LoFi School

I am a creative technologist committed to using entrepreneurship as a vehicle to deliver solutions to critical problems facing society. 

Since graduating from college in 2013, I have helped build three social enterprise startups addressing the issues of food security, personal carbon footprints, and access to tutoring.

I am currently building an education platform focused on making skill-building easier and more accessible to young people facing systemic economic disadvantages.

Problem

• Only 16% of millennials demonstrate a basic level of financial literacy. 
• People of color and people from low-income backgrounds are disproportionately affected.

Proposal

• A digital learning platform designed to make it easy to improve financial fitness, in just 10 minutes a day.

Elevation

• By strengthening understanding of foundational personal finance concepts, we can elevate the economic well-being and future earning potential of marginalized populations, creating a more equitable society.

Specific Problem

• Currently, there is no dedicated space, with universal access, that allows for manageable skill-building in the world of personal finance. 
• The world desperately needs this type of solution. 100 million people in the U.S. and 3.5 billion people across the globe are financially illiterate, and that number is disproportionately comprised of people already facing economic obstacles. 

Scale in Target Audience

• 84% of millennials in the U.S. are not financially literate. That translates to 60 million people.
• Roughly 33 million of these 60 million are people of color and people from low-income backgrounds.

Key Contributing Factor

• A key contributing to this problem in the U.S. is the lack of financial literacy requirements in the education system. Only 16% of students are required to take even a single personal finance course in K-12. 

• The need is clear for wide-spread adoption of financial literacy education. Instead of going through schools and attempting to coordinate across 50 states and 100,000 educational systems, I decided to make one app. One app available to everyone, regardless of the resources of their school district, their household income, or their ethnicity.

LoFi is a free mobile learning app, focused on teaching people all they need to know about personal finance.

On the app, users will find short, manageable exercises designed to boost their financial fitness. They can choose specific topics, for example "buying vs leasing a car" or "paying down student loan debt", or they can choose to go through guided playlists. 

The idea is straight-forward: Tell LoFi what you'd like to learn, set your goal, and we'll design the exercise plan that will get you there in as little as 5 or 10 minutes a day. 

The objective with LoFi is to capture a discrete amount of time per day. It can be overwhelming, for example, to think about learning everything there is to know about improving your credit score. So we've reframed that into "Commit just 5 or 10 minutes a day, and we'll get you there."

You can think of LoFi like a physical trainer app, but for your finances.  

Over time, the effect of these short exercises will start to add up, and our learners will develop stronger understandings of financial concepts that will lead to improved financial behaviors. 

This product is specifically created to assist young people (Millennials and Gen Z) who are facing systemic educational and economic disadvantages. This audience is primarily composed of people of color and people from low-income backgrounds.

In my experience in education-innovation, I've seen the majority of learning products created in the same manner: from the top down. They are often funded by large corporations or venture capitalists, designed by executives, sold to school systems, pushed down to administrators, down to teachers, and finally down to students. 

I decided to build my learning product in the opposite direction: from the ground up. I'm not just designing this product for my target audience, I am designing this product with my target audience. From day one, I've had members of my audience heavily involved in every aspect of the product’s creation -- from research, to design, to testing. This ensures that the final product is something they will actually find helpful, engaging and effective. 

To date, I have interviewed 800+ members of my target audience and I have a “Student Board of Advisors” with 28 members who provide detailed insight and feedback on a weekly basis.

This project is aimed at helping to elevate the economic well-being of people who have been historically left behind in society. These are people who are often living in poor conditions, attending poor schools, and faced with poor economic opportunity. These disadvantages make financial knowledge absolutely critical to survival and success, and yet very little effort has been made on a societal level to address this educational need for these populations. This goal of this project is to make financial education easy, engaging, and accessible, resulting in the improved economic well-being of historically marginalized populations.

In late 2019, I was meeting with a mentor of mine and a group of high school students at an after-school program where we were volunteering.

I was discussing the dislike for school I had when I was growing up. I explained how I truly loved learning, and I was a really curious kid, but I just hated school. I even revealed that I had barely graduated from high school. But once I got to college and found subjects I was interested in, I began to excel. 

It was a fascinating moment... nearly every student's head perked up. It was clear they were hearing a story that resonated with them. They started to chime in with their own stories of love for learning but dislike for school. We eventually started using the hashtag #LoveLearningHateSchool. 

I asked if they could study anything in school, what would it be? The most common answer: money! Everything revolving around money. How to save, how to invest, how to budget, how to handle credit cards, student loans, bank accounts, taxes, you name it. They revealed that no one ever taught them this sort of stuff.

The idea was born.

I attended public schools my whole life. In elementary school, I recognized the disparity of educational experiences my friends were receiving. I hated that some of my friends had so much at their disposal while others had so little. It felt extra wrong that this was often correlated to the color of their skin or what neighborhood they lived in. It was something I never really stopped thinking about… something that never really stopped bothering me.

In middle school, I began skipping class to spend time with my counselor and basketball coach, who at the time was becoming an educational activist in the Black community. We bonded over dreams of more equitable education. We sketched out ideas and philosophies on his chalkboard. We talked about how deep-seated systemic issues require big, bold ideas. 

This passion continued to brew through high school and into college. I studied behavioral science and entrepreneurship, so that one day I'd be equipped to build educational ventures that opened opportunities for disadvantaged students. 

Today, some of those childhood friends of mine are imprisoned, and some are deceased, while others are highly successful. That unjust disparity energizes me everyday to make a difference for the next generation. 

I believe I am uniquely positioned to deliver this solution because I am operating at the intersection of five key areas:

1. Education Industry Experience

2. Social Entrepreneurship Experience

3. Behavioral Science Background 

4. Keen Understanding of Contemporary Software Design

5. Unrelenting Passion for Educational Equity 

These five components empower me to identify gaps in educational resources, design the solutions, create the products, bring them to market, and build a community of members and enthusiasts. 

While the industry experience, academic background, and software skills are vital pieces of my qualification, the passion I hold for this cause may be the most valuable. 

I’ve learned that when you’re working in innovation, you are inherently working in a world of uncertainty. There are unforeseen challenges that arise every day. There are periods of time where you take many losses, or rejections, in a row. These times can be frustrating, depressing, and lonely. 

Having a burning passion inside you to deliver a solution to people who can truly benefit from it, is one of the best ways to fight through those tough times. That passion for something greater than yourself can help you get through to that one win, that one advancement, that one “yes”, that you need in order to get back on track. 

This project has been brewing in me since I was 12 years old, in my counselor’s office dreaming about a more equitable world. If that fire hasn’t been extinguished in the past 17 years, it’s not going to be extinguished anytime soon.

When first starting this project, I presented my concept to investors. I explained the problem at hand, it’s societal importance, and my unique solution. My hopes were to acquire enough funding to hire a software designer to create a prototype for the application. 

I was met over and over with the same reaction: "Great idea! But it's too early. We need to at least see a prototype" I naively thought to myself, "Well if it's such a great idea, why won't you help me build a prototype??"

I wasn't going to let anything stop this idea from getting off the ground. Since I couldn't get funding to hire a software designer, I decided to simply become the software designer I needed.

I began ingesting every design resource I could find. I spent dozens of hours watching design tutorials on YouTube, I cold-emailed industry leaders, I even took a part-time job with a tech company working directly alongside the lead software designer, acting basically as a human sponge. 

I took all the skills I had soaked up, and got to work. In just 45 days I was able to design and engineer the first prototype for my application 100% by myself.

After graduating college, I helped create a startup focused on two important issues: 

1. Six billion pounds of fruits & vegetables were going to waste every year in the U.S.

2. Fifty-five million Americans were food-insecure.

I designed a business model that used the first problem, to solve the second. With two former classmates, I established a network of local farmers in the Washington D.C. area who constantly had surplus produce they were forced to throw away each month. We began buying that produce from them and selling it in a weekly-subscription service to residents in the area. For every bag of produce we sold, we donated one to a family in need. 

I quickly realized our logistics model was labor-intense and that we needed to hire weekly workers. I decided to give those jobs to people who badly needed them. I launched a program where we solely hired people recently released from prison, giving them chances to start a new life. 

In the first year alone, we saved 250,000 pounds of produce from being wasted, donated over 100,000 pounds to people in need, and provided 16 new jobs to people recently released from prison.

Financial Education Innovation

Financial literacy resources are everywhere. There are often workshops you can attend in your area, books you can read, PDFs you can download, lectures you can watch online, and twitter accounts you can follow. The issue is that it’s all extremely fragmented. You have to know where to look, how to sift through the information, and how to piece it all together. With LoFi, you just download one app. That’s it. We’re consolidating financial literacy education into a single, dedicated space. A space that everyone has access to. A space that guides your learning, measures your progress, customizes to your habits, recommends next steps, and is constantly adding new content. 

Digital Learning Innovation

We’ve also made key innovations to the digital learning experience itself. Digital learning environments are often stale and uninspiring. Students and young adult learners are looking for environments that are splashy, exciting, and easy to use. We’ve leveraged modern entertainment design principles to help transform the online learning experience into something more engaging and relatable for our target audience. In addition to design, we’re innovating on the metrics of progress used in education. “Teaching for the test” has proven detrimental to the learning experience. People prefer to learn through exploration, not memorization. So we've designed our scoring system to reward “curiosity” and “exploration.” The more you explore, the higher your score. By encouraging our learners to simply just engage with our content, we're allowing the learning process to occur more organically.

Creation: Free Mobile Learning Platform 

Activity: Financial Fitness Exercises

Output: Increased Understanding of Personal Finance Concepts

Short-Term Outcome: Improved Financial Behaviors

Long-Term Outcome: Improved Economic Well-Being

Impact: Less Economic Inequality, More Equitable Society 

Summary

We are creating a free mobile learning platform, accessible to everyone with a smartphone. On this platform users will find free financial fitness lessons. Through the completion of these lessons comes an increased understanding of personal finance concepts that commonly relate to everyday life (creating a monthly budget, saving for retirement, understanding taxes, etc.). 

Stronger competencies in these various personal finance concepts help form better financial behaviors. Over time, these improved financial behaviors lead to improved economic well-being. 

We are specifically addressing populations that have been historically marginalized in society, and faced with systemic educational and economic disadvantages. By increasing the economic well-being of people in these populations, we will reduce economic inequality, and as a result, create a more equitable society. 

Evidence-Based

This theory of change was designed from findings in a meta-analysis of peer-reviewed research presented by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The key findings from the research were that financial education increases financial literacy, and that increased financial literacy leads to improved financial behavior. These links were proven across various forms of financial education, including mandatory education in school, education via "teachable moments", and informal group-based education. 

A deeper dive into some of the research reveals that these improved financial behaviors go on to have positive effects on people's overall economic well-being. These are some of the effects that were discovered:

• Improved credit scores

• Increased wealth accumulation

• Decreased borrowing from non-bank entities
  

• Decreased non-student debt

• Increased likelihood to have a credit file

• Decreased likelihood to be in default 

• Increased likelihood for earnings to exceed spending 
  

• Increased likelihood to save for retirement

• Increased likelihood to have non-retirement savings

• Increased likelihood to better manage debt

• Increased likelihood to comparison-shop

• Increased likelihood to stick to a monthly budget 

We are currently working on developing the first public version of the application, so we are currently only serving our internal feedback group, consisting of about 800 members of our target audience. 

Our goal is to serve 10,000 learners in the first year of the application being live, and to serve 3 million learners in year five.

Our goal within the next year is to engage 10,000 young adults with our financial education platform. In order to reach this goal, we need to accomplish two things: secure the funding for the remaining engineering legwork, and grow the enthusiast community we've been building since January. We currently have a “Student Board of Advisors” composed of 28 member of our target audience, who meet twice a month, a group of 800+ students providing design feedback, and a wait-list of 1,150 people waiting for the first public version of the app to be released. 

We intend to secure the funding through a convertible debt fundraising round in the Fall of 2020. We're currently working on growing the size of the enthusiast community through partnerships with after-school programs, tutoring programs, and PTA communities in our region.

Within the next five years, our goal is quite bold: help 3+ million adult learners boost their financial fitness. These will be learners either looking for specific lessons (setting up a bank account, creating a budget, etc.) or learners looking to build a broad financial skill set. We will categorize a successful use case by their score differential on the app.

Scaling from our very first users, to meaningfully impacting 3+ million learners will require taking our regional partnership strategy to the national level, implementing bold social media campaigns, and leveraging the national networks of our non-profit partners. 

Financial: 

It often proves difficult to raise investment before you have tens of thousands of active users and established revenue streams. 

Technical: 

LoFi’s core competency is the design of the app itself. Our emphasis on great design is what lowers the friction for new users, drives engagement, and makes the learning process easier. Securing the engineering talent to aptly construct high-end designs can be tricky.  

Behavioral: 

The reality is, many people don’t have strong financial knowledge foundations. While there is a demonstrated demand for products and services to help boost that knowledge, it will still require behavioral change. Mainly, people will need to spend time on their phones being productive, when they are used to spending it being entertained.

Financial

We will be focusing on social impact investors who have experience investing in early-stage companies addressing important societal problems. This makes the experience easier than approaching traditional venture capital. We’ll also be seeking PRI's (Program Related Investments) from local foundations. I have successfully navigated these roads in previous startups, which should help slightly boost the odds of success.

Technical

I will be contracting a small team of engineers who I have previously worked with to develop projects that were design-heavy. I have a strong rapport with these engineers and we've established two-way trust. Having reliable relationships with those tasked with this type of project helps to mitigate the risks.

Behavioral

1) We're leveraging the design principles of successful entertainment applications our target audience is used to. This helps to lower the friction for people to spend time on their phones actually being productive.

2) By branding the product using the phrase “5 or 10 minutes a day”, we're quickly signaling to people that this doesn’t require intense commitment.

3) The app is designed around “snack-able” lessons, with each lesson limited to three learning cards, and each card limited to three sentences. This makes the actual learning process less overwhelming and easier to stick with.

4) Our "Playlist Learning" delivers a simple and guided experience, so that users don't have to to build their own learning path.

5) The "Social Supplements" in the app prevent learners from feeling isolated, and provide easy opportunities to seek assistance at frustration points. 

We are currently working on finalizing partnerships with several educational organizations in our region. These will mostly consist of after-school programs, and community-based mentorship programs. We’re planning to partner with these organizations in order to formalize and build on the success of our internal inclusive feedback model that has incorporated our target audience into every aspect of the product development process. This strategy ensures that the final product will actually be helpful for our target audience. 

The goal for the students in our internal feedback group is to give them an experience of the product creation cycle, all the way from ideation to testing. Any type of exposure to entrepreneurial activity for young students is pretty exciting, but I love that they get to see their own ideas go from the white board to an actual mobile app prototype. 

What I get out of it is perhaps just as exciting, if not more. I’m able to actually build this product with my target audience, not just for them. Shortening the feedback cycle to this degree powers everything to run at peak efficiency. They help me identify both new ideas and potential issues that would have completely eluded me until the testing phase. 

In my experience in education innovation, I never saw companies operating with this proximity to their audience at the product creation stage, and that never made much sense to me. I cannot imagine building this company any other way.

Our business model is derived from the value we provide to the end user, our learners. We are providing an easy, accessible, and engaging way for them to improve their financial knowledge. Our model is clever in that it keeps the core of the service free for our end users. This is crucial because our mission is to elevate the well-being of economically disadvantaged individuals, so we don’t want to charge this audience a single dollar. 

Revenue Stream #1: Sponsored Curriculum

We will sell sponsorships to organizations whose missions align with specific curriculums. Examples: Wells Fargo sponsoring a personal banking curriculum, Fidelity sponsoring an investing curriculum, etc. The value delivered to these organizations comes in two forms: 1) exposure to a financially engaged audience and 2) positive CSR / PR. 

Revenue Stream #2: Educational Entity Licensing 

We will offer monthly subscriptions to educational entities who wish to incorporate LoFi into their programming. Examples: After school programs, mentorship programs, etc. With this service comes access to administrative dashboards where the organization can set assignments, monitor progress, offer guidance, and even offer program credentials. 

Revenue Stream #3: Freemium Model 

We expect to attract a wide audience outside of our target market, many of whom will have the means to become monthly subscribers to LoFi. The benefits to these customers will include additional “cosmetic” features such as deepened profile customization, music app-syncing, and more. For each paid premium subscription, we will unlock one premium subscription for a learner in our target audience.

We believe the way for LoFi to deliver the largest overall impact is to ensure that the company becomes self-sustaining through its own revenue. That way LoFi can be around for 10, 15, 20 years or more, helping people learn important skill sets, without the constant worry and resource allocation of securing outside funding. That is why we have structured LoFi as a for-profit, Public Benefit Company. 

We've designed a three-pronged revenue model that powers the company towards financial sustainability. Each prong is uniquely impactful at different stages. 

Early stage

Sponsored content will be a major factor. It’s an easy way for companies to get positive buzz in their community and support a cause close to their core business operations. 

Mid stage

We will have the resources to establish the monthly licensing model for educational groups. This gives organizations a simple way to engage their members in meaningful learning activity that relates to their core programming. 

Late-stage

The validity and traction at this stage will empower the freemium model to take hold, which as we reach scale, will be the driving force of the company's revenue. We're designing this based on successful freemium models including Spotify and Duolingo.

We will be using a blend of equity funding, program related investments (PRIs) from foundations, and contest winnings, as a bridge to help us get to the points where we can unlock these revenue streams.

Self-funded to date.

In the Fall of 2020 we will likely be seeking an investment of $175,000 USD, in the form of convertible debt. 

If $175,000 of financing is secured, the expenses for the following 12 months are estimated at $115,000. The primary expense will be software engineering.

I’m applying to The Elevate Prize primarily because of the access to world class mentorship & guidance. I believe I have both a concept and a business strategy that can one day elevate the well-being of millions. Having a platform to connect with experienced leaders in so many relevant fields can help me shape better strategies to overcome obstacles and catapult this project to the impact stage in significantly less time. 

The current pandemic has created an even greater and more immediate need for increased financial literacy. I want to deliver this solution to the people who need it most, as quickly as possible. The human resources that The Elevate Prize has access to would act as the catalyst I need. 

Specific, immediate obstacles The Elevate Prize could help with:

Financial

Funding would be absolutely transformational for my project at this stage. It would empower me to secure the necessary engineering talent to transform the internal app into the first public version, in just under 4 months. 

Technical

Learning from experienced leaders who have successfully created educational solutions to societal issues would provide vital insight into handling some of the technical difficulties of scaling a product like this. 

Business / Professional Development

I am constantly looking for ways to improve my leadership skills, business strategies, and overall ability to create change. There is so much to learn from being around experienced innovators and change-makers, and I would use that learning to drive real world impact. 

Funding is always helpful, exposure is always helpful, but I see the network and the mentorship provided by the The Elevate Prize as such unique and powerful tools for scaling a solution nationwide.

I'm not exaggerating when I say I find myself falling asleep some nights dreaming about connecting with world-class experts in social entrepreneurship, impact investing, and education innovation. I’m constantly sending out cold emails and tweets to people I admire, hoping to catch their eye and spark a conversation. When you are as curious and passionate as I am, there is no more impactful resource than a great group of mentors and advisors. 

LoFi offers a tangible solution to a critical, wide-ranging issue. The Elevate Prize would provide the resources and reach needed to deliver and scale this solution.

There's a long list of organizations I admire and would love to partner with down the line. I'll list a few I'm particularly excited about.

My Brother’s Keeper 

President Obama’s initiative to improve opportunities for young black men in the U.S. is making impressive progress in a short period of time. Their localized networks of leaders could help us build strong communities in some of our target regions, which can be utilized to increase our feedback channels as well as to drive adoption.

Center for Advanced Hindsight 

Dan Ariely, the founder, is one of the world’s most renowned behavioral scientists, and has proven tactful in applying his behavioral insights to social enterprise startups. Partnering with the CAH could help us refine the behavioral targeting features of the LoFi platform, improving outcomes for our learners.

Jump$tart

Jump$tart is a group comprised of over 100 organizations working to promote financial literacy initiatives. Collaboration with them could mean exposure to some of the nation’s leaders in this field, from world class educators, to non-profit executives, to leaders in finance -- the possibilities seem endless.

Common Cents Lab

Common Cents Lab is an innovation hub designed to help innovators who are building financial assistance products to help moderate to low income families. Collaborating with them could significantly propel the effectiveness of our product forward given their wide range of industry expertise.