This is interesting! Is the "change" applied to student loans after each purchase, or is it stored somewhere until it reaches a more meaningful amount? If it's stored - then where is it stored?
@arrev Hi There! I'm Nick, one of the co-founders of ChangEd. Great Question, I have an answer! So rounded up transactions are transferred to your FDIC-insured ChangEd account once accumulated change reaches at least $5. Once your ChangEd balance reaches $100 a payment is sent out to your loan servicers! (Average users save $30-$50 in spare change every month) Let me know if that answers your questions.
Hi all! I'm Nick, One of the Co-founders of ChangEd. We're super excited to be featured on Product Hunt! Thanks for finding us @gabriel__lewis.
We've been hard at work over the past few months to build a functional tool that intends to help millions of graduates suffering from student loan debt. It's amazing to see how much of an impact nickels and dimes can have on something that is such a huge burden on people lives. We've learned so much from our beta and we can't thank everyone enough for getting ChangEd to where it is today.
I'll be here to answer any questions from the community! Like...Android version? Working on getting one out there by Q3 of 2017!
Thanks Again! Looking forward to answering some questions.
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@nicksky Congratulations on the launch. I am glad to see a novel product working on this type of issue. I am curious about your experience with the development. Did you come in with a laundry list of features and cut things down? What was your production time line like and did you work with an outside dev team? Where there a lot legal issues? Looking forward to hearing about your story and using the app. Bests.
@organicthirty Thanks!! And you hit it right on the head! We had a huge list of features (e.g add family to contribute their change, saving rules, monthly minimum transfers) and had to cut them down to get a functional and secure app out there to test the market fit. We'll let users decide what features are needed.
We found a freelance dev to help us built out our MVP and eventually had him join the team after we had a great working relationship with him. It couldn't have worked out better.
As far as the legal issues, we use third party APIs and banking partners that work with trusted brands like acorns and venmo to help manage some of the regulatory and compliance concerns.
Let me know if you have any other questions I can answer!
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@nick_sky Thank you so much for getting back. It sounds like it has been a journey! How long have you all been working on this? From your experience hiring a freelance dev, do you have any tips on finding talent?
@organicthirty We're about 8 months in. As far as tips on finding talent, I'd say that finding someone as a freelancer that believes in what you're trying to build is key. We sold our concept and made sure we went with someone that was just as passionate about it as we were. We got an agreement on paper and went from there. Not sure if that answers your question but there it is...
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@nick_sky Nick thanks for getting back and for being so generous with sharing your story. Congrats again. Really inspiring. I look forward being on the product journey with you.
@micahbrich Thanks for the kind words! We have plans to collect a simple $1/mo to ChangEd members. This dollar will be collected from your accumulated change. This is to cover some of the costs that go along with moving money.
If you decide to cancel your account (we'll try to convince you that you're making a grave mistake!) we will initiate a refund of your entire ChangEd balance.
Does that make sense?
@nick_sky yeah totally! You should feature that cost somewhere very visible — it's entirely reasonable but there was a similar service that wasn't transparent about that and it made me lose trust immediately. I still wanted to use it, but wasn't sure what other hidden costs I didn't know about. You could be the one that builds trust up front instead 🙇🏻🙇🏻🙇🏻
@micahbrich Thanks for that feedback! During our beta we weren't charging users and are currently looking make it super visible on our site, app and in the emails we send out. I'm glad to hear you think $1/mo is reasonable.
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