Achieving Your Financial Goals With RiseUP and Why You Should “Start With the End in Mind” with Tara Falcone of ReisUp

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech, you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador Quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy and coffee my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos El gordo, the taco stand in puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset La Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside to Tijuana Estee be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon hashtag SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom.

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Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, and I am thrilled to have you here on the Talkers and Tech Podcast. We interview builders of technologies, of companies, of communities, and we do it weekly. So thanks for tuning in. Every Tuesday, new interview and on Fridays, we talk about what's new in the San Diego tech ecosystem from a news perspective. So make sure you join us there as well too. We also have a tech newsletter that comes out every other week@freshbroodtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode. I'm thrilled to have founder and CEO of RiseUp. Got Tara Falcon here. Hey, Tara, thanks for being on.

Hey, Neil. It's my pleasure. I'm excited about this.

Yeah, me too. Also, not to downplay your also big role in the community as entrepreneur in residence at Startup San Diego. Thanks so much for the dedication to the startup community.

Yeah, of course. I'm very excited about that role. I'm relatively new to San Diego, so it was a great way for me to just throw myself into the startup scene here and I'm having a blast so far.

Awesome. We're going to talk a little bit how you got into that role, because there's a cool story about that. But first, give us an overview of what Rise up is.

Yeah. So Riseup is a financial technology company and wealth tech company that really Focuses on increasing financial education and access for individuals. And we are leaning very heavily now into also providing products and solutions for everyday retail investors too. So to help them achieve their investing goals in a more organized and intentional way.

Oh, love it. It hits all the fun things that I love, Fintech, but also accessibility and financial literacy. I invest heavily in this area too, so we're going to have a fun conversation about that. But let's go back a bit further. I don't know how you got to this point. Where are you from? What got you into the tech world?

How long do we have? No, but, no, it's kind of a, I'll give you the abridged version. I grew up in a very small town in rural Midwest in Michigan. Very low income family. I've been financially independent since I was about 14 years old due to some, you know, family and financial circumstances. Ended up going to college to be a doctor. Got to the end of my senior year, realized I couldn't afford to apply to medical school. Fun fact, it's very expensive to apply to medical school. And so I decided to go into finance instead. I realized that I was the only person in my family who had the opportunity to, you know, break the paycheck to paycheck lifestyle that I had grown up in and you know, the kind of social upward mobility and opportunity to learn about money and how to put my money to work. So I got a job on Wall street as a hedge fund analyst. And I loved my work. I found it fascinating that, you know, stock prices actually mean something. Well, they did back then. I'm not sure if they do necessarily now, but you know, they mean something and they're, you know, they, they come from something with fundamentals and financials and I was just so fascinated by that. But over time got a little bogged down by the fact that my day job was to make our wealthy clients wealthier, which they paid me as a, you know, 23, 24 year old, incredibly well to do. But I knew that that couldn't be what I devoted my professional life to. And it coincided with my husband who left Wall street to join the Navy. We were getting restationed to Japan. And so I knew it was time for, for me to kind of strike out on my own and use my resourcefulness to come up with a way to serve people like my friends and family with the knowledge and skillset that I gained on Wall Street. And so it took me a little while to figure out exactly what that was going to be, but that has culminated into rise up and now into our new app, Reason, which I'm incredibly excited about.

Wow, that's awesome. What. Take us through a little bit of. Cause it's been a few years. I know. Since you've had the idea turning to reality, like, take us through that process. How did you iterate? How did you validate, you know, all that kind of the early pieces and steps to where you got to now?

Yeah, it's really interesting. And it's funny just how life works and really kind of goes full circle once in a while in ways that you don't understand or realize is happening in the moment. So when I was an analyst on Wall street about eight years ago, my husband came to me. Well, then boyfriend, but now husband came to me and said, hey, I have this much money saved for your engagement ring, but the one I want to buy you costs more. Are there any stocks that I should invest my money in to grow your engagement ring fund? And as a female investment analyst, like, what better carrot? You know, pun intended for me to be like, yeah, I've got some ideas. I literally spend my days analyzing companies. And so I sent him back then what is now the most primitive version of the app that we've built, which was a very simple spreadsheet with, you know, five to 10 different companies that I had analyzed where they were currently trading, what my price target was for each, and allowed him to play around with different potential allocations of stocks A, B and C might get me this close to my goal versus stocks X, Y, and Z might get me this close. And over the course of a year, we doubled his ring fund. I got a beautiful engagement ring out of it. And as somebody who came from no money, and as a woman who felt pretty excluded from the financial world for a very long time, to have been able to harness the power of investing to achieve such an important, pivotal financial milestone, you know, for myself and for my family was really incredible. So that was eight years ago. And then it kind of slept on it for a while because, you know, Robinhood wasn't really a big thing back then. Retail investing hadn't really taken off. And so the market demand didn't exist for me to really build something like that for people like my friends and family. Until 2020, when the market crashed and everybody was at home. They had plenty of time on their hands. Now dive into investing. And so at that time, I started just observing and talking to a lot of people, specifically women who had gotten into the market when they hadn't before, and asking them simple questions like hey, like what got you to start investing now? What is that? So, you know, there's the, oh, the markets dipped. It seems like a great time to buy Robinhood's free. Or there's, you know, lots of these fintech apps that make it really easy to get started. But a lot of the answers that I was receiving, again, particularly from women, were very tangible short and medium term goals that were not retirement. So they're like, yeah, I've got my 401k that's on lock. I'm not worried about that. But I want to do other things. I want to, you know, go on vacation whenever stuff opens up again. I want to pay off my, you know, car or my student loans. I want to pay for a nanny and not feel guilty about it, or I want to buy a peloton and, you know, and feel like I got a good deal or that I earned some of it by, you know, using gains in the market to do that. And during the course of leaving Wall street and starting my business, I became a certified financial planner. So I think in this very goals oriented mind. And so I asked them, okay, well, if that's the goal or those goals that you're investing for, how are those goals dictating which investments, stocks, crypto, ETFs, et cetera that you're buying? Because to me, you start with the end in mind and then you buy the investments that meet that time horizon and risk tolerance. And they were all saying, oh, I have no idea. I own fractional shares in 70 different companies and five cryptos. And I'm hoping something goes to the moon so that I can, you know, become a millionaire and achieve these goals. I was like, all right, that's not a great strategy. And then the next question I would ask them is, well, what are you using to track any of this? Because most people have on average three investment accounts at least, and really no way to see them in one place. And so most people are like, well, you know, a couple people were saying, I use a spreadsheet, which is not a great solution because you have to update it manually all the time. And then a few or most people were saying, you know, I've just, I open, you know, five different apps on my phone every day. I kind of mentally account for the different balances that I have. And then I come up with a total for all those five. And then I say, okay, a third of it's earmarked for this, half of it's earmarked for that, and another whatever is earmarked for this other thing. And so I realized that there's really nothing out there that is puts goals first, allows everybody to see everything in one, and really kind of guides them to strategically allocate different investments they own to different goals. So that was over the course of 2020, did some usability testing, kind of threw some prototypes together just to see what people thought. I had a very content focused angle at first. So it was a lot of like equity research and how to choose investments at first. But then over the course of 2021 really refined and iterated that product down to just the tech to start to facilitate basically your ability to ditch the spreadsheet and ditch the mental accounting and have an app that allows you to kind of, you know, view everything in one place and organize your investments in a more intentional way.

Wow. The Ring fund. I love it. It's so cool. Now that I'm a beta user, I've got the bitcoin fund, so I'm excited to test that out. But what a way to teach, you know, interest in the market and like, be incentivized to track it. That's super cool. So, and I know you did a lot of education, like you said in the beginning, like content. How did you actually get to. And I'm guessing you're kind of. You have a non technical background, right?

So I do.

Where did you turn to to actually start building out? What, of beta?

Yeah, it's funny, I consider myself to have a pretty technical financial background, but that's when, you know, when talking to investors especially, that's not the technical background they're looking for. They want to know if I know how to code, which I don't. But I'm very anxious to start learning some of that. So actually our lead engineer who has built the first version of the app, I met a few years ago in Princeton when my husband was there to get his master's degree. We were at a co working space together called Tiger Labs. We just kind of hit it off. He helped me do some development on our first product. So there is another thing that we offer to the market as well. But he helped me with development on that. We've just stayed in really good contact and, you know, been friends since then. And I kind of pitched to him, hey, this is the next thing I'm building. Do you have interest? And he was very interested. So, yeah. We started building in the beginning of October and there's been a lot of late nights for him between then and now. But he's doing a great job and Tackling this in ways that I don't know how, which I'm so thankful for.

So this is all culminating into. Are you calling it a private beta right now, or what are you currently running?

Yeah, it's private beta. We're targeting a public launch still with, like, a minimum, you know, basically core feature set by the end of March is our goal. And we have tons of other plans after that. But you have to start somewhere, right, and validate those initial theses and then build on top of it. So, yep, private beta. We've got 50 private beta users, including you, and so far, we've got tremendous feedback, great ideas coming from the community, and we're excited to start implementing those.

Yeah, take us through a little bit. Like, peel back the curtain of what a beta looks like for people, because you're in the middle of it. Well, depending on when this episode goes live, maybe you're out of it, but still, like, what are you actually looking for? Did you set up metrics ahead of time of, like, this is what we expect to see and learn? And already a few weeks in, have you learned different things than you're. You're kind of your premise?

Yeah. So we were very, very organized and intentional about, you know, what we were trying to get from beta, how large of a group we wanted to run tests with, what kind of analytics we were going to be tracking. Because our goal with this private beta is to really validate that people want to view their investments in this kind of. In these goal buckets, if you will, which you're not able to do anywhere else. So that's the first thing we have to validate. And so in order to do that, we are tracking things like what reasons you're creating. So I'm sure if I looked into our analytics platform, Neil, I would see that you created a bitcoin, a bitcoin reason earlier today and be able to track that. So we are tracking, you know, what goals are people investing for? What is the kind of min and maximum this time frame that they're investing for as well? Are they using our platform for everything from something that's like six months away to, you know, potentially 40 years away for retirement? We're also kind of looking at what is the general sort of mix of assets that people have, and are they thinking about different types of assets for different time frames of goals or different levels of importance for those goals? So we don't ask this yet, but one of the questions we plan to ask when you create a reason is how much would it suck if you lost this money, and that's a way for us to assess, you know, how, what is your risk tolerance for this particular goal? Because if it's a down payment on a house, your tolerance is probably very low. Whereas, like my husband wants to buy a brand new surfboard instead of a used one. So, you know, it's not the end of the world if he doesn't get it, if he loses that money in crypto, for example. And so that's a little bit of what we're doing as well. And we threw in an experiment which was fun kind of at the very last minute I was like, let's, you know, because you can right now. It's like obvious you can, you know, see your stocks and your crypto, ETFs, etc. In the app. But I was like, let's throw in a cash option. I want to know how people are thinking about, you know, this allocation towards specific goals in regards to risk tolerance and things like that. So we threw in a cash option and interestingly, people have used that so much more than I would have expected them to, to the point where a lot of the feedback we got initially about the like the cash feature was, oh, this sucks, you got to fix this, blah, blah, blah. And it's, well, yeah, we threw that in last minute just to see if you would even use it. And you want to use it so badly that you're telling us how we need to make it better, which is awesome because again, like, that's something that you can't do elsewhere. Right? If you're on a stock trading app, maybe you can see stock ETFs and crypto in one place, but like you can't see what's in your high yield savings account in the same breath. Right. And so I'm excited that we, we threw that in kind of at the last minute because it's been sort of a surprise that we didn't expect and something that we need to, you know, really, really think critically about and listen to our users in terms of what they, what they want to be able to do with that.

Yeah, I love that. I love to see the data of around like there's so much content you can create just from learnings from this. Are people saving for an experience, for an asset, for some just timeframe to say I need this kind of capital. Kind of like you're reverse engineering these robo advisors who are just saying tell us your risk aversion. You're like high, medium, low, but really you have no idea, right? What that actually turns the dials on the back end and it's just saying this amount of cash you'll have at this point in your life, but like you don't know what your actual budget needs are gonna be then. I really like the, just the tangible piece that you're connecting here with that.

Yeah. And that's interesting because you know the way like I think robo advisors are serving a great need in the marketplace for people who don't want to do this themselves, they don't want to be in it day to day or you know, picking their investments themselves, whether because they just don't have the time or they don't have the knowledge or don't feel comfortable doing that, I think that's great. But as you mentioned, they look at things from a very top down approach. It's like, okay, let's slap this random, you know, 6 to 8% weighted average portfolio return on your goal and show you a chart about how much your money is going to grow over time. That doesn't make sense to anybody who doesn't understand how assets grow or weighted average portfolio return period, that like, hey, the individual components of that portfolio are actually what together in weighted average. Right. Make up that return. And so instead we're coming at it from a bottoms up approach. We're saying, hey, if you have assigned this stock and this ETF and this cash or whatever, then combined you can expect it to do this kind of over the course of time. And that makes so much more sense to people. Is that the feedback that we're hearing? A lot of, you know, women especially are looking at this being like, oh, and like investing hasn't made sense to me until now. Now I get it because now it's for a particular purpose rather than just this kind of like random return that I don't know what that means or how that's supposed to happen. Yeah. So it's a very different way of approaching it. But I'm really excited because there are some things that we can do as we scale to get a little closer to like not robo esque but kind of community data and like community insights that we can provide that can give you sort of information that we wouldn't be able to give you. Like we can't recommend things to you unless we're an ria. We can't, you know, necessarily tell you what you should be invested in or invest for you like a robo can, but we can maybe show you like what other people are invested in or how they're approaching those particular types of goals. And so with scale comes these really interesting network benefits that we'll be able to leverage and just continue providing value to our users. So very exciting.

Yeah, very exciting. Barely have to really ask, like, where you think you'll be in a few years, because it's. It's apparent. Right. Of just kind of changing behavior of people and how they think about saving, buying, and, you know, just their portfolio or their assets. I guess in that regard, I'm thinking about how do I calculate enough saved up for a lifetime of tacos, obviously, tacos in Deck podcast. So I have to figure that out, but that's my next reason to try out.

But imagine, Neil, just to. Just to throw this out to the audience, imagine if you could calculate how large of a lump sum balance you would need to invest in order for us, like, to. To generate enough in dividends to pay for your taco habit. Right. Or your coffee habit or whatever. Like, that's where, like, I really want to take this because so many people are sitting on so much cash that they could be deploying in a relatively low risk way that could help them level up their financial life just a little bit or help them pay for those things that maybe they feel a little guilty about or that the rest of the personal finance shuns them for buying, you know, coffee every day or whatever it is. There's really interesting educational opportunities that we can leverage and ways to kind of start to make your investments a little, kind of blur the lines really between, like, your investments, your checking, your savings, et cetera. And that's where I'm very, very fascinated to take this.

Yeah. And there's a lot of communities, you know, these Facebook groups where it's like, learn how to be, you know, create a passive income to live your life how you want to. Right. This is the tool that says, go do it right, as opposed to people just sharing anecdotally, here's what I'm doing, here's what you're doing. So that community part is pretty huge. That I imagine, is what you're gonna also build into. But speaking of community, you're smack in the middle of the San Diego startup community. And that happened by chance and on purpose because you're just a go getter. And you said, I'm new to town, I'm gonna put myself there. Take us through how you got connected to Startup San Diego.

Yeah, it's a really kind of random story, but in the middle of last year, like, I guess, may of last year, I met a couple of investors and just had kind of casual conversations with them. They've been super supportive of me, giving me great guidance and feedback over the course of the last, like seven months, I would say. And they saw that somebody tweeted about the fact that Startup San Diego was looking for more people to apply to be entrepreneurs in residents, particularly women, I think was what the tweet said. And so he, you know, replied and tagged me and said, oh, Tara's one of my new favorite entrepreneurs in San Diego. Like she should definitely apply. And you know, at that time, they hadn't steered me wrong yet. So I was like, all right, I'm going to apply to this and look into it. And I did. Went through a couple rounds of interviews, met some really great people and it seemed really up my wheelhouse. I had just kind of finished doing a two year stint on the board for my alumni organization where I was primarily responsible for planning, you know, events that connected alumni and students. And so I was like, oh, I can, you know, definitely create events that connect entrepreneurs with resources in the ecosystem for sure. And lo and behold, we were thrown into you and I worked very closely together creating Startup San Diego's Startup Month and. Yeah, and put that huge event together. And then just most recently had first Mondays where we had over 200 people register and I think it was like 70% actually in attendance. And we had some fun programming, like dating style, esque programming between entrepreneurs and investors and some cheeky questions and yeah, that's definitely up my alley. I like doing that kind of stuff. And it's been really, really fun so far. And I've met people that I don't think I would have met otherwise because of COVID and, you know, just kind of working from home and not really interacting with a lot of people otherwise. So it's been a joy for sure.

Yeah, we're very fortunate to have you. Thank you for diving in. You know, being an entrepreneur in residence not only means that you're an entrepreneur, it also means you're a doer, which usually entrepreneurs are great at that. So it's been super fun. How many panels did we. We programmed maybe 10 plus. It felt like panels and workshops.

It was way more than that.

Yeah, six week period, we just put em together and it was great programming that for a whole week, you know, so super fun to work with you on that. Thank you.

Yeah, of course. It was great to leverage your network like, you know, everybody and I knew what needed to get put together and so I thought we made a great team, kind of Bringing all of that together in one place.

Definitely. Definitely. Well, we got conversions coming up, another chance to do some programming. I'm here if you need me. I'm only a slack message away, but also only a stone's throw away in San Diego or taco shops. We gotta know, do you have a favorite taco spot already?

So I'm gonna caveat this with again. I moved here at the end of 2020 in the middle of a pandemic, so I have not been out to many places. And you tend to stick kind of close to home. And I live in Del Mar, so I'm a North county person. And so I will say that our favorite so far, when they're good, like when it's a good day for them, which again, another caveat, but is Rudy's in Solana beach has great carnitas tacos. And the really big positive is that it's right across the parking lot from Buongiorno's, which is our favorite pizza place. And so we can kind of get a twofer if we're, you know, not necessarily feeling tacos or pizza. We can kind of get one of each. And it's also right around the corner from sumptuous cookies. And so once in a while, my husband and I, on a Friday night, we'll do tacos and treats. And so we'll go get carnitas tacos from Rudy's and a sumptuous cookie in Solana Beach.

Oh, yeah, Great spot there. And you got like a good little. Isn't Fidel's right there too? And you got.

Yes. Yep.

It's a great little, like, spot right there. Off. I'm forgetting the name of the street to Stevens or something right there. Yeah, off the Valley. Yeah. Great, Great hangout. You can make a whole day out of just like a little great Mexican food tour, which maybe we should do. Maybe that should be like a little half day event.

Yeah.

Walking tour of a Solano beaches scene. Great ones to have. Thanks for that. I don't actually know. I'm sure Rudy's has been mentioned on this show, but we will check the research on our taco database here and map it if it hasn't been yet. But, Tara, thanks so much for, for joining in here. I'm excited to put more reasons into the Rise up and get everyone else on this as well in our community too. So thanks for being on the pod. Thanks for doing what you do.

Yeah. Thank you, Neil. It's been a pleasure.

Likewise. Thanks for tuning in to the tacos and Tech podcast. You can find all of our episodes on freshbootcheck.com as well as on Twitter at Tacos and Tech Pod. Also follow Fresh Brew Tech on all of your social platforms and make sure to share and give her a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Play. Thanks again.

Startups get the party Startups get the party started. You want tech in tacos, tacos in tech? You know we got it hey. Startups get the party Startups get the the party started? Startups get the party Startups get the party started? Startups get the party Startups get the party started? You want tech and tacos, tacos in tech? You know we got it, hey, you.

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