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20 Year Old Founder Jessica Mah Raises Over $1 Million For Indinero (YC S10)
- shadowsun7 16y agoJessica is amazing. From her profile: She’s been programming since age 9, building businesses since age 12, and finished high school at age 15. pg wasn't kidding when he said they're more interested in impressive founders than they are in a specific idea. Can't wait to see what happens with Indinero next.
- joshbuckley 16y agoI totally agree. Although, the idea also holds its own. It's one of those "wish i'd thought of" ideas that's refreshingly simple.
- camwest 16y agoIt's not actually that simple. Indinero launched with Canadian banking support which is very difficult to implement (for example mint.com has just done it in the last couple of months). Kudos to them for considering the businesses north of the border.
- amirmc 16y agoI think he meant that the concept is simple to grasp.
- okeumeni 16y agoCongratulations Jessica and team!
- rumpelstiltskin 16y agoKudos to Jessica. I just hope ppl don't hype her beyond reason ('wunderkind', 'female zuckerberg' etc). That kind of pressure at such a young age can be crippling. Let her grow and succeed at her own pace.
- jacquesm 16y agoFemale Zuckerberg is a mixed blessing. Nice to see someone to counterbalance the 'lack of females in tech' again, to land an investment like this at the age of 20 is quite amazing.
- points 16y agoI think it's fairly condescending to bother noting that she is female and make out it's somehow a big deal. Reminds me of Alan Partridge (Comedy show)... "A female drummer! Interesting. Close your eyes, could have been a man."
- jacquesm 16y agoNo, it's just that there is a 'too few females in tech' post every other day, so I think that it is good to see some balance to that. For the record, the young males impress me just as much from a business point of view, it's just that for some reason young females succeeding in the tech world are much more rare.
- FlemishBeeCycle 16y agoGiven the reputedly storied history of Zuckerberg and Facebook, I don't know if that comparison is apt to draw the most positive connotations from a lot of people? On a side note...I don't know why the media generally feels the need to add these hyperbolic and largely tenuous comparisons - her accomplishments can stand on their own.
- deltapoint 16y agoJournalists want stories that spread. Making hyperbolic comparisons help make stories spread. It can be weird having stories with those type of comparisons made but I think it will help Jessica and the indinero team more then hurt. I once had a way overinflated headline written about myself and since it has helped to open doors for potential jobs and such.
- jlm382 16y ago
- baby 16y agoMaybe a stupid question but.. Where does the money go when a little startup or this kind of startup raise fundings ? in advertisement ?
- paulbaumgart 16y agoPresumably hiring, mostly. Salaries can burn through $1M pretty quickly.
- elblanco 16y agoA million dollars really doesn't buy a whole heck of a lot. A 10 person company (which isn't that big, assume a CEO, three or four developers, a support person, a tester or two and a couple sales guys plus offices, incentives, and other expenses and you're north of a million in expenses per year easily). Or another way to think of this...it's better to use this money to try and boot strap and hit profitability to grow out slowly and organically than use this as immediate ramp-up money to build out a huge team and hope that lighting strikes.
- cullenking 16y agoI love that you used the phrase boot strap in the same sentence as a million dollars...I understand the concept, don't blow the money on a big team, but man, for us people bootstrapping, selling possessions and hoping the $1000 a month salary turns into $2000 before there isn't anything left to sell...
- elblanco 16y agoKudos to anyone bankrolling their own start, I've been part of a couple of those in the past and I hear you. My wife is trying to bootstrap a company in the same sense that you are. Instead of a million dollar investment, we've "invested" what her old salary was (she quit her job a few months ago to explore doing this). But it's obvious that she's going to need some more money than that to hire a designer, a part-time lawyer, pay for hosting and probably get one more developer for what she wants to do...and we simply don't have the cash for that. So she's seriously thinking about looking for an investor to hire those people. A quarter million would probably cover those expenses for 18 months. I don't know what to call that, "investor assisted bootstrap"? It's definitely a different model than "I have an idea, give me money, I'll go hire 20-30 people and we'll make a go at it for a year", which is certainly not bootstrapping. My own company tried that "instant company model" a few years ago and it didn't work out, so we reconstituted the company with different leaders and different VCs, and now are following this hybrid mixed bootstrapping model...and you know what? We're doing much better.
- alttab 16y agoI hope that seed money goes into building the product - I haven't seen the growth in the offering of inDinero over time that its story is capable of considering its working off the problems set already solved by Mint. Consider it harsh criticism or motivation, this product is perfectly positioned and I hope to see it grow more/faster.
- jackowayed 16y agoDid you just complain that a company that launched 2 months ago hasn't grown its offering fast enough? Chill out and give them some time.
- alttab 16y agoinDinero may have "launched" 2 months ago, but its been around since 2007 if I recall correctly.
- erikpukinskis 16y agoJust checking out Indinero for the first time... seems like a great product. I've tried a number of products like this that replace a spreadsheet or a text document. Mint tried replaced my personal finance spreadsheet... Todo apps try to replace my text document todo list. This product tries to replace my company balance sheet that I have in Google Docs. But I usually run into two problems. These products are great at first, for a bunch of tasks, but when I want to do something slightly different, I'm screwed. With a spreadsheet I just add another column. With something like Indinero, if I need to track something that the system doesn't allow for, I run into a wall and I have to start over with a whole new system. Massive data headache. The second issue is that with a spreadsheet/text document, I have to type everything in, and manually update things, so I get intimately familiar my data. With Mint, I connected all my accounts and then promptly forgot it existed. The spreadsheet, because of the inconvenience of data entry, forces me to manually reckon my finances, which is actually a good thing. I don't know how you get around those issues, but I'd be excited to see a solution.
- jacquesm 16y agoFrom what I heard in the video indinero connects to your bank on your behalf as well and automatically imports the relevant data.
- mambodog 16y agoReading this, as a 21 year old, I'm starting to feel like I really need to get cracking on something!
- jacquesm 16y agoI'm pretty sure you can extend that range upwards quite a bit. People like Patrick (Collisson) and Jessica are really inspirational, I'd like my kids to look at them rather than at popstar 'x' as role models. It's great to see young people achieving this much.
- points 16y agoPerhaps I'm just weird, but the main feeling I have for people who achieve 'success' at a very early age is sadness. What sort of life are they going to have... The sort enjoyed by child actors? :/ (I'm not talking about anyone in particular, just in generalities).
- jacquesm 16y agoI'm the opposite, not sad but happy. People that achieve success at an early age, assuming they're not doing it to satisfy the pressure from some parent or family member but simply because of their own desire to achieve something and / or change the world are absolutely great. All that PG and company can do for people like this is open the doors for them and give them some monopoly money, they have to do all the legwork and make it happen. I wouldn't compare this with 'child actors' or 'virtuoso musicians' at the ripe old age of 5, hardly any of them chose for that. But someone that's 20, that's a different story. They presumably do this because they want to. Just give them all the tools they need and get out of their way. And to call this a 'success' already is a bit early I think, there is a misconception that when you have received an investment that you already have a success. That remains to be seen, but there is a substantial chance of success and there is a person that wants to achieve that success. Time will tell if it works out.
- tomjen3 16y agoJefferson was 33 when he drafted the declaration of independence, he had made many achivements before than and he would continue to achieve many things for the rest of his life. I don't see why people who achieve success early in life shouldn't go on and achieve even further success later in life, unless there is some fixed amount of success each of us gets.
- gdltec 16y agoI love the name of it "inDinero", and yes Spanish is my native language.
- rlm 16y agoCongratulations on the funding - it looks like a good product. :) I just wish that some of these finance-startups would support European markets :(
- maushu 16y agoI always wonder why people get amazed when someone raises money for their startup. Yes, it is impressive but it would be a lot more impressive if it was "20 Year Old Founder Jessica Mah Gets Over $1 Million In Profit From Her Bootstrap".
- sunir 16y agoTry raising $1M.
- jimboyoungblood 16y agoRaising 1MM seems fairly trivial these days in the valley.
- maushu 16y agoNo thanks, I prefer to use my energy for the goal of getting $1M in profit. ;)
- vaksel 16y agoI dunno, but I think the whole "we are young kids" may be counterproductive in this instance. It'll be great for getting coverage...but would that coverage be more or less effective? Would a 50 year old business owner who sees coverage in Wall Street Journal really want to put his business financial tracking in the hands of a bunch of kids who refuse to get off his lawn?
- ck2 16y agoI'm impressed by it all, except strangely the product name. The name seems to throw me off for some reason? The name would be perfect for targeting the spanish market but worldwide will it make sense? Or am I being silly?
- crxnamja 16y agoI like the idea of the product but using it was another story: a) copied Mint.com's look verbatim b) the functionality is horrible and extremely limited c) you can't delete your account and your data d) I question the 256 bit security they use as well
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]