Startup Spotlight #66: Quo Finance

Quo Finance is democratizing financial wellness.

Dec 15, 2020

Author’s Note: I apologize again for this coming out so late today, and for missing last Friday’s post. It’s been a really hectic and challenging time at my full-time job (software engineering at an aerospace firm), so I’ve had to give 100% focus to that for the past 2-3 weeks. Thank you all for your patience and for sticking with me and F2F so far. I’m thankful to have such a loyal readership.

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I got the chance to speak with Tucker Haas and Neel Yerneni, co-founders of Quo, about what they working on at their startup, and any advice they have for emerging entrepreneurs.

Quo was founded two years ago by Yerneni and Haas who were students at Stanford at the time. They both had a strong passion for using technology to shape financial services. Neel had previously worked at N26 where he built multiple critical internal systems and learned a lot about scaling a consumer fintech company. Tucker had experience with two previous ventures, and after exiting one of them, decided to pursue his true passion in reshaping financial services having grown up in a low-income household.

When Tucker and Neel met, they had very strong beliefs about the fintech space, namely that companies like neobanks were only scratching the surface of what was possible. They saw potential in building whole new products and business models that could materially improve people’s lives. They saw even more potential specifically in consumer credit where businesses were built on information asymmetry and deceptive practices. So they built Quo to be a more sustainable way for those who are typically exploited by more predatory products, to feel on top of their financial life, and achieve peace of mind.

Startup Spotlight: Quo

Quo cofounders (from left to right): Tucker Haas and Neel Yerneni.

Problem: 60% of Americans experience a serious financial shock every year and are forced to borrow in a pinch. Current emergency options are predatory and expensive and don’t actually provide any additional support to help people get back on track as they are fundamentally not incentivized to do so.

Market: Total Addressable Market: 72% of Americans don’t have 6 months of expenses saved, (i.e. likely to borrow during an emergency). Serviceable Addressable Market: 57% of Americans are and feel financially insecure.

Solution: Americans need a sustainable way to handle financial emergencies, so we designed a financial wellness membership.

Team: Neel graduated from Stanford with a BS and MS in Computer Science in 4 years with a focus on AI and decision theory, while previously working at N26 and Facebook. Tucker graduated with a BS in computer science from Stanford as well while previously working at Facebook and having exited as a lead engineer in a medtech startup.

Recent Success:

Yerneni and Tucker: Our engineering and design efforts have been exceptional. Both Tucker and I wear a lot of hats, but we’re very fortunate to have found such amazing talent. As a result, we’ve built our product on an extremely modern tech stack with highly efficient development— enabling a very fast, beautiful, and crisp experience for the end-user. It is not often seen in many personal finance apps.

Recent Struggle:

Yerneni and Tucker: It’s challenging to walk the line between pushing forward cutting edge technology while also remaining flexible and considerate of some of the traditional infrastructure that the finance industry operates on. There are so many fragmented systems that support financial institutions that each get developed at different rates. We have to remain cognizant of that and operate as efficiently as we can while bridging many different forms of technology.

Founder Advice:

Yerneni and Tucker: People are always going to be critical, especially investors. Listen to the critics who are also optimists and are able to give you constructive feedback. It’s easy to be a critic; it’s harder to be a critic with real solutions.

Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:

Yerneni and Tucker: Here are three founders you should check out next!

Sean Strong, Founder of GroveXR: Grove does live VR management for teachers, trainers, and groups.
Chetan Rane, Founder of Omni: Omni’s mission is to make the everyday employee omniscient by unlocking the collective, up-to-date knowledge of an organization.
Jessica Ouyang, Founder of Ditto: Ditto allows teams to manage their copy from design to production with a single source of truth.

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