Scrolled through first half of the page, learned that this is a web app that allows me to "see my money", that it's private, "makes things simple", and that it "revolutionizes financial management".
Is it really so hard to explain what your product is on the landing page? It's not just this app, it's most of the products promoted on HN. Also every other cloud app promises privacy until private equity shows up.
I use Rocket Money, it's free for me because I have a loan with them but I think I would still pay for it. The reason why I don't use other apps is syncing, if I have to manually sync or upload my data, I am out - it takes too much time. Personal Capital was another app that had pretty good syncing , but I haven't used them since I switched to Rocket.
Your landing page tells me so little about your app features that I am not even interested in trying it out. You have a lot of competition in this space. It's great to hear about my data being protected but that's not good enough if it doesn't have good features compared to the alternatives.
I have used lit.money, and I absolutely love it! Thank you, Mihir, for building something unique and user-friendly. I know the plans you have for this incredible piece of software are big, and I wish you nothing but the best.
Yikes I hope lit.money doesn’t go the way of Mint: bought out by giant corporation, enshittified, neglected and finally subsumed/killed.
Personal finance apps need to be trustworthy and be around for the long haul - I need them to just hum along and not take me on a venture-backed roller coaster.
It's interesting to see cloud service after cloud service launch that promises "never to sell your data".
I'm working on a similar thing, except making sure we can actually live up to that promise: that means making the software entirely feasible to run on-prem (i.e. on your own computer), on your own cloud infrastructure, or provided by a third-party provider of your choice. (We chose AGPL3 to avoid the obvious problems with third party hosting trying to add features or change things and then locking you into their platform.)
Of course, this takes a bit more effort, and some things like Plaid are nearly impossible to use when self-hosted, but we've found some pretty good workarounds for that.
But "I'll never sell the data" is different from "this service will never sell the data". If you sell the service, will you put it in the contract that any subsequent owner can never monetise the data? Will you decline a sale if they decline? How will you justify that to the board? What if they fire you to push the sale through?
Etc etc. "We'll never sell your data" is just empty words to me, except in one case: if you designed a system that never has my data in the first place.
The challenge is after it grows/becomes more successful, something happens that you lose control of the company, or perhaps you take some investment money (which is completely reasonable to do) and then they want you to start changing how you do things. You might not even "sell" the data - you might be forced to give it away.
Other's have already covered this so for you (OP) this will be redundant, but I do want to chime in regarding the general trend of apps/services everywhere (not just here on HN) focusing too much on the "Sell" of how their mcguffin will improve my life, but not actually saying what the heck their mcguffin actually is/does. To return to the post at hand, as an example, I'd change the byline uptop to say:
> An ethically designed financial management app to be the private and simple way to see your money, finally.
That maintains your pitch while also saying upfront and uptop in the first 6 words what it is/does.
Next, I'm not trying to be negative here, but rather acknowledge a very real problem that others have touched on and that anyone (myself included) launching any product will face in the current era:
Best Intentions != Best Practices. Security is hard. Earning trust is even harder. Especially when it comes to money. It's doubly difficult in early days as building out an app while maintaining security and respecting privacy is no minor task (even if "easy", it's still often tedious and easy to make mistakes), and in the context of finance/banking, there's unfortunately a large target on the app/services's proverbial back and impetus for users to have a far more critical and unforgiving eye given the potential fallout of someone leveraging or publishing an exploit.
There's also the ever looming potential of the original team selling the company/product/service to someone else (eg, Private Equity) who - despite claims to the contrary - rarely share the same ethos or respect for their newly acquired users as the founder/founding team does/did.
As to why people tend to be critical/suspicious: See another recent HN post "Everyone Knows your Location[0]" regarding all the practically systemic and endemic ways that applications/services expose/harvest data, and how difficult it can be to be aware of, mitigate and protect against these things. Exploiting user faith/data is unfortunately the norm now, not the exception, thus people's suspicions.
Wish you luck OP, because the market absolutely could use a privacy/user respecting app in this space.
Thanks for your time and feedback.
- Based on all this feedback, I am going to rework the website content and will focus on writing what it's actually doing.
- You are right, security and trust are ongoing things, and I will keep working on them.
Can you give the web app a try and share some feedback on it?
Scrolled through first half of the page, learned that this is a web app that allows me to "see my money", that it's private, "makes things simple", and that it "revolutionizes financial management".
Is it really so hard to explain what your product is on the landing page? It's not just this app, it's most of the products promoted on HN. Also every other cloud app promises privacy until private equity shows up.
Can you please share your feedback? If not like this, according to you, if you were designing this landing page, how would you explain?
Currently my goal is to get feedback. Yours will be really helpful.
Adding the text “it’s a financial management app” (or whatever description is more accurate) would make it clearer for me.
Noted, i am outside right now but I will update the site and write clear message like you suggest.
I was looking for a budgeting app about a month ago to replace my old usage of Mint and came across Lunch Money, been happy with it so far.
https://lunchmoney.app/
thanks for the like will check it.
Meanwhile can you check lit.money and share some feedback?
It has demo account option so you can easily check it.
Really miss Mint. CreditKarma is a joke.
I use Rocket Money, it's free for me because I have a loan with them but I think I would still pay for it. The reason why I don't use other apps is syncing, if I have to manually sync or upload my data, I am out - it takes too much time. Personal Capital was another app that had pretty good syncing , but I haven't used them since I switched to Rocket.
Your landing page tells me so little about your app features that I am not even interested in trying it out. You have a lot of competition in this space. It's great to hear about my data being protected but that's not good enough if it doesn't have good features compared to the alternatives.
Thanks for your comment. I will add more details about features in coming days, in fact will creat individual pages for each features.
About synching of data, it is possible of provide auto synch in background. Will explore in coming days.
I have used lit.money, and I absolutely love it! Thank you, Mihir, for building something unique and user-friendly. I know the plans you have for this incredible piece of software are big, and I wish you nothing but the best.
Thanks for the support!
A very similar site was launched right here approx. 18 years ago. Reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=54658
Yikes I hope lit.money doesn’t go the way of Mint: bought out by giant corporation, enshittified, neglected and finally subsumed/killed.
Personal finance apps need to be trustworthy and be around for the long haul - I need them to just hum along and not take me on a venture-backed roller coaster.
Haha
Right now my focus is just to talk to people and improve it.
Just saw it. Thanks for the link.
Indeed, it makes finance simple. I used it to handle my personal finance and share data with accoutant.
Best luck
Is there a self hostable version of something like this?
Not yet. lit is still in early stage!
But you can mail me, we can plan something.
Really like the font on your landing page!
Thanks, if possible then try web app and do share your feedback.
I posted here mainly to get feedback so i can improve it.
It's interesting to see cloud service after cloud service launch that promises "never to sell your data".
I'm working on a similar thing, except making sure we can actually live up to that promise: that means making the software entirely feasible to run on-prem (i.e. on your own computer), on your own cloud infrastructure, or provided by a third-party provider of your choice. (We chose AGPL3 to avoid the obvious problems with third party hosting trying to add features or change things and then locking you into their platform.)
Of course, this takes a bit more effort, and some things like Plaid are nearly impossible to use when self-hosted, but we've found some pretty good workarounds for that.
That’s really good for you. I am a solo guy working on this on nights and weekends. And definitely I ll never sell anyone’s data.
Also will work on self hosting and offline support once product get mature.
> And definitely I ll never sell anyone’s data.
But "I'll never sell the data" is different from "this service will never sell the data". If you sell the service, will you put it in the contract that any subsequent owner can never monetise the data? Will you decline a sale if they decline? How will you justify that to the board? What if they fire you to push the sale through?
Etc etc. "We'll never sell your data" is just empty words to me, except in one case: if you designed a system that never has my data in the first place.
I 100% believe you.
The challenge is after it grows/becomes more successful, something happens that you lose control of the company, or perhaps you take some investment money (which is completely reasonable to do) and then they want you to start changing how you do things. You might not even "sell" the data - you might be forced to give it away.
Got your point. I will also request you to try web app and share some feedback that you would like to see.
What's the best way to protect against this?
We’re implementing our code as open source (AGPL3) and offering entirely self hosted, cloud hosted by us, or third party hosted options.
Our biggest customer wants to pay us to cloud host it for them and manage the whole thing.
Congrats on the launch OP.
Other's have already covered this so for you (OP) this will be redundant, but I do want to chime in regarding the general trend of apps/services everywhere (not just here on HN) focusing too much on the "Sell" of how their mcguffin will improve my life, but not actually saying what the heck their mcguffin actually is/does. To return to the post at hand, as an example, I'd change the byline uptop to say:
> An ethically designed financial management app to be the private and simple way to see your money, finally.
That maintains your pitch while also saying upfront and uptop in the first 6 words what it is/does.
Next, I'm not trying to be negative here, but rather acknowledge a very real problem that others have touched on and that anyone (myself included) launching any product will face in the current era:
Best Intentions != Best Practices. Security is hard. Earning trust is even harder. Especially when it comes to money. It's doubly difficult in early days as building out an app while maintaining security and respecting privacy is no minor task (even if "easy", it's still often tedious and easy to make mistakes), and in the context of finance/banking, there's unfortunately a large target on the app/services's proverbial back and impetus for users to have a far more critical and unforgiving eye given the potential fallout of someone leveraging or publishing an exploit.
There's also the ever looming potential of the original team selling the company/product/service to someone else (eg, Private Equity) who - despite claims to the contrary - rarely share the same ethos or respect for their newly acquired users as the founder/founding team does/did.
As to why people tend to be critical/suspicious: See another recent HN post "Everyone Knows your Location[0]" regarding all the practically systemic and endemic ways that applications/services expose/harvest data, and how difficult it can be to be aware of, mitigate and protect against these things. Exploiting user faith/data is unfortunately the norm now, not the exception, thus people's suspicions.
Wish you luck OP, because the market absolutely could use a privacy/user respecting app in this space.
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43716704
Thanks for your time and feedback. - Based on all this feedback, I am going to rework the website content and will focus on writing what it's actually doing. - You are right, security and trust are ongoing things, and I will keep working on them.
Can you give the web app a try and share some feedback on it?
Invite code: iamvip