[00:00:02] Speaker A: Ramping up your business.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: The time is near.
[00:00:05] Speaker A: You've given it hard, now get it in gear. It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:20] Speaker C: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Law and I have my own startups and podcasts.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Welcome to Passage to Profit, the road to Entrepreneurship, where we talk with entrepreneurs and celebrities who tell their stories about their businesses and their solutions.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: So now we're on to our final presenter, Joshua Lee with Tribe Money and the way he describes it, one account, zero awkwardness. So welcome, Joshua. Tell us all about it.
[00:00:48] Speaker D: Awesome. Thank you for having me. So at Tri Money, what we are building is this shared financial management space where people can collect their money together and then from there they can manage those finances with their groups of all sizes. So this could be friends, families, roommates, relationships all the way up until clubs, as well as affinity groups like run clubs, pickleball clubs. Really a place where there's a lot of shared financial management needed, as well as a space to collect all your finances and really just be able to be able to transact and just see exactly how you're spending all your finances with your peers. And more than anything as well, just also ensuring that you can actually have control over those finances and also the members within it as well. And you know, outside of just that as well, you know, when people want to go out on trips with their friends, for instance, people oftentimes have to pull the money together, together, be able to budget what they want to actually use those shared finances for. And what our app really allows is for people to be able to first of all budget these expenses, which is very difficult to do today if you're trying to collect money with your friends. Oftentimes, you know what it would look like is that these funds really just end up in someone's personal account. It gets very mixed up as well, just because now you're having to manage the funds from the groups as well as for your own personal finances. And then you have to do all the tracking, all the Excel sheet, you know, bookkeeping, so that everybody knows exactly what those funds are going to be used for and how much was used as well. And it's just a very manual and cumbersome fragmented process. And ultimately what we were trying to provide is, you know, by having this one place where everyone can drop off the money, really also see as well what their spendings are. They can also budget better as well. You know, oftentimes in trips, people end up overspending without knowing exactly, you know, how much they're spending throughout the trip, because you don't really think about it as you're actually going through the activities, only to end up at the very end really having to sit down and, you know, understand and split the expenses and going, oh, man, I spent a lot more than I intended to.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: So how did you build your team to create this app and this company? What did you do?
[00:02:33] Speaker D: So, as a starting point, I myself worked at Zelle as a product manager for a little bit, just really trying to understand just consumer finance and data protection, just in data privacy as well, to be able to ensure that we could actually build this into the financial system. More so than that, we actually have some great mentors. So Hayley Kim, this person has been a personal mentor of mine and advisor to our startup. She had helped launch Google Pay, Samsung Pay, as well as Zelle as the head of marketing, as well as Alan Hui, who was our VP of Product at both Zelle and at PayPal as well, who really provides us all the insights and knowledge to really understand how to build a consumer product and really serve them from a financial perspective.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: So you made it a point to have people in your orbit that had experience in these types of businesses and they could help advise you on which directions to take.
[00:03:25] Speaker D: Yes, absolutely. You know, start when I was first starting, as I mentioned, I tried to figure out a lot of this stuff myself. And trying to build a financial app is very difficult. There's a lot of regulations and a lot of different compliance standards that you have to match up to. And it's not a very easy space to navigate without really having too much experience and understanding of really the complexities that lie in the legality and trying to build a financial application. And so really having those really figureheads and people who are more well versed in the space who knew how to navigate it as well, really did give us the confidence to know that not only were we building something that could be applicable, but also wouldn't have, you know, me land up in jail as well.
[00:03:59] Speaker C: Yeah, right.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: That's kind of a key intention. Right?
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Joshua, is there a voting function? Can you explain how that works?
[00:04:07] Speaker D: Yes, absolutely. So it's very simple. You create what we call tribes inside our application, which is essentially the shared bank account, and you invite your peers, friends, whoever it might be, and you set approval, people who can approve of certain spending. So people would then have to request out of the shared bank account when they want to actually pull money out from there. The approvers can then just, you know, make the decision whether or not this vote can pass. And you set those thresholds as you create these accounts. And also more than just that as well, you can also set certain permissions to ensure, you know, this person can actually request money, this person can spend the money. So you set all those really up in advance. And then, of course, as you actually use the app, you manage this together. If you add more people, you can also change the rules, change the number of people that have to vote, and essentially just manage it all as you spend together.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: And do you have people that are using this as a fundraising application as well?
[00:04:56] Speaker D: Yes. So it is actually one of the things that we are hoping to build out at the moment. We have not built out the capabilities for fundraising, mostly just because we have to integrate a payment processor to be able to actually allow for people to be able to just drop off money without downloading the app. So we are actually working on building that right now. We did just launch the app about a week ago, actually from today. And so as we continue to get users and, you know, understand their needs as well, we plan on building out really a lot more of the functionalities that could help serve different groups for their different needs and their finances.
[00:05:23] Speaker C: So what are you doing to market this?
[00:05:25] Speaker D: So right now, really, we're trying to try a few different strategies since we did just launch one of the ones. Mostly that we're trying to do from the consumer side is really focusing on working together with different branding and digital marketing agencies that will help us promote our product through, you know, different social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Meta. Just trying to see if we can get some visibility out of the starting point. Beyond that as well, we've started to do direct outreach with organizations that might have groups that might need to use this as, you know, just as an example, someone that we've wanted to have, and we've been having discussions with and still furthering discussions with, is the Washington Youth Soccer League. And just a firm that overheads all the youth soccer clubs that exist right there in the state of Washington. And really what we were hoping for with that is, you know, because our product can help the parents who have to collect all the finances for their kids, travel for the hotel fees, for the tournament fees, because our app can really help that procedure. We're really hoping that they would could establish a marketing partnership with us. And this is just one of a few different examples of these larger overhead or management organizations for groups that we are really trying to start our conversations.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: With at the moment to get over that first hump. That is where sometimes you have to take that deep breath, a few deep breaths, but that we see that as the first challenge, which is how do you get this out into the world in a way that people get it easily and say, oh, I need that.
[00:06:42] Speaker D: Yes, absolutely.
[00:06:43] Speaker C: What popped into my brain was the National Parent Teacher association because the schools, I mean, they're always getting money for everything. When my kids were little, the little field trip slip with the dollar bills, table 200. I mean, I really feel like that could be a good fit for you if they're receptive.
[00:07:02] Speaker D: Yes, absolutely. And I think that for us it's again, as you mentioned, Brian, it's for us really finding that first. I think that, you know, as people we've viewed by our financials very individualistically, but I think in reality there we have a lot of shared finances. Humans are very social as creatures and especially leaving that very isolationism era from, you know, people want to get together, people want to do things together. And unfortunately with wanting to do things together, it oftentimes requires finances. Although we do think things very singular transaction wise as far as, you know, trying to do our spendings, we do have a lot of shared finances where money comes together and we really do want to find that first, you know, one or two use cases that really help us, you know, be able to scale our product up and then eventually. Right. Just bring the visibility and just bring trust that we can also serve these groups and their needs for their shared financial management.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: You know, so I was just thinking if you could use the app for your investors. In other words, the investors are using the app to invest money.
[00:07:53] Speaker C: That's a good idea.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:07:55] Speaker D: Hopefully a one day goal. Yes.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: So what kind of protections do you have around the app? There's so much fraud out there. How can people feel like the money is going to be safe?
[00:08:04] Speaker D: As a starting point, we are actually backed by a financial institution through a banking as a service. So our back end financial institution is Crossover bank, who does do a lot of these compliance and regulatory checks with us. Prior to us even starting our beta testing, which was back in September, we had to go through a very stringent process of ensuring that at least from a financial perspective, we've upheld all the different compliance and regulatory standards just held by all the different bodies that regulate this space. Outside of that, of course, we also have a Partnership with Persona, which does a kyc, also better known as know your customer. It's actually this is just a better way to check and ensure that people, first of all, say who they are. As we know with AI as well, there's a lot of synthetic personalities and, you know, people impersonations happening out there. So just first of all checking that you are who you are. And as well as if you've been, you know, caught for, you know, fraud or scam before, you know, been noted as a bad actor, we keep you off of the platform. If you're on the OFAC list, you're also off the platform. And we partner with Plaid as well to do the bank authorization to really just ensure that, you know, we do double checks with the KYC and the bank authorization just to just ensure that we really know that this is the right person, who they are. And if they have had history of bad acting, they are removed from the platform. Of course, as we continue to grow the platform, we will also be building our own compliance and fraud engines to really ensure the safety of not only the money that's on the platform, but also all of the users who would be on our platform as well.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: Do you offer any kind of reimbursement if the app is hacked or anything like that?
[00:09:24] Speaker D: We're working very hard to make sure that that doesn't happen yet. Since we have just launched, I think we're at the scale where we will definitely be doing reimbursements. If those issues do happen, fingers crossed that that doesn't occur. But we will be continuing to build out measures to make sure that we do fight out any bad actors. And of course, if there are instances where a bad actor can abuse our platform, and more specifically the people using our platform, we do plan on remediating those issues, you know, at least by maybe refunding it as a starting point, but really more than anything else, trying to get ahead of it before it even gets started.
[00:09:53] Speaker C: What range of values can it take? Like, can you go up to a million dollars with it, or is it like capped at 10,000? I mean, because I would imagine that'd be a lot of money to handle.
[00:10:01] Speaker D: Yes. Right now, just from a singular transaction perspective, very similar to any other P2P app applications such as Venmo, PayPal, we do start off at the $2,500 limit to how much you can put in at a singular moment or take out as a singular moment. This is really just to fight money laundering as well. It's a huge issue in the financial space, something that we really worked on fighting over at Zelle and I'm sure at every fintech company that does payment processing as well too. But I think what we will start to understand better as we continue to develop the app is also how we can build trust scores for our users as well to see how we can start to increase that amount. Of course we will also be also building out capabilities for businesses to be on our application. So going through a whole kyb or not your business, which does open up the doors for much larger size transactions.
[00:10:42] Speaker C: Wow, that is awesome. How do people find you?
[00:10:44] Speaker D: Find us at Tribe Money. That is our website. You can also just search up Tribe Money Pools on Google. There was a whole trademarking thing that I'm sure you two really understand that made it a little bit hard to just acquire Tribe Money and so we are under Tribe Money Pools, so please find us there. We're also on the App Store as well as the Google Play Store, so you can type out Tribe Money Pools and our application is there. Excellent.
[00:11:03] Speaker C: Thank you. That was Joshua Lee.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing in 38 markets across the United States. In addition, Passage to Profit has also been recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank you to the P2P team, our producer Noah Fleishman and our program coordinator, Alicia Morrissey, and our studio assistant, Rishikeb Bussari. Look for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcasts, our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram X and on our YouTube channel. And remember, while the information on this program is believed to be correct, never take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first. Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You can find
[email protected] and contact us for a free consultation. Take care everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
