Chris Hutchens — Grove Personal Finance
On the journey to creating a personal trainer for your money.
Simply, Grove is just like having a personal trainer for your money. Although, like most great products, it came out of a novel insight from the life of the founder. When Chris became aware that financial advisors had “No obligation to look out for your best interest”, even though they had the title “financial advisor” he knew it was time to start a company and solve the problem.
Luckily, Chris took the time to speak with me. Here’s what I learned … (for the full podcast episode click here, to learn what Chris would ask Steve Jobs)
Product as personal trainer.
Even though the tagline of Grove is “A personal trainer for your money”, I feel that this type of thinking should really apply to all products. Different people have different goals and all products should ask and answer the question Where are you (the user) today? and the product should work do guide you to your goals over time.
On Product Decisions
Most companies, especially those in archaic industries such as banking, start with the question, what can grow our business? and then they think about the customer. Naturally, this is also how they think about the product. Grove is a refreshing exception, similar to Amazon, the key is a simple equation when making product decisions is What is best for your users + what makes us (the company) more efficient = Good Product Decisions.
Product Prerequisite’s
Especially in tech, we have the luxury of shipping product really fast and testing as we go. Although, some things should not be tested, but rather mediated on before writing any code or designing any interfaces. These are the product prerequisites, they are the answer to the question what is that we (this product) will not compromise on? and the trick to this is not to be generic, these must be unique to you and the problem you are solving.
Human Touch and Algorithmic Intuition
Great products, especially those that involve highly valued items or situations should bridge the gap between human touch — Tech products should serve as an aid to the nuance of decision making and situations. Answering the question What makes sense, for a specific user, customer or client?
First Principles Beautiful Product Experience
You just have to care about your users, caring about your users results in an immense amount of loyalty. This is especially true in the enterprise, where the thought of human can really lose its way.
Transparency In Finance
Transparency goes hand in hand with building trust. When thinking about building any feature in finance, we should assume the user is always asking her self where is the money going? where is it coming from? whats going on with my data?.
Anti Engagement For Finance
The ability to trust the product so much that they do not have to think about, that decision making and hands off value. Great finance products mean thinking about it less and less, knowing and trusting that everything is taken care of, and in the case of an emergency, the user will know.
