's life might be.

[Aaron Froeg]

Might help with, you know though, right?

[Joe Crane]

It does.

[Aaron Froeg]

Instead of avoiding it.

[Joe Crane]

Awareness.

[Aaron Froeg]

It's awareness. If I knew and I'm like, okay, I probably shouldn't be eating as much at McDonald's.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Yes.

[Aaron Froeg]

Like, yeah, that sucks. But it's like, it helps. So, you know, like, oh, geez, Dr.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Told him, oh, geez, Doctor told him that you should say more or less. And he's like, what does that mean? You know how at the restaurant you say more, do that less, like that. That was his weight loss plan. Yeah. I got to stop. Fourth meal. Ryan, what's going on at Array, man?

[Joe Crane]

Well, well, well, we got some exciting stuff going on. So we've been working.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

We need a drum roll here.

[Joe Crane]

Yeah, we've been working with a lot of content creators to help their communities to understand their credit better, to protect their privacy and to understand their subscriptions and to figure out where they're wasting money on subscriptions, but then also to be able to understand what tools they should be using and would benefit them the most. So even within the Stacker community, there's some people that are going to be more interested. Their top of mind is, man, how can I budget? How can I budget better? And maybe they need to be pushed over to Tiller. And then there's going to be some people that saying, man, I just need to get investing. I finally need to do that. And they can be pushed over to Griffin. And so even within the stacker community, we're going to be launching in conjunction with Stacking Benjamin, some really cool tools. And I don't know if you want to announce those yet or if we want to say coming soon, but they're coming soon.

[Joe Saul Sehive]

Hopefully they're released by now, but in an abundance of caution because we're recording this early. Head to stackybenjamins.com vault and you will see us helping you with your subscriptions, learn about your credit and lock down your identity. And we're doing that with Ryan's wonderful team at Array. And by the way, the behind the scenes stuff that you guys do, this is my first foray into this. So for Peter and Aaron, like, I had hair before we started working with Array. No, I'm, I'm kidding. All my hair was. I didn't have any white hair. It was, it was. Well, but there is significantly more. Ryan got that from working with me every week. All right, guys. Well, again, thank you so much for your knowledge and for mentoring our Stackers today. You'll find griffin griffin.com we'll also, by the way, link to this in our show notes page. Remember, it's one F G F I N Peter, thanks a ton to you as well. And you'll find tiller.com and you won't see Array. They'll be in the background as usual. But if you go to stackingbenjamins.com vault, you'll see what we're building with Ryan and his team. So you've got it from here. Doug, what are our three big takeaways from today's discussion?

[Doug]

So what's stacked up on our to do list for today? First, take some advice from our fintech guests. Paying attention to these cool new innovations can make your financial life easier. Second, AI that's only going to increase the pace of change in the marketplace. So set some time aside, maybe once a quarter and dive deeper into how your favorite apps are changing. But the big lesson, don't tell Joe's mom about what's going on at Tiller, Griffin and Array. She'll insist that was a comedy act she saw in the 60s. Thanks to Peter Paulsen for joining us today. We like Tiller so much that we've partnered with them. Head to stackingbenjamins.com tiller to check them out. Thanks to Ryan Ruff for hanging out with us today. His company Array is our partner for our new app to help you shed subscriptions, get on top of your credit and make better money decisions. Head to stackingbenjamins.com upstairs to make better decisions starting right now. Thanks also to Aaron Frug for joining us today. Want to try out investing in those companies you do business with? Check out Griffin. That's Griffin with just one [e-mail]. this show is the property of SB Podcasts, LLC, Copyright 2025 and is created by Joe Saul Sehive. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You'll find out about our awesome team@stacking benjamin.com along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah. And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and we'll see you next time back here at the the Stacking Benjamin Show.