Since most brands are obsessed with targeting millennials, baby boomers have been largely left out of this digital revolution, especially when it comes to personal finance. Kindur, a financial service company, is focused on helping baby boomers embrace modern retirement. For many retirees, its the first time in their lives that they are not receiving a regular paycheck and financial decision making becomes more complex. Kindur offers solutions that are highly customer-focused, providing straightforward digital advice and retirement tools to guide retirees during this confusing – and sometimes hectic – transition.
AlleyWatch sat down with founder Rhian Horgan about building a financial service company that caters exclusively to an overlooked demographic – who ironically holds 83% of the wealth in the United States. Horgan also shares the details on Kindur’s series A round, which brings the total funding amount raised for the company to $10.3M across two rounds.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised $9M in Series A funding and our industry-leading investors include Anthemis, Point72 Ventures, and Clocktower.
Tell us about the product or service that Kindur offers.
Kindur is building a new kind of financial services company to empower baby boomers to embrace modern retirement. Grounded in decades of experience leading financial and tech initiatives at major banks and startups, Kindur will provide straightforward digital advice and retirement tools to a rapidly growing population of retirees. We’re able to provide customers with a personalized roadmap, complete with actionable recommendations, through Kindur’s proprietary technology.
What inspired you to start Kindur?
While many Americans take a DIY approach to managing their finances throughout their careers, as they get closer to retirement the intersection of health, financial and insurance decisions make DIYing far more complex. Most of us also stop receiving a paycheck in retirement, which can suddenly make knowing something as simple as how much we have to spend difficult and complicated. Baby boomers require a holistic retirement solution to inform their decision-making. Kindur’s platform is uniquely positioned to guide customers through all of their retirement decisions by providing a full suite of services in one centralized location.
How is Kindur different?
Kindur’s biggest strategic advantage is our ability to cut across industry silos to provide customers with a holistic and informed approach to modern retirement. We’ve done the heavy lifting, so the customer doesn’t have to choose between hundreds of complex financial products. Kindur’s retirement paycheck is the ultimate simplification of retirement.; we offer our customers both guaranteed income and a flexible retirement paycheck, tailored to their needs, to streamline their day-to-day spending decisions and provide peace of mind around long-term planning.
What market does Kindur target and how big is it?
83% of the wealth in the U.S. is controlled by individuals over the age of 50. Among this group, there are millions of active savers ready for retirement. We want to empower this population to retire with confidence and truly allow them to enjoy an amazing stage of their lives.
How do you get baby boomers to embrace technology when many are apprehensive to do so?
Baby boomers are much more fluent with technology than many people think. Today 82% of them use at least one social media site and they embrace many of the same digital lifestyle brands that so many of us of all ages use every day. Kindur is digitally transforming how our customers manage retirement decisions and we’re relentlessly focused on providing simple and straightforward guidance that keep our customers’ needs top of mind.
What’s your business model?
Our process begins with a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the customers’ retirement goals, resources, and spending needs. We use this information to develop a customized set of recommendations that equips our customers with the guidance they need to successfully navigate retirement. From there, we offer a range of options to help baby boomers make critical financial decisions and effectively manage their assets.
What was the funding process like?
Since our seed round last fall (in 2017), we’ve been in close contact with a key group of fintech/ insurtech investors who really believe in our mission. They have supported us with intros to strategics and talent and were natural partners for this next stage of our business.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
There are very few venture-based products being built for baby boomers. We spent a lot of time helping our investors understand how our customer engages with technology and the financial intricacies of the problem we are solving.
There are very few venture-based products being built for baby boomers. We spent a lot of time helping our investors understand how our customer engages with technology and the financial intricacies of the problem we are solving.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Our investors see the challenges that millions of modern retirees are facing (longer retirements in a post-pension world) and the huge amount of capital this demographic controls. They embraced the peace of mind that our retirement paycheck delivers to our customers and trust the deep domain experience of the Kindur team.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We’re excited to launch our first consumer-facing product in Q1 2019. We will enable our early customers to optimize their retirement decision making through a range of tailored offerings, truly empowering them to retire fearlessly.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Stay close to your customer. We pivoted early on based on key insights and learnings from interviewing and surveying our target customers directly. When you understand your customer, you build products that solve real problems. You also have to trust your team—whether big, small or somewhere in between. We have an incredibly talented team with decades of relevant and insightful experience that has been so critical to our journey.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We’re looking forward to helping baby boomers simplify retirement and as we continue to grow Kindur, we’re investing in new talent from developers to designers and product managers, who are inspired to create a product for an underserved demographic with high consequence decisions to make.
What’s your favorite restaurant in the city?
That’s a no-brainer—it’s Supper on the LES. I’ve been going for 20 years and I love it! We’ll be hosting our team holiday party there this December to celebrate an incredible year.
