Matt Watson
@_M_Watson
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Founder & CEO @useorigin - Making Money Easy Previously Founder @ Indio (acq)
Boston
Joined September 2020
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Pinned Tweet
Welcome to the future of wealth management.
Today
@useorigin
is expanding far beyond our roots in spending & budgeting. We’re bringing complete wealth management to everyone.
We’re rolling out new tools to deliver the only platform you need to actively build wealth, including a
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AI & the future of fintech.
In the near future, everyone will have their own AI personal wealth manager. We’re working on three big opportunities
@useorigin
that are being unlocked by AI in financial services:
1) Making expert advice widely accessible
Getting expert, tailored
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The
#1
reason why people use Origin:
Managing their spending.
When Mint shut down in March, we saw countless Mint users signing up for Origin, seeking out an alternative.
Our product team wanted to understand the needs of our members, so we sat down with countless individuals,
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1/ I’m thrilled to announce that
@useorigin
has raised $56 million in Series B funding, led by
@dickc
’s and
@adambain
’s
@01Advisors
,
@lachygroom
, and General Catalyst (
@gcvp
), with participation from existing investors
@foundersfund
,
@felicis
, and
@AbstractVC
.
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A lot of fundraising advice comes from VCs. Some of it is good, but it misses the founder perspective.
So here’s my playbook for founders looking to raise for the first time:
(This comes from 6+ fundraises and over $100MM in capital raised directly and a few more hundred
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The next personal finance app doesn't look like
@mint
,
@Wealthfront
or
@turbotax
. It looks like all of them in one.
(1/3)
Most people think estate planning is for the ultra-rich, but it doesn't have to be. We built a modern, affordable way to create a trust or will within our all-in-one money management platform.
Excited to share w/
@Nasdaq
that estate planning is live on Origin nationwide!
🧵 1/6
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Excited to share that
@useorigin
&
@TheMint_vc
are hosting a Fireside Chat + Happy Hour in SF on September 10!
@pitdesi
and I are pumped to share more about what we're working on and bring folks together to connect and collaborate.
RSVP here:
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"it's aesthetic AF" & "this app saved my wallet"
We're bringing a new level of craftsmanship to personal finances at
@useorigin
. Appreciate the write up
@jivetich
!
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5.8% APY: A market-leading promotional rate*
You read that right. Refer a friend and get an additional month at our boosted rate.
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It’s a brutal job market in tech right now.
We’re receiving 5-10x as many applications for roles as we were during the ’21 peak (often times more than 1,000x applications per opening).
The first thing you need to do as a candidate is stand out. Everyone sends their resume. Do
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When the entire product team goes founder mode 🚀🚀
Thanks for checking us out
@PointChaser
!
I tried out eight finance apps and settled on
@useorigin
. I’m basically an 80 year-old grandma, with no patience for technology unless it’s super intuitive, pretty and functional. Origin checks all the boxes and offers a 30-day free trial (which is generous than most).
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The future of wealth management is here, and it’s fueled by AI
We revamped Sidekick, our AI-driven financial guide. Our AI guidance has always been one of our most-loved features, and now it’s even more action-oriented and powerful.
Sidekick now analyzes your portfolio,
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Finally, we’re live on
@producthunt
.
We’d love your support–come learn more about our launch and check us out.
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The best advice I got as a first-time founder was from
@mikesigal
&
@pitdesi
when we were going through 500 startups.
The advice was straightforward - spend as much time as possible with your customers.
When in doubt, go and spend more time with your customers.
Its laughably
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See you tomorrow!
We still have a few tickets up for grabs.
RSVP:
Bring your questions for me and
@pitdesi
Excited to share that
@useorigin
&
@TheMint_vc
are hosting a Fireside Chat + Happy Hour in SF on September 10!
@pitdesi
and I are pumped to share more about what we're working on and bring folks together to connect and collaborate.
RSVP here:
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Real-time notifications to make managing your money easy.
Get alerts for spending spikes, when you’re nearing your budget, or when there’s significant movement in your portfolio. All to help you make smarter, more informed money decisions on the go.
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There’s something oddly exciting about opening an investment account on your own platform
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A refreshed look and feel that brings a new level of craftsmanship and simplicity to managing money.
From a refined UI to a cohesive brand identity to stunning 3D illustrations— we wanted to make managing money simple and delightful.
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Confirmed: I'm roughly 10000x more effective working with my team IRL.
Awesome few days in SD with the
@useorigin
squad
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We are so back 🚀
10 term sheets. Love to see it.
*this founder is a stud, so not surprised to see it!
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Hiring great people is the single best (and most important) thing you can do for your company. Ultimately, people *are* the company, so take your time and be intentional as you scale.
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I’m a second-time founder.
My first company was acquired roughly 5 years ago.
Since then, I’ve been heads down working on my second company,
@useorigin
.
Without a doubt, one of the most common questions I get from friends, family, and fellow founders, is why?
Why build
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We just launched our referral program.
3 learnings:
1/ The retention of referred members is insane. Social proof/trust is the biggest hurdle in consumer products. You immediately overcome this through a referral.
2/ Optimize the program for what you are looking for. If you
Love Origin? Share the app with your friends. The more you refer, the more you earn.
• Earn $25 in credit for every friend you refer, once they become a subscriber.
• Plus, get one month of boosted APY.
Who will you refer first? Tag them below 📷
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So pumped to see
@useorigin
top
@Forbes
' list of best budgeting apps in '24 (6 months after we launched DTC).
"By integrating tax filing, estate planning, budgeting, and investment management into one app, Origin eliminates the need for multiple financial tools"
^^ couldn't
Thrilled that
@Forbes
has selected Origin as the best budgeting app for 2024, calling us a “trailblazer” offering a “comprehensive approach to financial management.”
Check out the comparison and see why Origin comes out on top:
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After months of planning, I’m thrilled to announce the launch of the Origin Diversity Program. We’ll be awarding scholarships to aspiring financial planners from diverse backgrounds, and helping high school students learn about personal finance.
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And finally, a massive shoutout to the
@useorigin
team for their incredible, hard work.
For the first time, wealth management is something that everyone can have.
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Last week, we announced new features to help our members build their wealth in a single platform.
One of my favorites is our AI-driven portfolio analysis. This is analysis you’d normally pay an advisor significant amounts of money to help with.
Our AI will help you:
-
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“What is the end goal for Origin? Where do you see all of this in 10 years?”
It's the most common question I get from candidates at Origin and here’s what I share:
At Origin, we’re giving every person the opportunity to have their own family office.
Today, these services are
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See disclaimers and details on the cash account promotional rate. Full terms and conditions apply:
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* Both my wife (
@AFriedensohn
) and I run VC funded startups
* Our house burned down in '22 (still rebuilding)
* We have a 20 month old and a -1 month old
AMA 🤣🫡
haven't lost any founders to drugs.
I have lost (or nearly lost) several to house renovations gone terribly wrong that are way over budget and behind schedule.
building a biz is hard. renovating a house is a nightmare.
both create big liquidity issues.
so...don't do both
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We will not stop at
@useorigin
until everyone has the tools to achieve financial success.
We’re taking wealth management from something the elite have and bringing it to everyone.
Right now there’s a $250k wealth requirement that blocks millions of households from achieving
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The intersection of AI x Investing is constantly on my mind as a fintech founder.
I’ve recently been thinking about how Robo Advisors were the start of bringing wealth management tools to the masses.
But the issue was the fact that traditional robo advisors aren’t as
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5/ We already help thousands of employees achieve their financial goals, and this capital will enable Origin to expand its enterprise-grade products to support employees on a global scale.
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Happy 4th of July 🇺🇲
I hope that you enjoy this time with your family, friends, and loved ones.
The
@useorigin
team is spending the rest of the week off, resting, relaxing, and recharging.
Grateful for all of the hard work and progress the team has made over the past 6 months.
Fun fact about Origin: We ship.
🧵 on some of our favorite Q2 releases
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3/ Financial stress negatively impacts most aspects of life—including relationships, family, work, and health. Employers realize that by investing in employees’ financial well-being, they can solve a host of these issues.
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Story time about building my first company, Indio (where we delivered 100x cash returns to our early investors).
🧵
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10. How much are you trying to raise?
This is a question that trips people up. I’ve found the best way to articulate this is by saying the following, “We’d like to raise enough to hit X milestone of ARR without giving up more than 20% of the business”. You’ve said absolutely
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4/ Origin helps companies solve this problem. Our mission is simple—we want to improve the financial well-being of every employee, no matter their income or net worth.
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Honored to be featured alongside some incredible people who are pushing the personal finance industry forward.
It was also nice to read the advice all of the dads passed on to them –– and the clear impact it had on their lives.
As for me, I learned about saving, investing and
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I’ve been running startups for 10 years and have raised over $100MM for two companies I founded.
One thing that isn’t discussed enough is the huge mismatch between VC attention span and the lifespan of a company. Why is that important? Because at some point almost all startups
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@useorigin
🤝 The Hartford
Excited to take the covers off of this one. We’re now the financial wellness partner to 1 in 9 working Americans through our relationship with The Hartford
We’re excited to be bringing high-quality financial planning tools and resources to
@TheHartford
’s employer customers!
Learn more:
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I don’t think I’ve made a bad hire yet when selecting for potential over experience (yes, these can co-exist).
What I’m looking for (in order):
1) Intellectual curiosity
2) Grit
3) Self starter
Can’t miss if someone has these three attributes.
* maybe this changes for hard
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1. WAIT.
Don’t go out too early. A common mistake that I see from founders is wanting to get out there and test the market early, thinking they might get lucky.
This won’t work. Fundraising is formulaic - you either got it or you don’t. If you have 50% of what you need to be
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2/ Money is hard. Since COVID-19 began, 63% of employees reported financial stress has increased, and more than 80% want advice or validation for their financial decisions.
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Public speaking is a critical part of being a founder. There’s just no way around it - all hands, events, VC pitches, sales pitches, press.
If you start a company you’ll need to get comfortable putting yourself out there. I hated public speaking for the longest time (still
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While the underlying tech is impressive, the look and feel of this product is what "wows". The interactions, the voice. No notes.
The best companies find a way to make common things feel uncommon through 10x UX/UI. Apple is the GOAT here. OpenAI running the same playbook.
OpenAI has just demonstrated its new GPT-4o model doing real-time translations 🤯
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We’re going to see a significant shift in the wealth management industry as the price of advice collapses and fintech products commoditize.
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One of the most common questions I get from founders:
How did we get initial traction when we first launched
@useorigin
?
Getting traction when launching any product can be tough, but we found the biggest success when we sought out the biggest challenges our customers had.
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@DavidSacks
FOMC cares about softly landing the plane from an academic legacy perspective, not about Biden
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4. Pack ‘em in.
Now that you’ve refined the pitch and nailed your business pitfalls, you’re ready to go broad.
The goal is a 5-10 day sprint of 3-5 VC meetings per day. Momentum is your friend and right now the only way you can create momentum is by packing meetings.
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Awesome write up on
@useorigin
from one of our users.
"There is so much that can be done in the app from investing, to net worth tracking, equity tracking, budgeting, taxes, and much more. It is capable of doing really whatever you want when it comes to finances, making it feel
The ability to have a family office on your phone is getting more realistic.
Wrote some thoughts on the leader here,
@useorigin
.
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Starting your own company is a faster and more rewarding way to build wealth than buying BTC at 50k.
Few understand this 😂😂
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@heysamir_
@mercury
@M1Finance
@RobinhoodApp
@public
@robinhood
@AngelList
@joinrepublic
Biased as the founder but
@useorigin
for spend tracking, estate planning, tax filing and financial planning
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8. Control the Narrative: Always use a deck when presenting.
Some investors will get into a meeting and start asking questions or discussing the business conversationally. Maybe the meeting is taking place at a coffee shop and it feels odd to bring out a laptop. Do it anyways.
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1/
Super impressed by what
@ankurnagpal
is building at
@carryhq_
. 2x founder, Impressive product, building quickly and publicly, and excited about their OOO summit.
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Origin 🤝 Everyone
Today at
@useorigin
we're taking a massive step towards bringing wealth management to the masses. After years of offering financial wellness to employees, we’re launching our product to everyone, everywhere.
Thanks to
@mint
for the nudge :).
Budgeting apps frantically chasing Mint users.
Meanwhile at Origin, we have all their features PLUS:
- Dedicated financial planners
- Investing with no advisory fees
- AI powered guidance
- Tax filing
The best part? Get 3 months free. Now we’re talking.
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Two things everyone wants in a job -- a rocketship and a team that is actually doing good in the world. Why not both?
The CEOs not bad either 😂😂
@AFriedensohn
cc:👀
@jinen
We are excited to announce our $51 million Series C investment round led by
@BatteryVentures
. This financing will help us scale our platform and make comprehensive mental health resources accessible to many more companies and employees!
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Good take from
@sheel
who knows this space as well as anyone.
There have been a few meaningful exits in this category that provide good learnings to companies building today and help to shape our re-bundling/all-in-one strategy at
@useorigin
Heard of a few people building a new version of
@mint
now that Intuit shut it down. I wouldn't recommend it if you want to build a venture-scale business.
There aren't that many people who want to actively manage their finances; startup graveyard is littered with PFM's.
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6. Don’t send materials ahead of your meeting.
Hot take. Many VCs will ask for a deck ahead of time. I recommend not sending any materials beyond a 1-pager.
Why? Because you don’t want the investor to come into the meeting with a preconceived notion about the business.
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I see a lot of the VC/Founder community misunderstand PMF.
It’s never a one-and-done type of thing.
It’s evolving every day and changes for companies as they grow from 1MM to 10MM to 100MM
Sometimes you have it.
Sometimes you don’t.
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5. “What’s your timeline?”
This is a common question you’ll get from every VC. They ask it to understand how quickly they need to move and how much momentum you have.
Without nailing Step 4, you’ll be left to answer with a specific time frame. Time frames suck because you don’t
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Benefit of being on the west coast: the "tech rout of '21" is over by the time you've made a cup of coffee
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Something I wish was discussed more often...
The inverse relationship between amount of time spent solving customer problems vs. amount of time spent fundraising.
Solving customer problems is the only thing that matters. Everything else will follow.
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Stoked for
@psjeffrey
- he’s one to watch!
He was
@AFriedensohn
’s right hand as they scaled
@modernhealthco
to well over 9 figures in revenue.
Going to crush it with
@getshayapp
!
Today, I’m thrilled to announce the launch of
@getshayapp
, a platform that supports self-represented homebuyers in purchasing a home without a real estate agent, allowing them to save tens of thousands of dollars in commission fees.
Today also coincides with the implementation
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7. Don’t send materials after the meeting.
Another spicy and counterintuitive take:
Every investor will ask you to send the materials you presented. This sounds like a positive signal of interest, but it’s not. The investor is doing this to be polite.
A good way to see if
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Periodic reminder: you aren’t going to beat the market stock picking as an individual investor. DCA the index and hit the beach
Through 2022, here are the stats for actively managed large cap equity funds
Over three years, 74.3% of actively managed funds trailed the index
Over
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2/
Love the fintech deep dives and updates from
@sytaylor
’s and his Fintech Brainfood newsletter. Really deep expertise.
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2. Tackle the Risks in Your Business Head-On.
We all know the strengths of our businesses, but in my experience, founders overplay their strengths and try to brush over the obvious business risks.
VCs often make a decision to pass because they can’t get comfortable with a
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A lot of people look down on consulting/banking talent in tech.
Say what you will about working on Wall Street, but I wouldn’t trade the first few years of my career there for anything.
And the people we hire from WS/Consulting have been unbelievable.
The training and
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So proud of the
@useorigin
team.
I’m convinced we have the fastest product team in fintech right now.
We’ve been heads down cranking product and are about to drop some amazing new features in early September.
Stay tuned!
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3. Throwaways.
Once you nail the requisites to start fundraising, it’s time to pressure test the pitch.
I recommend doing this with 3-5 VCs that aren’t your top targets. You need to get your pitch in front of the VC brain to understand what pushback and hesitations they’ll have
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3) Be Authentic + Embrace Imperfection:
Watch Elon Musk speak and you’ll see that he stumbles, mutters, uses filler words etc. but he is highly effective and encapsulating because of how authentic he is.
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3/
Have known
@pitdesi
since he was the 1st money into my first company. Best combo of general knowledge, having fun, and hot takes on all the latest fintech products
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Second was Bruce Callendar, an SF native who had done incredibly well building his own traditional insurance agency (Sweet and Baker) in downtown SF on 2nd Street.
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When:
* You gift mom some startup stock
* She approves of the latest feature
(Everyone should gift mom + dad some stock. They got you there!)
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We didn’t know anything about digital marketing so our friend
@josh_nussbaum
at Compound Ventures urged us to pursue the enablement/Vertical SaaS path, similar to what
@courtstarr
was building at Ease. We also didn’t know anything about insurance but that’s a story for another
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Almost every management issue comes down to communication, especially in a remote/hybrid environment.
You can’t have communication without trust. When you have low trust and low communication, people get scared to talk about failure. They get frustrated. Issues get hidden. It’s
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11. What’s the price?
This is similarly a tough question and the only right answer is that you don’t know (because you don’t!).
Your job as a founder is to present your company in the best way possible and to let the market set the price. I’ve found a strong answer here is
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@drmillybarker
We do all of this at
@useorigin
. Track everything, file taxes, create trust + will, invest. You can invite your partner as well
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@chrismaconi
@bchesky
Everyone. The press. Investors. Employees.
Having seen it first hand - it's a totally different (unfair) standard.
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12. Don’t be overly price sensitive
A common thing that I see with early-stage founders is being overly price sensitive.
The reality is it doesn’t really matter what the price of your company is within a reasonable range. It’s going to work or it's not. You’ll own 18% or 20%
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From there, we’d go back to the office, design a prototype to fix a process that we saw and then go to each of their offices (Sweet & Baker, G2 and ABD).
They’d give us feedback and we’d go take another turn and soon enough we had a product that our first three customers
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@SkyyTheeGuy
Check us out at
@useorigin
. We're a one stop shop for budgeting, investing, tax filing, estate planning and financial planning
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These folks dove in and invited us into their businesses.
We would go daily/weekly to sit with them and literally watch the way that they worked.
We’d sit behind their chairs and watch the programs they used, how they moved between them, when they used paper/pen/fax instead of
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Our pitch to these three was simple - teach us the worst parts of running an insurance agency and we’ll build a product that fixes them for you.
We wanted to know the hardest parts about their job, specifically the sloppy/messy workflows that they were struggling with.
Where
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And finally we connected with the Goldman brothers who founded G2 Insurance, another local brokerage in the City.
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5) When you feel anxious, think excitement and gratitude.
How cool is it that you are going to speak in front of your company/board/the press? What an honor!
Be proud of what you did to put you in a position to share your story.
Channel that energy into being excited about
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The first was
@KoehnGarret
, an active angel investor and insurance exec.
Garret plugged us into the insurance ecosystem in SF and was our industry and product guide as we got things going.
He helped make sure we were chatting with the right folks who could help us design and
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At the time,
@Mike_Furlong30
and I had decided to start an insurance business.
We had met working at Citigroup in NYC out of college and both found our way out to SF and reconnected. He was exiting his first startup and I had been working to get something off the ground.
There
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Then we got in touch with Brett Rineck, CIO/CTO at ABD (now Newfront), a large regional brokerage firm HQ’d in downtown SF.
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The most underrated feature of SF.
The community is bound by the desire to build which spans across all levels of success/wealth. Having built on boat the east and west coast, this is always the thing I miss most about SF
I love the lack of generational wealth in SF.
In NYC/LA, even if someone's parents aren't paying their rent, their future is "set" no matter what happens with their startup.
SF is full of hustlers, with no backup plan. The difference in hunger and ambition is real.
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Appreciate the high praise
@derekflanz
!
I recently signed up for Origin (
@useorigin
) for spend tracking, AI-driven guidance, and some investing. Basically Monarch/Mint + Kubera put together in a beautiful, intuitive design. Very impressed so far.
If curious, use my referral link below to get one month free, 25% off
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Let’s talk about financial advisors.
Does everyone need one? Are they helpful? When should people consider getting one?
Here’s my take:
Financial advisors provide instrumental value in a couple of scenarios.
Here are three scenarios where you might consider working with one:
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The ultimate it ain’t over til it’s over
Noah Lyles was in SEVENTH place through 50m 😱
10m: 1.95s (last place)
20m: 2.98s (last)
30m: 3.90s (last)
40m: 4.76s (last)
50m: 5.61s (7th)
60m: 6.44s (3rd)
70m: 7.26s (3rd)
80m: 8.09s (3rd)
90m: 8.93s (2nd)
100m: 9.784 (1st)
WHAT A RACE FOR THE AMERICAN 🇺🇸
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