You don’t hear as much about it as I would like, but I love the small and scrappy fintech startup community in Portland. What started with companies like Simple has spawned any number of interesting takes on banking, financing, and investing. Even the cofounder of Acorns—which enables folks to round up purchase prices to invest small increments of money—has a Portland connection. (He graduated from Lewis & Clark.) So you can imagine my excitement when I heard that Giftango founder David Nelsen was getting back in the startup game with a fintech play. And now, it’s come out of stealth. Meet Bumped.
One of the primary culprits? The basics of finance. I mean, let’s face it, you didn’t come up with a startup idea because of your love of numbers and tax law.
Sometimes, the biggest barrier to getting your startup off the ground isn’t the things you know—it’s the things you don’t know. Worse yet, finding a mentor or a trusted voice to help you figure things out can be more difficult than it should be.
One of the primary culprits? The basics of finance. I mean, let’s face it, you didn’t come up with a startup idea because of your love of numbers and tax law. Well, maybe you did. But you get my point.
What to do? What to do? Well, how does gaining some basic knowledge about finance for startups sound? Good? Good. You’re in luck. Read More
Corvallis-based Strands, the service that recommends things you might like based on your behavior, has announced the acquisition of Expensr, a move that takes its recommendation services beyond the realm of entertainment to personal finance.
Expensr will be brought into the Strands fold as moneyStrands, a personal money management solution based on Strands recommendation technology.
moneyStrands is an online money management solution that allows users to aggregate their online financial information in one place, providing them with an instant snapshot of all their finances. With moneyStrands, users can anonymously compare themselves to others with similar traits, such as demographics.
The move also allows Strands to more clearly define the areas into which they’re planning to introduce recommendations, like business recommendation solutions that help people find content on sites, social media recommendation solutions that use online behavior to make recommendations, and personal finance recommendation solutions that helps individuals take more control of personal finance decisions.
Rest assured, there are also some other interesting undercurrents here—that I’m not yet at liberty to disclose—that promise to cause some interesting ripples here in the Silicon Forest startup scene.
