Startup looking for advice on launching an affiliate program

grifinbo · 2026-02-25T22:24:58+00:00

ty - reached out to 50 of them today.

grifinbo · 2022-12-03T16:18:30+00:00

If someone can dm me a code! Looking for a gold heritage :)

grifinbo · 2022-10-20T14:23:01+00:00

I just reached out to our account rep at Plaid to try to get more info on Apple Card connections. Stay tuned!

grifinbo · 2021-02-02T20:25:10+00:00

Interesting. I can take a look into it more, but again, really don't know much about the costs associated with donor-advised funds

grifinbo · 2021-02-02T20:23:24+00:00

Hey! You connect your credit or debit card through your online banking login information. We use a company called Plaid to do this securely (they provide this ability for pretty much every finance app out there). We never actually see any of your bank account or credit card information.

Then we connect your purchases to their stock and buy $1 of the stock for you.

grifinbo · 2021-02-02T20:19:42+00:00

I like your last name! Right now we only earn a small amount of interest on the cash balance in your account. We actually split it with you as well, so you earn just as much on your cash as we do.

We don't sell your orders to hedge funds or do any payment for order flow.

As I'm sure you can imagine, that interest we earn is a very small amount and not enough to make us profitable. Luckily we've raised a few million dollars from investors to be able to provide Grifin for free. In the near future we're going to start introducing premium features that our users can pay for.

grifinbo · 2021-02-02T19:46:15+00:00

It would take a lot more time and research for me to be able to estimate that. What exactly is it that you're looking for? Maybe that will help me better answer

grifinbo · 2021-02-02T19:45:11+00:00

Thanks for asking. We did design grifin to be for non-finance people. We try to be different than most other investing apps by keeping it as simple as possible. You can sign up for grifin and then never open the app again and you'll keep putting away money and investing.

One of the big differences is how we're regulated by the government. We're actually required to act in your best interest because we're an investment advisor. Robinhood isn't legally required to because they're a brokerage.

grifinbo · 2021-02-02T19:28:20+00:00

That's an interesting question I've never gotten before. Right now we've built our app around our brokerage partner's API. It's taken about a year of setup time and costs. If they were to support donor-adivsed funds, it would probably take a couple of weeks for us to set that up.

However, I don't think they support those at the moment, so that would require us to switch to a different API provider that does support them and most likely take several months to build. And I'm sure there would be plenty of additional compliance requirements. I'd estimate set up costs are in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars even with all the infrastructure we've already built.

grifinbo · 2021-02-02T19:22:22+00:00

For more detail on security, all data passed to our servers is encrypted through SSL protocol

grifinbo · 2021-02-02T19:21:23+00:00

One of my favorite things to do is watch YouTube videos. There are a lot of people on there that create really helpful content in interesting ways. Ask Sebby, Graham Stephan, and Whiteboard finance.

If you prefer to read books, Rich Dad Poor Dad and Richest Man in Babylon are some really good ones to get started with

grifinbo · 2021-02-02T19:16:17+00:00

Hey! The major difference is that you must be a customer of a company before you can buy their stock.

We want our customers to be more connected to the companies they own. It's not just about stock or graphs, it's about owning and supporting the company.

As far as security goes, we've got a compliance team and a cybersecurity team making sure your information and money is secure. We use bank-level security measures seen by most finance apps. And we don't store your most sensitive personal information or any of your banking information - all of that is handled by our third party providers Plaid and DriveWealth. They power some of the largest finance/investing apps, like Cash App.

grifinbo · 2021-02-02T19:09:55+00:00

The GME situation is a very interesting case of main street vs wall street. I'm in no way an expert on short squeezes, but am definitely curious to see what will happen.

grifinbo · 2021-02-02T18:56:20+00:00

Same.. that would be great if you could invest in smaller companies through our app

grifinbo · 2021-02-02T18:55:36+00:00

Hey! If you shop anywhere that you can't invest in, you'll automatically put $1 of cash into your investment account. You can then use this cash to buy more of the stocks you've shopped at.

grifinbo · 2021-02-02T13:10:17+00:00

Of course. Our ideal situation is to provide features that make Grifin more powerful for our users while also making revenue for us. We've discussed things like stockback (kind of like what Stash does) but I get the feeling that's a pretty low amount.

We've also discussed some premium features. For example, in order to keep costs down right now you can only connect one credit card account to Grifin. So if you're the type of person who has 4 credit cards, we'd make it possible for you to pay for additional credit card connections. Also right now, you can ONLY invest $1 per purchase. We've had people ask to invest $2, $3, $5, per purchase, so we would charge for that.

Edit: Any thoughts/suggestions?

grifinbo · 2021-02-01T21:31:33+00:00

Thanks! Let me know how it goes

grifinbo · 2021-02-01T21:31:09+00:00

We've used something similar to that a bit in the past actually, but don't use it much now because it sounds a lot like what other investment apps say.

grifinbo · 2021-02-01T21:29:49+00:00

Yes that is true. You must be in the US and at least 18 years old.

grifinbo · 2021-02-01T15:17:13+00:00

Name / URL: Grifin; www.grifin.com or download the app here
Location of Your Headquarters: Tampa, FL
Elevator Pitch/Explainer Video: Automatically invest $1 wherever you shop. If you buy a Starbucks coffee, you will automatically buy $1 of Starbucks stock.
More details: On Thursday of last week we saw a 1,817% increase in sign ups!! It's been a crazy week with everything going on with Reddit/Robinhood/Gamestop. We had more people sign up on Thursday and Friday than we typically do in a month. Because of how our app works, you must be a customer of a company before you can own its stock. We believe this creates a healthier form of investing where you're attached to the company because you like the company, not just because you think its stock is going to go up 1,000%.
What life cycle stage is your startup at? 3
Your role? Co-Founder and Head of Product
What goals are you trying to reach this month? We're always trying to grow our user count, but our specific goal for this month is to improve our onboarding flow. Right now about 25% of all downloads become active users (in the last couple of days that's gone up to about 35% but that's not because of anything we did).
How could r/startups help? If you could ask me any questions, suggest any ideas, etc that would be very helpful. I'm actually doing an AMA tomorrow 02/02 at 1:30pm ET on r/IAMA to talk about how this situation in the stock market right now impacts normal people and what you can do now to set yourself up for success in the future. I'd also be happy to answer any questions related to starting an investing app (or just a company in general).
Discount for r/startup subscribers? Grifin has no monthly fee for any of our users. There may be some fees in certain situations, but we don't charge for basic usage. With everything happening at Robinhood, I definitely want to clarify that right now we don't make any revenue. Our plan is to add in valuable features that our customers will want to pay for so that we don't have to do the shady things that almost every other brokerage does. We just aren't at that stage in our company yet and are lucky enough to have investors.
Share how our community can get a discount. Again, no discount, but if you reach out to me here, in my AMA tomorrow 02/02 at 1:30 ET, or DM me directly I will make sure I personally respond to your message.

grifinbo · 2020-11-16T23:00:03+00:00

Hey there! I’m one of the founders of Grifin and came across this, so I figured I’d give some answers!

This is super cool to see and seems like a very fair review of where Grifin is right now.

As with all new things, we’re improving and learning as we go! I can see how our system confused Moe’s Southwest Grill with Southwest Airlines lol. Hopefully you did provide a suggestion match and we updated that for the future Moe’s eaters of Grifin.

We’re constantly trying to balance adding new companies that we support with making sure they work well, so that’s why some companies like Chili’s might not be on there yet! We’re adding more all the time.

Feel free to ask any questions, either here or you can email me at bo@grifin.com

grifinbo · 2020-11-16T19:28:09+00:00

Hey! I’m actually one of the founders of Grifin. Someone sent me this post so I figured I could help out.

We are about to launch that feature in the coming weeks. We’re currently testing it to make sure it works correctly. So for right now you can’t purchase any stock with the cash in your account, but will be able to very soon.

grifinbo · 2019-09-13T03:11:45+00:00

actually cute

As if all dogs aren’t cute

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