The twin brothers Alexander and Benjamin Michel have brought back the largest single investment in the “DHDL” history with Finanzguru. With their app they want to give the customer something valuable: more time
If you want to have someone’s money, it’s a smart move to help him save some money. Benjamin Michel likes to tell this in an anecdote: A potential investor logged into the app and saw: Hey, he’s been paying for years for his Heidelberg fitness club! The problem with that: He had not lived in Heidelberg for ten years. He used to study there, did sport – and then forgot to quit. Everyone knows, even if it may not take every ten years: At some point a subscription or a double cancellation insurance completed, dismissal sweaty, then forget. Keep it up.
The Frankfurt fintech start-up Dwins promises to solve this problem automatically with the app Finanzguru: Who connects his account with the app, never has to torment himself through the ravages of past and forgotten account sales. He gets all contracts displayed and the option to cancel the superfluous directly from the app. In addition, Finanzguru recognizes fixed costs such as rent, electricity or gas and determines the free disposable income until the end of the month. In short: The Heidelberg gym has no chance then.
Clear that Carsten Maschmeyer bite in the “cave” quickly. And how: 1 million euros – the largest single investment ever made on the show. But for another reason, financial guru is still interesting: because it’s a product that has made the classic fintech career, and some wondered: why the hell into the “cave?”
“Finance is never really fun,” says Alexander Michel. “But we want to show that it can be a bit of fun.” The modesty fits in with the twin brothers who are not identical but yet so similar that even their parents can not tell them apart on the phone.
The idea struck
After graduating, they studied business administration separately. In the job, they crossed paths with Postbank, where they worked as product managers for their banking app. Your task: Automatically categorize account sales. The brothers considered what could be done with this technology. That’s how the idea for financial guru came about, and they founded their company Dwins with two other co-founders in 2015.
The idea struck: In October 2016, the founders joined a hackathon hosted by Deutsche Bank – a temporary software development competition. Finanzguru prevailed against 150 teams from all over the world. The prize money: 30,000 euros. About a year later, the next milestone: In autumn 2017, Deutsche Bank announced its entry, acquiring 24.99 percent for around EUR 1 million. In addition to the fresh capital Dwins came to a pool of test customers. Because the app was still flawed at the time. Especially with the automatic recognition of the contracts it hakelte.
But the app got better. Which was also due to the fact that not only customers of Deutsche Bank can now use Finanzguru. “We said from the beginning that today you can only go the way of independence and transparency,” says Alexander Michel. That’s why users can now link accounts from thousands of banks to the app.
Also published on Medium.