The brief
Most personal-finance apps either copy Western patterns or skin a bank statement, and quietly monetize the data behind both. I’m building the one I’d actually trust: spending, budgets, and savings in one legible view, encrypted so only I can read it. The thesis is simple: privacy isn’t a feature you bolt on, it’s the product’s spine.
What I did
I own the whole arc: strategy, brand, and the build. I wrote the positioning (“track your spending without anyone tracking you”), designed the brand, and shipped the marketing site at monietally.com: Next.js, a scroll-choreographed 3D phone in Three.js, and a Supabase-backed waitlist that’s now ~300 deep across 12 countries. The companion app is in private beta: end-to-end encrypted on device, synced as data the servers can’t read. I talk to early users every week and let those conversations set the roadmap.
What I learned
Being the PM and the engineer on the same product is the discipline I want to bring to a product team: every “yes” carries a build cost I feel personally, so the bar for what ships stays high. Designing privacy-first also reframes scope, half the hard calls turn out to be about what not to collect.
