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My time with the Geezeo founders… it’s a pretty sweet service
Yesterday I had the chance to meet the founders of Geezeo, Peter Glyman and Shawn Ward. Based in Red Sox (Boston) land, their tagline is, "Keep the Geez in your pocket." The first thing I picked up on is how passionate and excited they are about their product. This is such an important piece of the success of an idea. So many of the companies who contact me write a basic overview. You need to get up in my face and tell me what your service is, why it's better than the rest and how you are going to kick ass. The Geez'rs did this.
Along with Wesabe, Geezeo was part of a piece in the Wall Street Journal last week. Geezeo wants to be considered an "Online Quicken Alternative" and the product offers a lot of new and innovative options past what Quicken or Money do.
For example, Shawn noted that a large percentage of Americans still have their money in savings accounts making sub-1% in interest. When you sign on to Geezeo, they will make recommendations on how to improve your savings by moving to accounts offering 4-5x more. This can amount to thousands of extra dollars a year. Also, the system will offer you suggestions on reducing your credit card debt by looking at using lower interest rate credit cards.
Their target is the 18-34 age bracket and they have ambassadors for their product at major university campuses around the U.S. I suggested to them that they might look at offering seminars on dealing with credit and how to effectively use student loans. I know when I got to college I was hit with 100 credit card offers and wound up with a large amount of debt quickly. Their seminars will provide two benefits: helping students and getting more subs for Geezeo.
So what is Geezeo? Basically it's a "smart" way of managing your money. I say smart because the system learns as it goes. You aggregate all of your bank account and credit information into the system, and it will smart-tag it as it goes along. You can also tag your items as well and then the system learns from your tagging to apply to other users in the future. Geezeo will also offer suggestions on other accounts that you might want to use to either make more or spend less. This is how they generate revenue by affiliate subs with the banking providers. Check out here, here and here for a more detailed product overview.
My immediate reaction when they said, "Yea, Allen you just give us all of your logins and we take it from there" is about security. With hundreds of startups out there, what faith should I have that either of the following won't happen: a. they will just wipe my accounts clean since they have access or b. that their security model will allow a hacker in to accomplish a. Check out their security overview page for some geez speak on how they protect your money.
We spent 45 minutes discussing security and I feel more comfortable now. I asked them to put together a video overview of the security they are using but basically its secure. They are using CashEdge which powers most of the online banks for authentication and they don't store any of your login information after you create your account. They also compared it to storing quicken files on your laptop and your laptop is stolen which would be worse than if someone was able to hack into Geezeo.
There are also mobile components to Geezeo. While I am not a mobile banker, by the looks of the Citibank ads all over NYC, there is a growing percentage that are mobile bankers. And the young'ns are using it more than ever. They also provide support via a MeeboMe widget.
I think the Geez'rs are smart by going after the college and university demographic. Students typically suck at managing their money and overspending on a daily basis. By using Geezeo they might be able to do a better job which could result in extra pocket money for the bars and clubs. Best of luck to Geezeo, if you have tried the service, please post your thoughts in the comments.
Allen, this is an interesting write-up. I worked at banks for many years and think Geezeo is an interesting idea although they will have challenges. A company called Yodlee has long been trying to aggregrate customer info and offer recomendations based on it. They offer the same type of aggregration albeit with less features but the uptake was never that high. Getting consumers to share their information and take action on it is actually extremely difficult. Everyone sees the ads for ING, Emigrant Direct but how many people actually open an account and transfer their money?
I do think their service has lots of potential but I would advise them to really think through their model and talk to banks if they haven’t already. I’d be happy to provide them with more insight from the world of banking if they want to contact me: mobious78756@yahoo.com or leave a message on my site.
Best of luck to Geezeo.
But I am just not quite sold on the doling out of my personal financial information. Granted someone could get it from my online banking, credit card and mortgage.. But it’s hard to swallow using a start-up company for such personal information.
Allen, are you going to use this service?
Jason, I would have to say no. At least not in the beginning. Unfortunately having worked in the financial world years ago, I am very resistant to using new banking services. In fact, I resisted online banking for a long time. I would use Geezeo as I think it has a great potential once it has been around for a while and has proven itself. They also said I wasn't in their demographic.
Both Shawn and Peter come from the financial sector which helps me raise my trust ranking for Geezeo over say if 2 web dudes built it.
i think it’s a fantastic product
Allen, Great meeting up. Pete and I enjoyed spending time with you, and are both fans of your site.
I did want to talk a little bit about our launch plans. Some of the features you mentioned are available now, others will be available in a few weeks.
Live now:
Ability to automatically aggregate checking, savings, and credit card accounts
Mobile access – text messaging for all acct balances
Groups – foster a community around groups
Product ratings – allow user to recommend (or not) their products
Coming in the next few weeks:
smart comparisons to alternative products
transactional level details with smart tagging
comparisons to the group
Looking forward to any feedback your readers may have.
Shawn
Geezeo is a good idea going nowhere fast if they don’t create a better business model. I’ve seen them present at the WebInno gathering in Cambridge, MA and heard the founder say something like “people in our target age bracket don’t care about giving their secure information online anymore.” This is, and was, ridiculous. No one in their right mind would give a start-up all of their personal financial information — this is a service begging to be hacked and I, for one, would stay far away from the service. Their standard answer “you’re not in our demographic” (I heard them say that to — well, everyone) should really be changed to “you’re not stupid enough to trust a bunch of guys that don’t have any real answers about our security problems.”
That said — it’d be a perfect service for a larger bank to integrate into their systems. Would I trust, say, Bank of America, over a start-up with a goofy name like Geezeo? Sure, BoA isn’t perfect, likely even has security breaches — but perception and accountability are important. Even with a breach, I can sue and get something from BoA. What would I get from Geezeo? My identity stolen and the founder’s iPod in a settlement, likely.
To Max
Re: Better Model Needed
My main man, Max. I respect your opinion about Geezeo, but feel you are extremely misguided. I think it would be doping people who have read this a disservice not to present the other side of the story, or as I like to refer to it as, the facts.
After researching Geezeo and other personal finance websites including those maintained by, bigger corporate entities, like Chase and BoA; I learned that your identity-theft doomsday scenario is unlikely to say the least.
Geezeo uses CashEdge, a third party aggregate data storage company of immense “perception and accountability” which as you stated, are so important.
CashEdge is the trusted partner of over 6,000 financial institutions (i.e Vanguard) in the US. It is by mere circumstance that Geezeo happens to be one of them and is, a “startup company.”
In addition; just to be extra safe – Geezeo communication goes on behind an encrypted connection.
I am not the most tech savvy person, but my brother-in-law is a software programmer an he basically broke it down for me like this: – “its legit, Geezeo is mad secure yo!” (he is way in to underground rap music right now)
But, hey Max…Max-o-rama…The Max-o-nator:
You’re a cool dude and I dig your paranoid styles. We have to stay vigilant in these turbulent times.