Ep.18 - Founder insights into building a brand designed for the needs and tastes of Gen Z

0:04Today, I'm talking to two people, Annam Lakhani and Eve Halimi, the founders of Alinea Invest, an AI powered investing app revolutionising how the next generation of wealth. wealth by transforming investing into an accessible community driven experience um they're amazing uh they uh have both been recognized as one of forbes's 30 under 30 um they've dabbled in finance they've also created something that uh oh my god i got there completely wrong sorry i'm gonna do this one again. Sorry, Shimmy. All right. Today, I'm talking with Anam Lapkhani and Eve Halimi, the founders of Alinea Invest, an AI-powered investing app revolutionizing how the next generation builds wealth by transforming investing into an accessible, community-driven experience.

1:07Anam and Eve both had backgrounds in finance, but decided to create Alinea while students at Columbia after noticing that many peers were intimidated when it comes to investing. Alinea has grown fast and is backed by people like Play Ventures, Y Combinator, among others, and both women have been recognized as one of Forbes' 30 under 30. Hi. Hello, both of you. Thank you so much for joining me. How are you doing today? good we're excited to be here thank you for having us i know i'm so uh i actually can't remember how uh how i first met you but i've been watching your uh evolution and it's it's just amazing what you've built um for anyone that hasn't heard of alinea can you give us a quick elevator pitch about what it is and what makes it different.

2:06Go ahead. So we are the first AI-powered wealth management tool on the market. It's an app that you can find on the App Store, and it's targeting Gen Zs. So we have over 1.4 million users on the app today, primarily Gen Zs and primarily women are using it to have wealth management services and also to be able to invest in the stock market. It's amazing. And I'm kind of curious, can you talk a little bit about, yeah, your journey to creating this app? I mean, you started really young. Like what triggered it? What gave you the confidence to actually build this thing? Yeah, definitely. I think we both interned on Wall Street and we saw how conversations around money and investing are just limited to a certain group of people.

3:06Especially saw amongst our friends these conversations were not happening, which is so frustrating because we all work so hard to get a good job. But if you don't really know how to put your money to work, you can't really build a wealth out of time. So we found that to be incredibly frustrating and we wanted to bring people who were on the fringes of these conversation into the mainstream with investing. And so we set out to build a linea and fun fact, we started it as a college class project. amazing what um yeah I mean it it's pretty unusual to start something uh that moves into from kind of class project through to real life um can you talk about that process like when did you actually realize it was something that you were going to pursue beyond class yeah we could We couldn't stop thinking about it post-cust.

4:04So we were always, I mean, Anam was working in investment banking at the time. I was working in a growth stage startup. And we were talking about it on the phone after work. We were texting all the time about it. We were meeting up on the weekends, working on this idea to really bring Alinea to life. And it was when we got into Y Combinator, actually, that we kind of took the first step into building out the application and building out the company. And that was in 2021. So that was when it became real, the Y Combinator, going through that experience. And then talk to me about what both of you do.

4:46One of you is more product, one of you is more growth. How do you, is it just by chance you happen to be focused on different kind of skill sets or that was part of how it came together? Yeah, so Eve and I have always been very aligned on the vision and we both bring like complementary skill sets. So while I was doing investment banking, Eve was working at a growth state startup and really getting that startup experience. And so, yeah, I focus on product. Eve focuses on growth. And as most of the world's successful companies do, we try to tie those two together really well and make sure one feeds into the other yeah I feel like um you're very you're a very close pair were you friends beforehand like properly friends or you came together and I asked you to be my college my partner for this project I just thought I'm like do you want to be my partner um you could have chosen to do it alone or do it with um a partner in class and I'm glad I did that.

5:53It's amazing. I mean, it kind of shows the kind of serendipity of how things work, doesn't it? Yeah. Every time I see you, you seem like, you know, so close and so always together. What's your secret for always getting on? Do you, you know, how, how do you think this has worked you know it's like with any relationships i think even with like finding a significant other like when it clicks it just clicks and i think that that's that's the relationship we had from the beginning it just clicked like we we were always we were always complimentary and working well together and just it just worked naturally and And I think that that was the beauty of how it started and how it's still going.

6:44I think we're both like, I'll say, let's do this. And Eve will be like, yes, let's do it. And then Eve will say something. I'll be like, yes. And I think we've just continued to enable each other to get to this point. That's pretty good. Yeah, I mean, I think that's quite unusual to fall into something that just starts to work and keeps building. I spoke to a lot of founders that have had partnership issues. um what uh do you think there's what I mean like again I'm always uh as someone that is old um I'm always like just so uh blown away by people that have uh started you know done something so ambitious uh so young um is it what what do you think in your upbringing or in who you are has made you kind of entrepreneurial yeah you why don't you go okay i think a good skill set that we both have is that we're always willing to take a risk like we we don't like the traditional path we from the beginning and i'm with during covid was like let's put our jobs apply to yc and and kind of see where life takes us and i was like let's do it you know we've always been big risk takers and um and that's yeah that's why we've been able to get to this point today is because we take risks and uh and we're yeah you you can't really get to this that's doing this without uh being able to to risk everything yeah um i think that's obviously an important thing um and then in terms of more practical stuff what what were the kind of key milestones that helped you take it from an idea from going through Y Combinator into uh you know starting the business pub there yeah I'll say I think the most important thing is really understanding the problem and who you're building for and luckily enough we had experienced the problem and we were building for us selfishly right like this is a product we wish we had uh when we had graduated college or gotten our first paycheck from our internship.

8:56And so what we were really good at is just understanding our market. We had spoken to thousands of people and conducted thousands of customer interviews before we even built out the app. And building a company sounds really tricky, but at its core, especially for a tech startup, you're hoping to add value or solve a problem that exists in the real world. And for us this was such an overlooked problem um that is so significant and impactful right like financial health to this day there is no it is it is getting more and more complex as we get more technology as we get more information and so I think what we really knew well was our audience and the problem that we had to solve yeah so the kind of gens built by Gen Z for Gen Z um and so how did you do I mean a really silly question but how did you do thousands of uh interviews before before start yeah so luckily enough since we started as a college class project like one of the little requirements was like go go like talk to to people see if this problem exists so we started and very naturally started talking to all of our friends I was like hey do you invest in the stock market and they're like no I'm freaked out by it I was like okay well like what freaks you out And then we went all across our campus, spoke to people of like all ages and backgrounds and just found the same story over and over again, especially with females, right?

10:28It's the same story. It's like I want to invest. I'm scared. I don't know how to start. Or whether if you're a child of immigrants and you're like, hey, this was the stock market was considered gambling in my household, but I know I have to do this. How do I start? um so we just kept hearing the same story over and over again and we're like oh wait this is a recurring problem and we really want to build a solution for this yeah um yeah interesting um so the same obstacles coming up um people being scared not knowing what to do um and obviously you've created this, you know, community platform with education.

11:10It's guided with personalized strategies. What else was important to you to actually create a product that served this consumer and was different from, you know, things like Robinhood or other kind of more general? yeah it actually came again from a user pain point which was i don't know how to get started i don't know how much to invest and so what's different with us is the onboarding is very well thought through we spent over a year of thinking and and building the onboarding of the app and when you download the alinea app you have our ai alley which is our ai coach that guides you and and asks you through questions about yourself and then we'll personalize an investing strategy based on what your risk tolerance is, where you live, what your age is, what city you live in, et cetera.

12:03And then we'll also recommend an amount that you should be investing every month. So we have a handheld onboarding that feels like you have a personal WAP advisor guiding you through making your first investment. And when we unlocked that, basically, our conversion triples and we found a willingness to pay for our services. And so the onboarding was really critical to making Alinea successful. and how do you think you know this gen z or younger think about money differently from previous generations yeah i think they are way more knowledgeable and aware i think if you if we were building this 20 years ago um there was there was the challenge of convincing people that investing is important especially young people and I think after everything that happened with GameStop and news cycles and and social media what the younger generation knows is they have to take charge of their finances early on in life and so it is something that Gen Z knows they have to do the question is how do I start where do I start how much do I start with yeah um and do you do I I I know that I feel like your, you know, how you market, how you think about the product also kind of takes into account your users' lifestyles and aspirations.

13:30Can you talk a little bit about how you think about your users' aspirations and desires and, you know, the whys behind why they invest? Yeah. So one thing that I think even while we were doing this as a class project, what we were really excited about is building a brand around investing and money. That really feels authentic. That is exciting. That's modern because we didn't really see that. Right. When you look at any of the traditional banks, like they're great, they're trustworthy, but there's no fun brand around it. And so investing is scary because, first of all, it's boring and it's technical and it's complex.

14:12And it's like, well, what if we just flip this on its head and say, this is fun. This is aspirational. This fits in with your lifestyle. And that's what really excites us even to this day is redefining what investing means. And actually, tangent, but the word Alinea means a new chapter. And so for us, Alinea Invest is a new chapter in investing. Yeah. Yeah. And I think in our marketing, we also just we want to use a lot of trends. So we're making it relevant by saying, like, hey, girl math is girl math free written is etc. And then we're also selling a lifestyle. So like, do you want to retire a millionaire?

14:50Do you these are the steps that you need to do when you're younger? This is how you should be investing every month. and so we make it much more applicable to the lifestyle and the goals that they want to have instead of just focusing on product features. Yeah, so speaking Gen Z, very social first. Just out of interest, as I'm a strategist, do you have like a brand strategy, like a framework? It's written down, codified. do you have like a you know what your north star is or your positioning um no but i think well there's nothing that formal but like we really lean into like vibes for lack of better word like you're vibe coding and i think vibe marketing is is very adjacent so it's like okay let's put something out there what's resonating what's the vibe of this let's let's lean into it right and so yeah i don't think a lot of other consumer fintech brands are focusing on like the vibes of their marketing it's usually all very technical like hey we're gonna give you a thousand dollars or we're gonna do this so for us it's it's really important that people feel a sense of community and authenticity and on the point of vibes one of our best ads right now running on meta is a tweet basically from a gen c customer that's saying i toss in a hundred dollars a week into this app it's a stupid easy app it's like wording like that that's very like vibey and relatable to this generation that that really works yeah do you find that you have to um kind of think about how to also balance expertise or trust or or you don't have to think about that at all people trust you because it it's there you you have returns you have testimonials like do you have to think about that or you or it's mainly vibes?

16:49Well, people trust us because we have over 30 ,000 ratings on the App Store with a 4.8 rating. So we have one of the highest ratings on the App Store compared to other fintechs. They know that we have over a million downloads at this point. So I think the trust comes through that form as well. I think Gen Zs are way more willing to try out new products and tell their friends about new products than other generations as well. And that's that's definitely helped us flow faster. Yeah. Are there any brands that you got inspiration for or you think about as you create your brand? Any any brands that you kind of think have done it well?

17:29Not necessarily, not probably not in finance, actually. Yeah, I mean, I mean, when I was in college, I really looked up to like the Glossier of the of the world and Bumble had great marketing and they do. so like really kind of leaning into that and I think like we we did that a lot in the beginning I think now we've started to not look around as much anymore and and just focus on on how everything's being received by our community yeah and how would you explain kind of your marketing strategy is it is it mainly performance is it like how because you you do a lot in terms of community which seems like good for the product good for the users but also a great way of marketing like how yeah I mean when we when we started out the first time we saw we really saw it through community and content so the first time we saw a really big spike in downloads was when even I wanted to go speak at a conference at like Northeastern and we're like wow like we spoke to a large audience of people and we got a lot of downloads and I was like wow I wish we could replicate this every day, but we can't go to different colleges every day and give speeches.

18:42And so we really didn't want to be on social media. And then Eve spoke to like a YC advisor and he's like, your biggest regret will be not going on TikTok and telling your story. Yeah, I guess regret on your deathbed, on your deathbed is very dramatic. So and then Eve was like, we have to meet TikToks. And I was very much like, yeah, I don't really want to do this. Like, I'm not a big social media gal. But now our digital footprint is massive. And what we did is we told our story on TikTok and that went viral. And everyone started commenting and there were so many people who resonated with it.

19:21And from that point on, we knew that content and storytelling was our superpower. And so we've continued to do that. And we really think of Alinea as like two parts of a company. The first is the product and the investing app, but the other is really like a content machine. And so that's how we think about it. And I think in this day and age, to differentiate yourself, content and volumes of content is so critical. And what are the main types of content that you do? Like financial literacy, product, like your story? What are the things that work best? Today is very performance marketing based.

19:58So we will create content and concepts based on what's performing and so that we can try to scale our advertising. And so we're going to be testing a concept like podcasts. So Nam and I went did a podcast reporting in Brooklyn and we'll chop those up and test that concept. We'll test the concept of us being on CBS News. We'll test the concept of a static image with a tweet of what a customer said about the app. So we're trying to have about 20 different concepts a week and seeing what works best. Amazing. And in terms of obviously you're in the fintech space, you're also in the kind of AI personalization.

20:43How do you think these technologies are going to impact what you do or what the personal investing industry is going to be like in the next few years? obviously gold rush for anything mentioning AI. Yeah I think conversational interfaces will will really be the future right so it's right now you go on any platform there's a lot to figure out you have to figure out how to deposit your funds how to withdraw your funds how the investment works but what we really see as a future at Alinea is you speak to an AI agent and all of this is done for you and you actually understand how your investments are performing over time really automating the role of going to a financial advisor and wealth advisor and having it straight at your fingertips.

21:29I think it's really exciting what AI has done for so many different industries. And we have yet to see a really massive impact in the personal finance sector. Yeah, so your Ali kind of advisor is almost like that personal wealth advisor. What are the sorts What's the things that you hope that that tool is going to help people do that they can't do now? I think so much of investing is emotional, right? So it's like investing is actually pretty boring. You just have to put your money in there and do nothing. And that is really hard to do because you see headlines. Today, the stock market's crashing.

22:10Today, it's increasing. And so what you really need is like the guidance, the confidence, the emotional support of that. And so that's what we're hoping we can achieve with AI Alley. And then another very tangible part of this is education and financial literacy, which we've done many surveys, and that's the really important part of the app and what users value. So it's how can we continue to meet you where you are in terms of your knowledge and continue to grow you as an individual with more financial literacy and as an investor and understanding your investments in the markets. yeah you mentioned uh you know talking you do a lot of you know understanding your consumers are there any insights into your consumers that have surprised you um that have surprised me it people like every nobody wants uh when it comes to investing it's like there's always a curiosity right you don't want to just put your money in one place or another.

23:16You want to try different things. And so I think the biggest thing we cracked is our automated offering is what users come on to and they stick with. But there is a very strong inclination to explore single stocks and different playlists, which is our thematic direct indexes and indices. And so that's that was the big learning is that it's not a one size fits all for anyone and giving people options but also onboarding them in a way that can help them get started yeah um yeah it's interesting that the the need to almost feel like you don't need to keep playing with it you know the whole Robin Hood trying to invest stuff versus just going in a tracker letting it grow over time um any other mistakes that you think young people make within their financial kind of...

24:16I think the biggest mistake is actually not investing sooner. We see a lot of people start investing at the age of 40, 45, 50, 55, and they should have started investing at the age of 18 with just$25 a month or$100 a month. But that's what we really try to do at Alinea is really get you started from that young age and putting in a recurring investment into the stock market because time is the best thing. and that you'll have time is on your, when your younger time is on your side and you can really have a significant chunk of wealth by the time you retire, if you start 10 years earlier. Yeah, I definitely think about that.

24:57The whole compounding thing. Yeah, there's a lot that time can do that other strategies can't. I saw that, I think you recently closed around. Congratulations. uh i'm sure it's uh not you know it's i i hear it's not the easiest time to fundraise generally but um what what do you think uh how have you gone in and talked to investors in a way that has had them believe in you and your vision like any tips for other well statistically most of them don't um yeah i i actually think you know my biggest learning is you can't ever convince anyone they either like have this hypothesis from the start or they're excited about this or they're not but it's really i think it's really hard to convince someone um to believe in your idea i i actually think it's the opposite you have to find the person that already has a preconceived notion or hypothesis about the space that you're in or the or the market that you're serving so those are the big learnings yeah so kind of finding the right people to talk to in the first place are there any meetings where you just go in there and you know before really anything's happened that you're like this this isn't that person yeah oh yeah within like a minute you can know that they start checking their phone they're not really looking at their they're asking the wrong questions it's all in the questions that people ask and the way that they're engaged like it's uh it's very easy to tell and i think for people who get started the best way to fundraise actually is going like looking into your circle so for people that you work with for people that you know uh well that can support you that can give you the first um investment like for example one of our investors has been like um my my previous former hedge fund manager um who gave it and put in a check and so these types of people will support you at the beginning and and finding those people uh is great to get started yeah yeah um have there been any any of uh your investor relationships have helped really shape how you've grown the company um strategically like any any great examples of people not just providing capital but actually helping with how you've grown or no not really not really but i think it's worth any any businesses right you won't hear that the founder of robin hood or the founders of duolingo saying hey these investors they have tier one investors on their cap table but they're not the ones driving the business at the end of the day and they're great our investors are great we we really enjoy them we were really lucky to have them but they are and they've enabled us to get further and and build a team and and grow our our we love our investors for the right i think past investors just let you do your thing like they don't derail you from your vision um and and they're backing you because they believe in what you're doing so that's uh that's what we love about our investors and yeah it's always great to get like intros to to you know a certain field of people or all that sorts but at the end of the day um i think it's important as a founder to to drive your own business sounds good um looking back are there any risks you wish you'd taken sooner um i like the idea that you're pretty ballsy you've done this pretty young and you said that it's because you try um what have been the big swings that you you yeah I wish we started charging earlier we we were offering a free product for two years and I wish we had uh figured out what people were willing to pay for earlier on I don't I don't really have any any regret I mean we started the company at 23 don't think we could have done anything sooner than that maybe dropping out but um I'm sure my mom is glad at my college degree so but I do think if we had charged earlier we could yeah we could have we could have built um because you build towards when when you're charging you're building towards a KPI and a North Star and and for a long time we were kind of building blindly I think it takes time to learn new lessons it took us two years yeah um how did you how did you actually change that model then going from allowing people and I guess it helps you scale to deciding what the price was and how much you're going to charge yeah I mean like the vc like the markets took a downturn we're starting to get emails like hey you might not be able to raise funding down the line from like y combinator and so just we've we've done this through a lot of market cycles um and so before it was like growth at all costs and and zero interest environments.

30:03It didn't matter about your revenue, especially as a young startup. We're optimizing for users, which like, as Eve said, it was very difficult for us because we didn't know what we were actually optimizing for. And you're on a customer interview and you're just asking the user to like, hi, do you like the product? But you really don't know until someone is willing to pay for something. And so, yeah, and then we just shifted the mental model and we're like, hey, we're going to charge. Let's see where this goes. And here we are today. Okay. Any particular kind of big things coming up in the next year?

30:38Any new parts of the business? What are you hoping to kind of do in the next year or two? Yeah, what I'm most excited for is that we're building out an AI Alley conversational interface that should really help you understand your investments, get recaps, and also guide you towards how much you should be investing, how you should be diversifying your portfolio. So that's what I'm personally most excited for. I'm excited that we're going to be launching new financial products. So we'll be launching retirement accounts later this year. We're going to be launching crypto. And so you'll be able to diversify your portfolio even more on the line.

31:23OK. I love that, you know, I've looked at quite a bit of your kind of press. And again, you're very much, it seems like you're very much the kind of face, faces of the brand. And you seem very comfortable at that. Did it come easy? I mean, how do you, again, how has your confidence grown over time doing this? No, it's something I try not to think about. It's just, I don't think about it too much is the honest answer. Because the more you think about it, the more you psych yourself out. So, you know, we're excited about what we're building. We love talking. We love talking about what we're doing and sharing it with the world.

32:07So we will come on and do that for as long as we can. okay um you both uh seem pretty grounded um i'm just wondering if there are any tools or practices or things that you kind of use to stay sane as you build this and obviously probably spending a large part of your life focused on you know making this a success wow why don't you go how How are you staying grounded, Disney? Walking to work helps. That's walking to work. Walking to work or walking. No, I think it's, yeah, I don't know. Honestly, I don't have an answer for that. I have a cat named Peach and he keeps me really grounded. I love that it's like all we get to do is have a cat and walk to work.

33:08yeah no but walk can help like like if you we go on a walk like you know things are never that bad and you shouldn't yeah yeah but you shouldn't go on a walk yeah go on a walk mental health walks walking is good walking step getting your steps in always good to the air and think um what about um do you have mentors do you have people you kind of reach out to to get advice yeah we do we do um talk to a few founders who are ahead of us and i think that that has actually helped us a lot over the last two years so we used to talk to series a founders who were doing x amount of revenue now we talk to series b founders and and being around those types of people and asking them questions has definitely been helpful for us

33:58yeah um yeah okay um i'm curious if the what you do to kind of keep up with your trends and social stuff and um yeah are there any sub-stacks podcasts uh people you follow to get inspiration and keep up with it or do you have a team that kind of does that stuff no honestly we do it i i mean i'm i hate to admit it but i'm scrolling i'm scrolling at night um we're looking through tiktok we're looking on instagram we're talking about social media trends you and i love podcasts we're always sending each other different podcasts to listen to on our on our way to work and any on your walk on your walks to work to work yeah yeah um any that you'd like to give a shout out to or just generally always scrolling yeah I mean I love 20 VC how how I built this acquired all the all the big startup tech podcasts yeah um I'd have interest how many people work with you how big is your team we're 20 and what sort of what sort of roles are they?

35:11You have engineers, designers, growth marketers, data people and customer support. Okay. It's pretty lean. It's kind of amazing. We'll always have it lean. Okay. Any goals personal or business-wise in the next few years slash long-term? What does what does success look like? Success looks like every household in America knows about Alinea and someone in the family is using it. It's pretty good. Not just the young people, just everyone. Everyone, yes. It's a pretty good goal. All right, I'm going to go to last set of questions. Just kind of quick fire. Nothing too hard. um what's a recent investment uh either personal or financial that's made you happy i can't hear my cat again

36:25what's a recent investment i'll go eve it's not recent but when when we started working on this in college eve was really into crypto she had this like book she'd carry around And then she made me buy Ethereum back in college. So I'm grateful for that. Thanks for the wreck, Eve. It's pretty good. It's probably done pretty well. Yeah, thank you. All right. Tell me, do you have any guilty pleasures? Mine is ice cream. I love ice cream. Mine is having a cigarette. Having what? A cigarette. A cigarette.

37:04um what's the best career advice worst career advice you've ever had on best career advice go for it just do it yeah worst your advice is take everyone's advice like just go overthink bad career advice don't um is there anything that you wish you'd learned earlier I think honestly the hardest thing is always trusting yourself right so you you go to these VCs and you pitch them and everyone's telling you you're wrong and it gets really hard to just believe in yourself and so that is a that is a constant skill in progress

37:54um what are your superpowers that you think have helped you be successful

38:03marketing i think marketing has taken us uh further than a lot of other uh fintechs because we we have an edge there really like being the customer and being close to your community super important yeah and and that's why you're good at the marketing or or what what in particular has made you so good at the marketing yeah we we can create content that we would enjoy seeing uh instead of a fidelity ad okay um anything that you're trying to work on and get better at so much stuff it's a long list um to be generic and buzzwordy like i'm always thinking about ai Like how can we use AI and the team to increase productivity, to better serve our customers, to increase our product velocity?

38:59And so constantly on that, I think just getting better at just being more and more customer obsessed and really focusing on like as small as the details go, like what do our users need? And as big as they go is like what is a different financial product that they'll need down the line?

39:23Biggest money mistake you've ever made? You might have already asked this, but. Should have bought more stocks and accrued when I was 18. Anything else? Or just should have bought more crypto? Should have invested more regularly in the stock market from a younger age. Do you think real estate is a good investment?

39:52I think it's always good to diversify your portfolio all right um last question so tell me someone or something that you're professionally jealous of I'm gonna say Brian Trusky from Airbnb I think he uh I think he just posted yesterday it's been like 17 years since he launched it I really looked up to Airbnb applying to Hawaii Combinator And I think they've built such a big consumer company that is so well designed and they continue to serve their customers. So, yeah. And they're global. Brian Trusky. It's a pretty good one. I'm not jealous of their product, but I am jealous of their product velocity.