Some of the top US PFM-ish players

I was recently talking to a former start-up founder who got a promotion and is now an “entrepreneur”, meaning he hit the pay-dirt and sold up (or out), making a motza in the process. One of the cleverest Fintech-ers I’ve met, who, like the other four or five I’d class in that cohort, marches completely to the beat of his own drum, impervious to outside thoughts or factors.

In other words: zero stuffs given — and I mean that as the highest praise possible.

His business started life as a PFM tool and pivoted to being something else. I won’t say what, in the interests of protecting the innocent. Oh, and for the noobs, PFM stands for ‘personal financial management’.

Our discussion was around the trickiness of making PFM stick, or rather more precisely, making it stick as a sustainable, revenue-generating business model, something that is notoriously hard to do.

In short, how do you avoid the ‘Graveyard of PFM’, the notoriously wide chasm that, like the event horizon of a Black Hole, can start to drag you in slowly but alarmingly quickly without you even realizing what’s going on.

Many a start-up has perished in these dark & stormy waters, whilst a relatively small few have grown & thrived.

Before we delve into some reasons why the PFM space is a tough nut to crack, a little potted history follows to provide context.