Awesome to see this live, @amanda_peyton. I love how flexible Braid is for different social structures (couples, families, organizations, clubs, etc.). What's the most weird or unexpected use case so far with Braid?
@rrhoover Thanks Ryan! So far two really interesting and unexpected use-cases: one user has been using it to manage his real estate investments, collecting rent and making individual accounts for each of his properties. Another interesting use-case has for sure been divorced couples who use it to track their shared expenses and child support. It seems to save a lot of headaches there.
Hey everyone! Excited to share Braid with you all today and get your feedback. Thanks to Erik for hunting us!
Right now it's really easy to send money, but still hard to share it. Sharing money can be painful, especially for ongoing expenses with roommates, family members, significant others, etc. Most people use a combination of Excel, Splitwise and Venmo/Cash App/Zelle. We realized that what we really wanted instead was a group account, and that’s what we’ve been building.
Braid is a group account that eliminates the need to track expenses after-the-fact (no more spreadsheets). The only product for this currently is a joint bank account, but that’s not ideal for a bunch of reasons. We tried to make it as easy as possible to create a group, invite people, add money and spend it together. Braid groups have chat, too. That way you can talk about money and spend together, right in the same place. You can set permissions to specify who can spend the money and how, and use the unique account/routing numbers and virtual cards to pay for shared expenses.
Some usage we've seen so far from early users:
-Couples using it as a lightweight joint account
-Roommates using it as a house account
-Sharing money with family members as a way to help/support everyday expenses
-Divorced co-parents who share childcare expenses
-Social envelope budgeting
The product is totally free. U.S. only for now. You can download the app for iOS or Android and get started quickly. For the Product Hunt community, we’re also offering 1:1 onboarding. Someone from our team will give you a tour of the app, and walk you through our sign-up process. If you’re interested in that, sign up here: https://getbraid.typeform.com/to...
We'd love for you to check it out and tell us what you think. I'll be here answering questions, or you can email me directly: ap@braid.co.
-Amanda
Links
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-App Store: https://apple.co/33sUaNf
-Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/ap...
-Website: https://braid.co
-Our Twitter: https://twitter.com/braid_app (it’s brand-new!)
-Medium post: https://medium.com/@ap_8218/shar...
Congrats Amanda and Todd and team for the launch! A couple questions to kick off the convo:
1/ When did you develop conviction that this was what you wanted to spend the next decade building? What was that journey?
2/ (Without sharing too much...) What can users expect in terms of what's to come in the future?
@eriktorenberg Thanks Erik!
1. We both had issues in the past sharing money, and realized that it's a widespread issue. For us, this was a problem that we both had, but also one where we realized we might be able to help solve a real problem for others, too.
2. Lots! We are working on features that make it easy to ask multiple people for money at once, for example. We're currently paying a lot of attention to early feedback and making improvements based on that.
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