Show HN: Slackbot for founders to track their startup's finances(swayfinance.com) |
Show HN: Slackbot for founders to track their startup's finances(swayfinance.com) |
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.
This would be handing your financial data over to a third party to old in an unsecured format. Yikes.
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).
It's important to your customers that you make it clear that their data is safe.
If it isn't, you need to make that clear, too.
Right now, I have no basis to extend trust to you, and no desire to do so.
Also, hooking into Xero immediately makes it usable by companies in countries outside USA.
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!
Are they typically side projects? Or on the VC / startup path?
(This is not a dig at Slack apps, just curious whether people see a big market here)
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?
What am I missing?
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'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.
Appreciate the feedback, we'll keep testing around this.
If not – how are you managing security?
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.
Thanks for the feedback!