Walkthrough AI Financial Coach

At Walkthrough, we understand that financial literacy and empowerment are essential to financial stability and peace of mind. Unfortunately, financial anxiety is high, and many Americans lack basic money management skills. Four out of five Americans ages 18 to 34 don’t know the answers to basic financial literacy questions[1], and 40% of Americans (83M People) cannot afford a $500 emergency without taking on debt[2]. 72% of Gen Zers and Millennials (101M) want financial planning, but don’t know where to find it[3]. We are initially focused on first-generation/low-income college students and recent graduates (10.8M)[4][5], whom we call “first-generation wealth builders”. They know the pain of financial instability, are starting to make good money, and are motivated to take action on advice to figure out how to manage money for themselves and their families. They need a solution like Walkthrough because there is no other service that provides financial advice affordably at scale in a way they can understand.

The Walkthrough app puts a person’s whole financial picture in one place, gives them unbiased advice about what next steps make sense based on their personal situation, and helps them track their progress as they go. We’re a Registered Investment Advisor, but around 10x cheaper and always in your pocket. Our aim is to offer the best possible financial advice for the 70% of Americans who currently lack access to financial advice[1]; that’s why our financial plan is only $100 per plan, and our app is $10 a month.

We partner with forward-thinking nonprofits, universities, and employers to have the largest impact. Our 11 pilots in 2023 include Yale, CU Boulder, FLIP National, CollegeTracks, and Ada Developers Academy. 92% of organizations we’ve spoken with have agreed to run pilots with us.

At Walkthrough, we believe that financial empowerment should be accessible to everyone. Join us on our mission to help individuals take control of their finances and achieve long-term financial stability.

We are initially focused on first-generation/low-income college students and recent graduates (10.8M)[1][2], whom we call “first-generation wealth builders”. They know the pain of financial instability, are starting to make good money, and are motivated to take action on advice to figure out how to manage money for themselves and their families. They need a solution like Walkthrough because there is no other service that provides financial advice affordably at scale in a way they can understand. Walkthrough uses behavioral science & habit-building techniques to help these folks reduce their financial anxiety, and take meaningful steps towards financial wellbeing.

Walkthrough's founding team—Ben, Megan, Eric, and Jayden—all care deeply about financial inclusion. 

Ben was born and raised in New Orleans and didn't grow up with much in the way of money. Through a lot of hard work and luck, he got into Yale and ended up working in finance after graduating. All along the way he was sending money home to my family, working more jobs than he had classes while at Yale. Whenever he'd go back home, people would ask him a bunch of questions about how to manage their money — things like "How do I invest? Is investing gambling? Do I really need an emergency fund?". Ben understood deeply that his community wouldn't have access to this kind of financial advice if they didn't know him. Though he was happy to help folks pro-bono, he knew they needed a more scalable solution. This was the seed for Walkthrough. 

Jayden grew up in Colorado with a similar background to Ben. He started a landscaping business at age 12 to help support himself and his family (and over 7 years grew it into quite a successful business!). He believes that empowering people with financial advice can change their lives.

Megan has seen how many of her friends (especially women friends) are highly competent in so much of their lives but are intimidated by money. Many of them used to keep all of their money in savings accounts because investing felt risky and scary. She cares about empowering folks who haven't traditionally had access to financial advice to build long-term generational wealth. She believes that financial advice in the right place and the right time can lift entire communities.

Eric is frustrated by the misaligned incentives in the financial services industry, and cares deeply about fixing this by building a company that actually aligns its incentives with the people it serves.

We continuously talk with first-generation wealth builders in the communities we serve to get feedback on our products. We are focused on helping them reach financial wellbeing and work closely with them to not only help them take meaningful action towards financial stability but also address underlying financial anxiety. We also partner with nonprofits focused on economic empowerment to maximize our impact.

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We are looking for connections to organizations focused on economic empowerment to partner with to help amplify our impact. We'd also love to collaborate with technical and product mentors as we continue to tune and improve our AI financial coach. We care about the ethical and responsible development of AI, and believe that collaboration is key in this space.

The personal finance industry isn’t addressing these problems, in large part because incentives in the industry are misaligned. Financial advisors charge a percent of people’s net worth to manage their money, which means they only want clients who already have a large net worth. The cruel irony here is that the folks who need financial advice the most are the least likely to be able to get it.

We are one of a few companies working to automate and make accessible financial advising for middle America downward. Most fintechs do not want to actually give financial advice because it comes with a lot of SEC regulation and scrutiny - we give proper advice, are attentive to governmental supervision, and are building in a trust and integrity-first way.

We also believe that generative AI will be transformative for the personal finance industry, and will finally enable a product that is emotionally attuned and personalized. This will empower people to navigate financial anxiety and take meaningful steps towards financial stability. It will democratize access to personalized financial advice.

In the next year we aim to help 10K people reach financial stability. 

In the next five years we aim to help 25% of our total addressable market  reach financial stability. This equates to 25M people (72% of Gen Zers and Millennials who want financial advice, but don’t know where to start = 100M people * 0.25 = 25M). 

Financial stability means: (1) reducing people's anxiety around money, (2) increasing their ability to weather financial hurdles, and (3) helping them build long-term wealth to take care of their families & communities.

We plan to achieve our one-year goal by partnering with nonprofits and organizations focused on economic empowerment. We have 11 pilots in 2023 such as Yale, CU Boulder, FLIP National, CollegeTracks, and Ada Developers Academy. The pilots took 1 month on average to establish from the first conversation. 92% of organizations we’ve actually spoken with have converted to pilots or are on the journey to one.

We plan to achieve our 5-year goal by partnering with employers and large banking institutions to provide Walkthrough's financial advice to their employees and members.

Our main metric is the proportion of people using our app who actually take action on the advice we give. Taking action means doing things like: paying off debt, contributing to a Roth IRA, getting a 401(k) match, etc. In our alpha testing, 50% of people took action on the advice we gave. This is significantly higher than the industry average of 33%[1] for human financial advisors. We also look at qualitative self-reporting of people's emotions around money. Our goal here is to decrease financial anxiety. In the long-run we also hope to measure long-term financial outcomes for people using our app.

Walkthrough's theory of change

Activities

• Walkthrough gives personalized financial advice to folks who haven't traditionally had access to financial advice. (For example, advice like: pay off a particular credit card, establish an emergency fund, get your 401(k) employer match)
• Walkthrough helps those people take action on the advice. We use behavioral science techniques to help people actually pay off debt, and contribute money to their 401(k) etc.

Outputs

• Each person enters information about their financial situation in the Walkthrough app.
• Each person gets a comprehensive financial plan.
• People read about savings rate, investing basics, and any other modules needed to understand their current task.
• People get step-by-step help with their current task.
• When a current task is complete, Walkthrough tells them what the next task is & helps them take action it.
• People can ask our AI financial coach any questions they have about personal finance

Short-term Outcomes

• People increase their basic financial literacy.
• Personalized outcomes: some folks might start to pay off their high-interest credit card debt, some might build up their emergency fund, some might set up automatic contributions to their 401(k)
• People feel less anxious about their current financial situation
• People feel like they are on track towards financial stability

Medium-term Outcomes

• People reach financial stability. They only have healthy debt, have an emergency fund to cover 3 months of expenses, are saving & investing some money from each paycheck in the best accounts for their particular situation (e.g. 401(k), Roth IRA, HSA, brokerage accounts).
• People have the right investment portfolio allocations for their risk profile & age.
• People feel financially secure.
• People recognize when financial anxiety comes up for them & how to address it.
• People understand their financial situation.
• People understand & feel confident in their longer-term financial plan.

Long-term Outcomes

• People build long-term wealth for themselves, their families & communities. They are able to do things like: reach financial independence, afford retirement, pay for their kids to go to college, fund their own creative endeavors & give back to their communities.
• People find deep financial wellbeing.
• People feel empowered in all aspects of their lives. They are healthier[1] and happier because they are not consumed by financial anxiety. Their days can focus on self-actualization instead of figuring out how to get enough money to take care of this week's basic needs.

Walkthrough gives scalable, accessible financial advice via a mobile app. We use a proprietary algorithm to give people accurate, straightforward, personalized financial advice based on their particular situation. We use generative AI (via Open AI's APIs) for the financial coach component of the app that helps answer people's questions about personal finance. We are planning on integrating this technology even further into our product. Our algorithms will still choose the advice, but the AI will package it in a way that resonates with each person. The AI coach will meet each person where they are at, tailoring content to help ease their financial anxiety, helping them take action on things in small steps and building their confidence.

DEI is integral for our team. We believe that a team of people with varied, wide-ranging backgrounds and identities is key to building products that actually help a wide range of people. We believe that equity and inclusion are not only good for everyone involved but also good for business, because they allow everyone on the team to shine and contribute their best work.

The founding team of Walkthrough comes from very different backgrounds (Ben is Latino and grew up in New Orleans with not much in the way of money, Megan is a woman and grew up in Colorado with two moms, Jayden is a Gen Zer and started a business at a young age to support his family, Eric is from Chicago and was exposed to the financial industry from an early age) We have diverse perspectives on the world that help us build a better product. As we continue to hire, we look to bring on folks with different backgrounds from ours.

Walkthrough enables first-generation wealth builders to take control of their finances by giving them down-to-earth, personalized, actionable financial advice, just like a human financial planner does, but at scale. Folks connect their financial accounts securely to our platform and our software does the analysis of their balances, interest rates, asset allocations, and transactions to give them the next financial moves they need to make and how to make them. It's a true financial advisor in your pocket at a fraction of the cost of traditional financial services.

We initially provided our products directly to consumers to get product feedback, and are starting to scale via B2B2C sales. We partner with organizations who are focused on economic empowerment for their communities, such as universities, nonprofits, and B Corps. These organizations pay for Walkthrough on behalf of their communities. Universities want to help their students and alumni find financial wellbeing post-college because that reflects well on the university and increases their alumni's ability to donate to the university. Nonprofits focused on economic empowerment have a clearly aligned mission with Walkthrough, and partnering with us helps them reach their impact goals. B Corps want to provide top-notch benefits to their employees. We believe B2B2C is our long-term scalable growth channel as CACs via Google and FB ads in the consumer fintech space are quite expensive.

We believe B2B2C is our long-term scalable growth channel. Nonprofits, universities and companies pay for Walkthrough on behalf of their communities, students and employees. For our B2B2C pilots, Walkthrough makes $100/yr per person using our services, which will have around 80% gross margins at scale. See the "What is your business model?" question for more details on our business model.

We will also likely raise VC funding to fuel quick growth.

We got a $125K grant (non-dilutive) and $100K in AWS credits from the AWS Impact Accelerator for Women Founders.

We've made $2600 in revenue so far. We expect this to scale up substantially over the next year. 

We have 11 pilots in 2023 (such as Yale, CU Boulder, FLIP National, CollegeTracks, and Ada Developers Academy). The pilots took 1 month on average to establish from the first conversation. 92% of organizations we’ve actually spoken with have converted to pilots or are on the journey to one.