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“ I was using experience I already had , and it was fun ,” he explained . “ She found the information really helpful and from there it started to get circulated around other friends ; I thought pretty quick that , if I ’ d done all this work and it was proving popular , why not just put it out there on the internet and let others access it .” The popularity of the data saw Chen realise the ‘ shopability problem ’ that existed in financial services : unless consumers actively seek professional financial advice it ’ s difficult to compare products or find readily available answers to what are often relatively straightforward problems .
“ Most people don ’ t want to spend their weekends making a spreadsheet ,” he told the Money20 / 20 audience , elaborating on the moment he saw the potential in Nerdwallet becoming something larger . “ I think by year two we had a pretty decent audience . It was still relatively small , but maybe 30,000 to 40,000 people per month were visiting to get the advice that they needed . We weren ’ t making much in terms of revenue , but knowing how big the market was and how many people would be looking for the kind of service we offered , made it clear that we could extrapolate it towards a very sustainable business .”
Today , that ‘ sustainable business ’ reaches around 100 million Americans
MARCH 2020