The amount in the bank account is very, very different than the budget. A startup should not be tracking its money on such a simple basis. Without categories (or envelopes) the amount of cash is pretty meaningless without knowing if is clear to spend.
Makes sense. We're starting with accessible (and push-based) information to complement founders' existing systems and then planning to build upon it in the future. Thanks for the feedback!
This is potentially enormously sensitive data that'd be very valuable to competitors etc. I'd want to see a much more extensive privacy policy than the current state of https://www.swayfinance.com/privacy, particularly as it's a free service in need of an eventual business model.
I'd add that this is all too common with data/analytics startups I've seen. I've seen instances where the first thing they asked you to do is link your Google Analytics account. No privacy/data security policy worth speaking of, no info on the team, nothing.
For anyone who deals with this data (analytics, financial, etc.) for their company, particularly if it isn't of the "two guys in a garage with no real revenue" variety, we take data super seriously. I could lose my job (or worse, get sued) if I was negligent in handing out sensitive company data in a way that put the company at risk (let alone actually caused monetary damage to the business).
A clear privacy policy, details on the team and information about where the HQ is located (so I can make sure they are in my legal jurisdiction should it ever come to that) are the absolute minimum IMHO.
Wow--didn't realize that. If that's the case that's a major issue for anyone considering building a product that transmits sensitive data on top of Slack's platform.
I'm not terribly keen on providing my actual login to my bank. Ie, adding Betterment asks me for my user/pass Betterment user login (they don't offer 2 factor) - something anyone could then use to login and manage my money there.
I see you're using plaid underneath to connect; so giving some assurance that plaid is handling the data flow and sway will not be storing usernames/passwords would be nice (if that is true).
Another thing you need to be clear about is that data is permanently removed when a user closes the account. "Your photos might stick around for years after you click delete" works for Facebook, but not for you.
Site feedback: the video at the top of your landing page only shows the output of the bot for 4-5 seconds. Let it linger a bit longer so I can see what you're offering.
Yep, could calculate things like invoices owing, draft invoices that haven't been sent yet, as well as calculating average monthly expenses so you know if everything's looking okay or not.
Also, hooking into Xero immediately makes it usable by companies in countries outside USA.
We made a Slackbot for startups to tell them some simple financial metrics (how much is in their bank account, and what their latest transactions in those accounts are). We're connecting to company accounts through Plaid (plaid.com) and sending them a financial 'digest' through Slack/email each morning.
As consumers we've been using a couple apps like Digit (digit.co) to track our personal finances but couldn't find a push-based version for companies. Logging into our company bank accounts to keep track of transactions has been pretty painful (online business banking UI is really hard to navigate) so hopefully this can make the process easier.
We want to eventually incorporate burn-rate to help founders stay on top of their company's money. Would love any feedback -- thanks!
I'm a founder and the guy in charge of the $$$. This sentence doesn't resonate for me: "Logging into our company bank accounts to keep track of transactions has been pretty painful (online business banking UI is really hard to navigate) so hopefully this can make the process easier."
If you've already tested your target customer segment and found that they find this to be "pretty painful", then you can conclude that I'm an outlier. If you have not already done customer discovery, I'd encourage you to check whether this is actually a pain point you can market to. I've found our bank's website to be pretty quick and easy to navigate.
I agree with the above. This seems like a "neat to have", but not a huge productivity enhancer.
I'm seeing more and more apps like this. It's telling me that a lot of the low-hanging fruit has been picked in this technology cycle and entrepreneurs are looking desperately for unoccupied niches to fill.
We've used a couple banks ourselves and have talked to people using other ones, we've found them pretty hard to navigate. Some people are using consumer bank accounts at the early stage so it might be easier to use.
Appreciate the feedback, we'll keep testing around this.
We're using Plaid to connect to accounts so we're not storing any credentials ourselves. For security when we pull the info to give to people in the digest each morning we're not persisting it anywhere.
Interesting point about the CSV (giving us information without bank access); a problem with that though is it defeats the 'push' based idea of giving people information without them having to do any work. Atleast on the consumer side we've found that many people don't keep track of their money because it's too much effort to log in and manually get that information.
Is this a US thing? Getting programmatic access to my UK bank accounts is still a nightmare. I must use a manual download process involving two factor auth each time.
A company exists that scrapes the bank sites of all major banks but obv cannot defeat two factor auth so for my accounts package I used to give them my username and then have to enter the two factor each time anyway.
I conclude its too dangerous to give other companies my RW login details
Basically programmatic access to my accounts - forget it. Differentiated access (RO, RW, fine grained), don't make me laugh.
Is this just UK? Is there a better bank Inshoukd move to?