New YC Startup: Buxfer

http://www.buxfer.com/index.php

by pg • 19 years ago

32 22 19 years ago

buxfer.com

wastedbrains• 19 years ago

I really like the ability to just use my existing accounts, it was enough to have me take a little look around.

sly• 19 years ago

Me too

juwo• 19 years ago

If my bank allows it, can you access my bank account? I think this is a great idea that can even upstage Quicken. I stopped using Quicken - it is a pain to have duplication. However I cannot annotate my transactions with my bank. (this cheque was a donation for charity http://lydiapress.com). As a result, actually, I dont keep track of my account (shouldnt confess this here!) Yes, it is a great idea because IF I GIVE YOU READ-ONLY ACCESS TO MY ACCOUNT, WHY SHOULD THE BANK CARE? WOW!

Alex39172• 19 years ago

I'm imagining two intersecting lines. The positively sloped line represents the amount of time saved increasing as transactions of this kind increase. The other negatively sloped line is the cognitive overhead of using the system, i.e. higher when the number of transactions is small. I'm trying to figure out where exactly they cross, because while I like the system in theory I can't really see myself using it, at least at the moment.

P.S. Congrats on launching to the founder(s).

ashu5• 19 years ago

Well, that's a challenge for us, then. Let's see if we can make the y-coord of the overhead line start below the time-saved line :P

Also, we'd love to know what is causing your inertia at this moment.

Alex39172• 19 years ago

OK, I sent you guys my thoughts using the feedback link.

abstractbill2• 19 years ago

Congrats to the founders for building and launching a very nice-looking site.

At this point though, I'm more likely to use something like wesabe for keeping track of my spending since it understands my existing online bank accounts rather than requiring me to enter transactions by hand - that seems like a killer feature to me since my spending these days is overwhelmingly electronic.

[disclaimer: I haven't used either tool. My opinion is based only on having seen the online demos.]

ashu5• 19 years ago

This is Ashwin - one of Buxfer's founders. Glad you liked the look of the site.

We do allow you to import transactions from your bank and credit card accounts - provided they are in Quicken or Microsoft Money format. Integrating directly with banks is on the cards as well.

One of our goals (besides tracking shared expenses) is to be able to better reason about cash transactions. Our experience as students indicated we spent close to 30% of our income(!) on coke and coffee combined. To capture all these little transactions, we allow reporting expenses via text-messages. (More ways coming soon!) Ultimately the goal is to understand *all* your expenses completely at a central location.

abstractbill2• 19 years ago

"Ultimately the goal is to understand *all* your expenses completely at a central location."

That's an excellent goal to have. Full integration of bank and credit card accounts would definitely be important for me.

The following may be outside of the scope of your product, but I would love to have a system that knew my finances and goals so well that it could give me useful advice such as "start buying product A, which you seem to use a lot of, in bulk from store B", "use the savings you have in account X to reduce the debt you have on credit card Y", "apply for this savings account that has a higher interest rate than the one you have now", etc. Such a system would have to understand things like credit cards that are zero-percent for a given period of time and so on. It would probably also need to know my credit rating so that it could guess what credit card offers I could realistically apply for.

To make this a little more concrete, my fiancee and I have spent a lot of time recently trying to figure out how we should best combine our various debts and assets. It's been very boring to be honest - lots of comparing interest rates that seems like it could be automated.

Good luck anyway!

keizo• 19 years ago

Congrats guys. I had the same idea last summer, started to implement it and then never bothered to finish it. What you guys have looks good. Safari support would be nice though.

danielha• 19 years ago

I just wanted to compliment your use of third party APIs for authentication. This definitely helps that initial adoption barrier.

How do you guys feel about OpenID?

herdrick• 19 years ago

Integrating directly with banks is on the cards

Did you mean 'in the cards' or are you an Agile/XP shop?

dmnd• 19 years ago

Wow, I have a half implemented (and nowhere near as nice-looking) version of this app on my computer. I guess I should have searched a little deeper before starting to convert my finance spreadsheet to a web app... back to to brainstorming for me.

I suppose I better sign up, then!

mynameishere• 19 years ago

Looks a little too cartoony for a financial app. Actually, umm, if Windows media player looked like this, I'd say the same thing: Too cartoony. Just to give you a baseline.

ecuzzillo• 19 years ago

Probably the problem is just the color scheme; it's fruit salad.

python_kiss• 19 years ago

I read Buxfer's review on TechCrunch earlier today; congratulations to YC and the founders on getting featured there! :) The site looks great but they have some tough challenges ahead since Buxfer is coming late in this market.

The key is to resist the temptation of copying features off their larger competitor (Wesabe) and build something different. I think a great lesson we have all learned from Reddit is that a startup can survive in the face of tough competition merely by filling the gaps left by their larger competitor. So far Buxfer seems to have done a great job at it :)

- Jawad Shuaib

jwecker• 19 years ago

I think it looks great. Well done taking the concept and getting it to the "just right" stage without overdoing it. The start page/index is perfect- in 5 seconds I know pretty much what it does and whether or not it's something that I've been waiting for.

Does anyone over there mind if I ask what the plans are for monetization? Paid subscriptions at some point? Tie-ins with other financial institutions like credit card companies? Ads? (it looks like too clean of a site for that, but I'm sure you could make it work if that's the plan).

ashu5• 19 years ago

Your guesses are pretty accurate. And ordered from most - least preferable. :) We'd really hate to place ads particularly if they reduce usability and cleanliness of the site.

plinkplonk• 19 years ago

Hi, What web framework are you guys using? Rails? Django? something else?

(Awesome product btw)

ashu5• 19 years ago

Just object-oriented PHP. No framework, yet.

supahfly• 19 years ago

Isn't this just billmonk?

New YC Startup: Buxfer

Related Stories