Startup Stories: Featuring Untangle Money
This week we are excited to be featuring the Co-founders of Untangle Money, Ria Savla, COO, and Kristine Beese, CEO.
Ria and Kristine first met at a hackathon in November 2019, where they bonded over a shared financial background and understanding that personal finance isn’t clear cut. In an effort to untangle financial planning for themselves and their clients, a company was born.
Fast forward eight months to Volition’s June 2020 Women’s Pitch Canada–our introduction to Untangle and its founding team. Ria and Kristine delivered a solid pitch and captivated the audience with their solution to help women understand their “now” money and their future money and the relationship between them.
And why is Untangle specifically for women? In their research, Ria and Kristine found that women’s financial lives differ significantly from men’s, creating unique needs for this group. For example, women take frequent sabbaticals, often for maternity leave, are more likely to switch into part-time work, and are also more likely to get paid less than men.
So, let’s dig in and get to know this team better!
Hello Ria and Kristine! Let’s start with where we met. We know what it was like to be the audience for your pitch in June 2020 (congrats, again!), but what was it like being in your shoes?
Ria: One of the things we struggled early on was really finding our voice. The first months we were enrolled in an accelerator and we spent a lot of time perfecting our message to make sure it landed in the right way. We didn’t want to sound condescending and navigated the waters of “yes, finance is hard and we’re making it accessible to you” but not in a negative connotation.
The work paid off. The Volition event we pitched at in mid-July allowed us to showcase all the work we put into crafting our message and really hitting the right notes for our target customers.
That was also our first pitch experience outside of the accelerator program.
Kristine: We went into the Volition pitch event with a lot of confidence because of all the work we’ve put into it. We also realized how strong the other pitchers were and it was nice to know we had attained that level with all the practice we’ve done before.
We’re glad to hear that it was a valuable experience for you. Aside from earning Top Pitch, what are some recent company highlights or wins that we can share?
Kristine: Yes! We’ve been accepted to Western University accelerator. They only take eight companies each cohort so that was fantastic.
We are growing our team and we have onboarded eleven developers, five brand ambassadors, and two interns in the last weeks, which is really exciting! We have also launched the brand ambassadors program and we’ve completed our MVP, we call it the Mini, and we’re testing it now. We have five beta testers lined up!
Ria: I think the most exciting part of that is, ideally, after we finish the beta we’ll be able to open it up for all our customers.
Quite a few highlights! What are the next steps from here?
Kristine: Validating the Mini and making it scalable. Then it’s about building on that and seeing what the users want in addition to the Mini. Also making sure the product works worldwide.
Covid-19 slowed us down, for sure, but it has also increased the need for our product. People have more sensitivity around their budget as they are much more concerned about their finances.
Most importantly, women have been disproportionately impacted by Covid-19, so hopefully we’ll provide a solution for them that they can implement really quickly.
I love this idea, and appreciate you working on such an impactful solution for women. So, you’re about one year into your journey now–what has been your greatest challenge as an entrepreneur?
Kristine: Some of the challenges are definitely Covid related, like being geographically dispersed, but that actually turned into a positive.
One of the hardest for us so far was finding the right narrative, how we were saying before. We continue to test out our voice and product to make sure it is hitting the right notes.
Also, not taking on more that we can handle and building a community so that we have users we could talk to and ask what is impacting them right now.
Given all of this, what is one piece of advice you would give to someone just beginning their startup journey?
Ria: Create a running priorities list with your team!
Early on, there are so many different things to do and it’s easy to get caught up and feel overwhelmed. The reality is there will always be competing priorities, but creating a running list of most important tasks that get updated daily will really help things stay on track.
Kristine: I find that it’s hard to navigate the resources available for an entrepreneur because there is so much. So, my advice is to try things out and if they are not working, don’t feel bad about letting them go.
Ria: But also don’t be afraid to take the long path and don’t come out of that feeling that you’ve wasted time! More often than not, you’ll realize how valuable it was in terms of lessons learned.
Great tips! As you may know, we define Volition as ‘the will to do what you want and to get it done’. What is your volition?
Ria: Our volition is to help reduce the wealth gap.
Unlike the better known Gender Wage Gap, for every dollar a man has in net worth, the average woman has 32 cents and the average Black and Latina woman has only one cent.
Part of the gap is due to the fact that the financial services industry today treats men and women as if they are the same, but they aren’t.
Women tend to take sabbaticals for maternity leave, switch to part time work, and get paid less for equal work, but that’s not taken into account when building most financial plans – meaning that for most women, mainstream financial products don’t work.
We set out to make personal finance easier for women!
Kristine: One thing that we really want young women to understand is that the earlier they can start investing their money the better off they’re going to be.
Alright, we are 100% on board and we know that building a startup takes a village. So–what is your ask today? How can the Volition community support your vision?
Ria: We are looking for customers and beta testers in our target demographic: young women aged 20-30 early on in their careers in Canada and worldwide.
Also we’re looking for people potentially interested. We really want to grow our community and create a safe and positive space for women to speak about their money. We want to undo all the negative feelings many women tend to have regarding their finances.
We want them to feel comfortable, strong, and successful.
Is there anything else that you would like to share before we sign off?
Kristine: The Volition pitch event was great! The resources were really helpful and we really appreciated the prize package. After the event we’ve also connected with another pitcher, a fellow female-founded team.
Ria: Yes, we thought it was such a wonderful opportunity and we’re so thankful for that. It was genuinely a safe space to pitch and an inclusive environment.
As Kristine said, we’ve made friends and connections through the Volition community.
Thank you, Kristine and Ria! We appreciate your support. So, how can people best connect with you?
We are so excited about growing our community right now – sign up for our newsletter at www.untangle.money!
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