Kristin Myers: Now, my guests met as students at NYU’s campus in Abu Dhabi. One is from Estonia and the other is from [unclear: “Lafayette”]. Now, neither had worked in finance or tech, and neither knew anybody in American venture capital. But they started a personal finance company in a shared New York apartment in 2021 with just $25,000 in grant money. And now, five years later, 1.6 million young people have joined it. And Acorns, which has 16 million customers, bought the entire thing. Katrin Kaurov and Aleksandra Medina are with us at the desk. But first, let’s take a look at the company. The road from an idea to the opening bell starts right now.
Gen Z talks about almost everything online, from salaries to rent to credit card debt, even how much they spend on a first date. But when it comes to actually learning about money, Katrin Kaurov and Aleksandra Medina saw a gap. So they built Frich, the idea: to make personal finance feel less like a lecture and more like a conversation with your friends. And they found an audience. Frich grew from zero to a community of 1.6 million, giving young people a place to talk about spending, saving, and how their financial habits stack up against their peers.
And now they’ve got an exit. Acorns has acquired Frich, bringing its community and creator network into its financial wellness platform, and both founders are staying on as Acorns’ new co-leads of education and community. The opportunity: to turn conversations about money into actual financial action, saving and investing. But here’s the challenge: can Katrin and Aleksandra take what works with 1.6 million Frich members and scale it across Acorns’ much bigger platform? And can they turn Gen Z’s obsession with talking about money into long-term wealth? From Startup to Stock Exchange, Katrin Kaurov and Aleksandra Medina are next.
And joining us now, right here at the desk, are Katrin Kaurov and Aleksandra Medina, co-leads of education and community at Acorns. They were previously the co-founders of Frich, which was acquired by Acorns. So, Katrin, let’s start with you, because this is an interesting sort of entrée into what you guys were doing at first, and we’ll get into the name in just a couple of minutes. But Katrin, you started modeling at 14, I have here. So you were earning, you know, real money as a teenager. Now, I know how I spent money as a teen. Not the best. Did you know what to do with any of that cash that you were making when you were younger?
Katrin Kaurov: Honestly, no. And that was a big reason why we ended up building Frich. Because, you know, I was a 14-year-old, pretty much a kid, living across 20 countries, often earning money inconsistently, sometimes in cash. And I just really felt there was no one I could turn to for money. So that was a huge inspiration behind why we started Frich.
Kristin Myers: Okay, so let’s talk about how you guys actually started Frich, because you both met at the NYU campus in Abu Dhabi, started this in a shared apartment in New York City, so literally what no one else is doing in their New York City apartments when they’re younger. And neither one of you came from finance. Did you find that to be an advantage, or was that actually a disadvantage for you guys as you really tried to build out this community?
Aleksandra Medina: Yeah, I mean, I feel like in the beginning, a lot of people wanted to position that as a disadvantage, that we didn’t have that background, that we didn’t really know what we were talking about or doing. And a lot of people were very suspicious about our approach to money. But I think that the fact that Frich did resonate with so many people ended up being because we did not come from a finance background, because most people don’t.
So we started Frich, you know, five years ago, and we were in our early 20s, obviously figuring money out for the first time as well. And we were learning alongside, together with our community. And I think that that transparency really translated, and that’s what brought people into the community and really brought them into our mission. And then we just kept going together.
Kristin Myers: Because building community is all about authenticity and about trust. And if you are a member of the community because you also don’t know what to do with money, I understand what you’re saying, that there’s a connection that resonates with a lot of your users. So let’s talk about the name, Frich. Okay, so apparently I can’t say what it stands for on TV, but it was picked deliberately.
Katrin Kaurov: Yeah, absolutely.
Kristin Myers: Talk to us a little bit about the name. We can leave out... I’m assuming it’s an expletive. But yeah, so we’ll leave that part out. But talk to us a little bit about the name.
Katrin Kaurov: Yeah. We always wanted to do things differently around money. We felt that the current financial companies out there were just too conservative and sometimes too, quote-unquote, boring, and they would just not resonate with a regular 21-year-old college student who was just about to start their financial life. So we always wanted to do things differently. We wanted to make sure that money is part of culture. And for us, it was really important that money is for everyone, whether you are a dancer, a content creator, a stand-up comedian. All of these people often feel like money is not made for them. And Frich’s idea was to include everyone, and the name was our first part of starting to be a little different.
Kristin Myers: Is it to also help people get rich, essentially? Okay. So talk to us about peer benchmarking. What is it? How is that a part of the platform, and what does someone see when they actually open up that peer benchmarking?
Aleksandra Medina: Yeah. So that was one of the things that made Frich a little bit different. One, we realized, and I think all of us know this, but most people don’t approach money from that perspective, is that money, like it or don’t like it, is part of every single decision in your life, whether you want to break up with someone or change your job. It comes down to, can I afford to do this? So first, we approached every single financial problem from this real-life problem.
And then our other thing was that we wanted to break that negative connotation that comparison has. Because, you know, we all are inundated with this idea that we’re all comparing ourselves to each other on social media. It’s making us feel bad. It’s making us do bad things with our finances. But comparison in and of itself is not negative. It’s only negative if you’re comparing yourself to flawed data, and of course, social media is a very flawed perception of what’s going on.
So our goal was, can we build a platform where you are anonymously comparing yourself to true, actual data of how real peers are doing when it comes to finances? And not just, oh, you know, I have $100 in savings every month, and you have $200 going into your savings account. It’s more about, okay, I’m Aleksandra. I live in New York City. This is sort of my basic demographics. This is how I think about life. These are the paths I’m going through in my life. How are people in similar situations to me approaching money? So then we wanted to make sure that you matched with the right person, and you can learn from your community.
Because on one side, someone’s always going to be in the top half. And then you can actually do the one thing that we don’t do, which is celebrate good financial decisions, right? And on the other half, there’s always going to be a bottom half. And all of us, in some situations, are in the bottom half and in the top half. But when you’re in the bottom half, it’s nice to know, okay, similar people have been here. They’ve resolved it. I can follow a similar blueprint, if you will. And it is a solvable, real problem that I should not be ashamed of talking about. And that was really how we tried to approach benchmarking.
Kristin Myers: Okay, so when you are looking at the benchmark, what is it that people are seeing? So you mentioned savings, right? What else goes into that benchmarking? Is it how much I have in savings? Is it how much I’m investing? Is it how much I am earning? What goes into, you know, the entire benchmark?
Katrin Kaurov: So one of the things we always did differently was approaching money from every angle. We realized that money is not just investing or saving or how much debt you have. Money is also a decision, like how much should you spend on therapy, or how much do you spend on a first date? Can you afford to break up with someone? So one of the things we did on our platform was give people comparisons for all of these real-life case scenarios.
Kristin Myers: I’m sorry, did you just say if you can afford to break up with someone?
Katrin Kaurov: Yes. One of the best-performing campaigns we did was how much does it cost to break up with someone, especially in a place like New York City? If you’re sharing an apartment with someone, if you have shared details, it is expensive to leave a dysfunctional relationship. And this is what catches people’s attention. They’re like, oh my God, can I? And this is a very smart way to introduce very basic financial concepts and get you sorted when it comes to basic financial life. So I’m glad you also caught on to that.
Kristin Myers: Well, as a New Yorker, I know exactly how expensive it is to live in New York. And, you know, everyone complains about how expensive it is to have your own one-bedroom apartment, or if you don’t want to have one of those partition walls to share with all of your friends. Okay, so a question. I’m curious to know, are folks taking that benchmarking and using it to better improve their financial well-being? Because you were mentioning a second ago, Aleksandra, how we sometimes use comparison quite negatively. So talk to us a little bit about how you’ve actually seen the community utilize some of that data and that information, and also figure out where they are in the community as well.
Aleksandra Medina: Yeah. So something that we did really differently was always listening to our community first. So we always first got user-submitted questions, understanding, like, what are even the burning money questions that all of our customers have? And then what we did after was always pairing the user with a relevant person who can teach them around that specific money topic. So let’s say a nurse would get advice from other nurses. A freelance creator would get guidance from other freelance creators. So the idea was really to first listen to our users, understand what kind of money questions they are trying to answer, and then pair them with a relevant expert in their field.
Kristin Myers: So I want to talk about the investors that you got. One of your investors wrote this week that when she put money in, you guys actually hadn’t even figured out a revenue model for Frich. So then what did she see instead, if it wasn’t that very clear revenue stream?
Katrin Kaurov: I think one of the things that got investors really excited initially was just the fact that we spoke to our customers. And five years ago, almost no one was focusing on Gen Z. No one was even trying to do something different and understand that customer base. And we got traction on college campuses across the US really early. In the first couple of months of running Frich, we reached 10,000 users and then scaled from there. So it was really the user growth that got investors very excited.
Kristin Myers: Okay, let’s talk about the deal. Why was Acorns even interested in Frich in the first place? Why was a community worth buying instead of building? Because you guys had built this to 1.6 million, essentially, customers and community members, but Acorns has 16 million already. So talk to us a little bit about why you think they saw so much value in that community, instead of just trying to build it from scratch themselves.
Aleksandra Medina: Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at Acorns’ previous acquisitions, it was always about, let us bring in a different product. We want to add an additional offering to our existing base of products. What they acquired with Frich is not just an investment tool or a savings tool. It’s actually about everything that comes before that. So at first, we excelled at nurturing people, capturing those initial moments in your life when something changes, when some friction in your life happens, and that kind of makes that mental connection of, okay, there is also a financial component in that.
So we don’t just push financial products into people’s faces constantly. We nurture them, and we show them what life changes can mean to them financially. And I think bringing in not only the 1.6 million customers, but that approach of thinking about community, thinking about education, is changing what those words mean when it comes to financial products. That’s the whole thing that Acorns is acquiring as well.
Kristin Myers: You look like you were also about to say something, in case you wanted to add on as well.
Katrin Kaurov: I think it’s just such a perfect match with Acorns, because Frich was always really focused on open money conversations, like Aleksandra mentioned, and [unclear: “like pocket money”] earlier than ever. But what’s really great now with Acorns is that we combine these open money conversations with real investing and savings tools.
Kristin Myers: So I want to dive into essentially your relationship now, because, you know, you guys were the co-founders. You were the CEO and chief product officer, but now you’re both co-leads of the same thing. Talk to us a little bit about what that pivot and that transition has been like for you both, to be the heads of education and community at Acorns. How is it working with each other now, compared to working with each other before?
Katrin Kaurov: Honestly, it’s really exciting. For us, it was always our favorite part, to take care of education, to be focused on building community. So now we get to do it day in, day out, right? And yeah, I really feel, for us, it’s more of an expansion of our existing mission rather than replacing it. Before, you know, we had 1.6 million people that we were working with. Now with Acorns, we have 16 million customers that we can reach. So I think it’s just really exciting.
Kristin Myers: Well, you guys still seem to be good friends, so that is always super, super helpful. So Frich was a place where people talked honestly about money. You guys have been saying that, you know, repeatedly as we’ve been chatting, including about what they could not afford. Now, Acorns sells investing products, as we know. So I’m curious to know how you guys are keeping things somewhat separate, right? Still maintaining that ethos you were just talking about, about helping people in their financial journeys, and keeping it from turning into a marketing tool for folks that perhaps might not need it or can’t afford it at this present moment.
Aleksandra Medina: Yeah. I mean, that’s a really good question. I think that’s also part of why Acorns wants Frich and us to be part of their work, because it’s not about, like you said, just selling things and marketing things at people. But I think we can all agree that at the end of the day, starting investing early is the best financial decision.
Kristin Myers: You won’t hear me disagree.
Aleksandra Medina: You know? I mean, and that’s the funny part, where we would have people come in, and we would hear all these questions from the community, and it would always be the same advice, right? It’s build your emergency fund and start investing early, build for your future. But I think it is the fact that we get to open this all up and say, it’s not just about a retirement account, or it’s not just about thinking about your kids’ finances. It’s about everything that life can throw at you. And you can prepare for these things with Acorns’ tools, and there’s a whole plethora of tools that they offer. There’s, you know, savings, and there’s investment. There are all these micro-habits you can bring into your financial life to feel more secure.
Kristin Myers: Is there a line for you guys, or has there been a line of demarcation that has been drawn, in terms of what you guys are doing and the community that you are really building with those 16 million Acorns users, versus, again, some of the products that are being sold and offered by Acorns?
Katrin Kaurov: Yeah, we’ve always been very, very mission-focused when it comes to never marketing products that are bad for our customers. For example, we’ve always turned down any offer to partner with all the buy now, pay later products, any kind of predatory loan product. So that was another reason why Acorns was a perfect fit, because all of their products are focused on truth and financial wellness for the everyday American consumer.
Kristin Myers: Say more about that. Are there other products, or things that you guys said, we are not interested in working with you, or we’re not interested in pushing or supporting this sort of product? You just mentioned buy now, pay later. Were there others that approached you guys, where you said that this doesn’t fit with your brand and the mission?
Aleksandra Medina: There were. I mean, in five years, we’ve gone through so many waves of products and hypes, right? I mean, there was a period where everyone was trying to convince our customers to invest in NFTs. And we were like, absolutely not. We were not pushing this down 18-year-olds’ throats. Like, this is not happening. There’s been sports betting [unclear: “big wand”] trying to get in front of our audience, which has been an absolute nil from our side, anything that’s related to gambling. The buy now, pay later thing has been a very, very steep uphill battle for us, to keep repeating that this is not something you should have in your financial mix. So I think anything that sort of falls in those buckets, we have always taken a very, very stern stance on never doing, no matter how much these companies try to throw money at us.
Kristin Myers: Now, you guys have said that people don’t start with products. They start with uncertainty. Talk us through what that means, and what that means in practice.
Katrin Kaurov: Yeah. So I think financial companies often think that people, you know, lie awake in the middle of the night wondering, what’s the best high-yield savings account they can get? You know, they don’t. But the truth is that people do lie awake at night thinking about money. They think about, can they leave the relationship that they don’t like? Can they move to another city? Can they get their dream job? And all of these things come with a price tag. All of these things eventually connect with an investing product or a savings product. So we’ve always taken a really human-first approach, where we focused on the real-life problems that people have, and then gently guided them towards the financial products they eventually need to get to those goals.
Kristin Myers: Right. So I’m curious to know: five years, almost 2 million people in a community. What is something that you learned about building that community, about the way people, especially younger folks, are thinking about money and thinking about their own financial well-being and financial trajectories?
Aleksandra Medina: I think one sort of went hand in hand with us also being very young founders. I think everyone looked at us, and the customers that we were trying to serve, as non-serious, as a group of people that are just lazy, and they’re just doomscrolling, and they don’t care, and they don’t work hard enough. But that’s not true. I think this generation has gone through pretty once-in-a-lifetime kinds of things, one after another, in a pretty brutal way.
Kristin Myers: As a millennial, I would disagree. I would say we had it worse. But this is not the Struggle Olympics. But yes, continue.
Aleksandra Medina: I know there’s a millennial out there that disagrees with that. That’s true.
Kristin Myers: That’s great.
Aleksandra Medina: Okay, let me rephrase that. Every single generation feels like they [unclear: “haven’t been saved”].
Kristin Myers: Yes. Yes.
Aleksandra Medina: And I mean, it’s pretty brutal out there. But what we do see is that at the end of the day, everyone does have the same real human pains, and everyone does want to have a real community around them. They want to have a safe place to live, a career that fulfills them, healthy bodies, healthy minds. All of these things, no matter how old or young you are, you want these. And it really, really sucks to admit it, but those things do come down to money.
And yeah, luckily for us, we kind of got in at that right moment, where the mindset changed and people admitted, you know what? This is harder than it has to be. We need to start talking about it. And we happened to just seize that moment of opportunity and be able to step in there and facilitate that conversation. And when people were very hesitant to believe that people would openly talk about money, because it’s never really been done before, people haven’t really uploaded all these details about themselves to an anonymous community, we actually could prove that people were desperate enough to do that. They definitely desperately needed answers and guidance, and what we could give them in return from community actually brought a lot of value.
Kristin Myers: All right. I want to ask you super quickly, for 30 seconds. You guys were acquired by Acorns. Acorns is private. But as you think about your entrepreneurship and founder journey, have you ever thought about taking a company public and ringing the bell that’s right over there?
Katrin Kaurov: Absolutely. That’s definitely the dream. And I feel like it’s ahead of us one day. I’m super excited.
Kristin Myers: I could talk to you ladies all afternoon. Thank you so much. Katrin Kaurov, Aleksandra Medina, co-leads of education and community at Acorns.
