June 2, 2017: The Mother of Invention is a Worthy Purpose June 7, 2017 Cinch, Mindful Musings, Uncategorized Sean Collins I am stunned, daily, by the capabilities of our team here at Cinch. It is a good-sized team — 35 folks — with amazing academic and work credentials ranging from design to artificial intelligence to econometrics. And everything in between. It’s not only the individual capabilities that amaze me (which are stunning, particularly to a Keep Reading
May 12, 2017: Dispatch from the Future May 15, 2017 Cinch, Mindful Musings Sean Collins Kerri Moriarty and I have been in lots of meetings with various interested outsiders talking about Cinch. Though backgrounds are different, these people share one thing in common: a real interest in what we’re creating at Cinch. Each meeting is different, and the people in them take us in different directions given their professions, but Keep Reading
April 7, 2017 — Mission: Validation April 10, 2017 Cinch, Mindful Musings Sean Collins Part of my job at Cinch is to reach out to influential third parties that are aligned with our purpose of increasing your financial health and best outcomes. We started that process nearly three years ago with our initial outreach to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or the CFPB. That’s the government regulator for most Keep Reading
March 30, 2017 — Building Trust April 3, 2017 Cinch, Mindful Musings Sean Collins Earlier last week, a partner at Greylock (a top tier VC firm) named Sarah Tavel wrote (yet another) great piece on her Medium blog, which she also expanded on yesterday. As I get to know more VC companies, it’s been helpful for me to discern the skills each partner (and the firm) brings to the Keep Reading
Why Do I Want You to Pay for Cinch? March 30, 2017 Cinch, Mindful Musings Sean Collins Great question. Everyone’s used to free apps, so why isn’t Cinch free? Because it wouldn’t be Cinch — your completely unbiased, comprehensive personal financial manager. Every business has to make money. And free financial apps do that in two ways: 1. They sell access to your personal financial identity to banks, insurers, even bankruptcy attorneys Keep Reading
March 18, 2017 — No Power, No Problem March 18, 2017 Cinch, Mindful Musings Sean Collins Not many people know that Cinch HQ was, in a prior life, a huge Borders bookstore (and many years prior to that, the headquarters building for the long-gone Boston Five Cent Savings Bank). When Borders got Amazoned, the store was cut into two, escalators removed, and the second floor (where the science fiction section was, Keep Reading
Why Is Cinch Based in Boston? March 14, 2017 Cinch, Industry, Mindful Musings, Regulation Sean Collins People do ask if (and sometimes when!) we plan to light out for Silicon Valley like so many other Boston-founded startups. It sort of astounds me, but in my case, once they learn I grew up in SF and the Bay Area (and went to college there) they sort of assume I will make my Keep Reading
Financial Products Buried Inside Financial Apps March 7, 2017 Cinch, Industry, Mindful Musings, Uncategorized Sean Collins My post about ad-based free financial apps generated an email asking about products like Digit or Clarity Money that have bank and savings accounts inside the app as competitors. To be fair, we’ve looked at these products very carefully. Not only do we feel that they are not competitive to Cinch, but we truly believe they Keep Reading
March 3, 2017 — Demo, Demo, Demo March 3, 2017 Cinch, Industry, Mindful Musings Sean Collins Today, and most Friday afternoons, we have an all-hands meeting we call an FYI. The meeting focuses on a demo from a team, or several teams, here at Cinch. “Demo” is loosely applied of course. On days with big software release, like today, there’s a backstory given on the release, surprises the team learned along Keep Reading
If It’s Free, You’re the Product February 27, 2017 Cinch, Industry, Mindful Musings Sean Collins I wrote a post about free apps some time ago that needs updating – and Kerri shared our point of view just last week on CNBC. Basically, we all love useful free apps on the web and the tradeoff we’re making is clear. We’re all fine with using social media apps knowing they make money Keep Reading
