EarlyBird 2.0 Demo and Conversation

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Key Points Discussed:

• Announcement of EarlyBird 2.0
• Live demo of EarlyBird 2.0
• Laur discussed what we have learned over the past two years about families and how they invest, some of the biggest challenges faced when developing EarlyBird 2.0 and what's next for EarlyBird.
• Q&A session discussed if/how people outside of the US can use the app, and the best way to set up an account as a non-parent.
  
  

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Jordan Wexler: Very excited to do a quick run through of our large announcement this week of Earlybird 2.0. We want to thank so many people that put in a ton of work to bring this to reality. We believe this truly transforms how families will invest in their kids and the ability to bring together all of the family and friends that want to collectively invest and share all these special moments under one unified platform. And offer the ability, of course, to both celebrate and also invest in the child's most special milestones.

So, really quickly. Some of the highlights of the Earlybird 2.0 – the biggest one is this concept of the 'Nest', which we'll go through and talk about further. But it's really the ability for a parent to invite those closest to this child, that want to be part of their life and really experience all of the special moments of a child because unfortunately we all live all over the country or world today and it's harder than ever to stay connected, so the 'nest' becomes that centralized place. As a nest member like Uncle Jordan, I will then be able to celebrate, upload moments myself, invest in these moments and also contribute whenever I want.

Within this, a new idea that we've shown is this concept of micro contributions. So, being able to basically tip a moment like a child's lost first tooth, being able to invest just a dollar or three dollars interact with that experience. And of course, to help build a better financial future for the child, so that you aren't just liking and commenting on social, but you're actually having a bigger impact. And then, the last major update here is that we fully redesigned a lot of the EarlyBird app and experience, which we'll get through. So instead of just talking through it, we thought it would be super fun to actually just do a live demo.

EARLYBIRD 2.0 DEMO WALKTHROUGH

"And here we are: EarlyBird 2.0! So most of you are familiar with the basic functionality of EarlyBird, but as you can see, there has been a ton of UI and UX updates. But where we begin is on my "kids' tab where you can see my two kids, Izzy and Remy. Really best in class, robo-advising so I can click in, I can see their portfolio, how much money is invested, where the funds are actually invested. I can now though, quickly add 'nest' members, add funds or add 'moments' right on the 'My Kids' tab.

Then the bottom nav has significantly changed. Now we have a centralized place for your 'nest' where you can both monitor and oversee your 'nest' for your two kids or you can also be part of other people's 'nests' and join those and see all the wonderful activities of each child on EarlyBird.

If I click into Izzy's 'nest', you can see here that I can see their goals, upcoming birthday. I have a whole activity feed. I can see the details of their account. I set a month recurring investment as a 'nest' member, how many 'nest' contributions have been made. As the parent, I can also see who I've invited, of course, I've invited my two aunts, my uncle, my grandpa. They've set reoccurring investments. So you have a fully centralized place to experience EarlyBird and all of the wonderful kids that you're investing in. But what is most exciting, of course, is the 'Moments' tab.

This is where we begin to see all of these wonderful moments uploaded from the parents of the 'nest' members that you are part of. So this is Izzy, my niece. This is her first day of pre-K, we were so excited. So my sister-in-law uploaded this moment and now I get notified. I can like it, comment, but I can also one click, one tap, micro-invest $5 into that moment, or micro-invest $1 so that I'm not just liking it, commenting on it, but I'm actually investing in her and her future. Of course, that is optional, but it is one of the most exciting new ways of how we invest in our kids. So it's not just birthdays and holidays, but we're actually investing in them and all of the most precious milestones and moments that they experience from 0 to 18."

So, hope you enjoyed that demo walkthrough and can't wait to see what you all do with EarlyBird 2.0.

INTERVIEW WITH LAUR (Director of Product)

I thought it'd be interesting and fun to bring in Laur, who is our Director of Product, and they have actually, invested a ton of time and really digging into what has worked, what have we learned over the past two years about families and how they invest? And what are the most important aspects to building out a massive future like this? So we thought it'd be fun to start with, Laur, giving us a little bit of an idea of what the core problem was that we were seeing, and what we were really trying to solve with EarlyBird 2.0?

Laur Mohler: Yes, that question I sort of reframe for myself as: Why did we build this? And, for us at EarlyBird, we believe that building the best future for a child is about bringing their community together. We know that parents are looking for simple and meaningful ways to invest for their kids, and we also know that people who care about those kids are looking for the same. So we really sit sort of at the intersection of those two points and wanting to bring everybody together in a way that feels comfortable and meaningful to invest in the kids that they love.  To be frank, we know that finances are an uncomfortable topic to talk about and parents don't want to feel like they're asking their family and friends to contribute to their child. We also know that people who care about the kids in their lives, want to contribute in a meaningful way to the kids that they love. So how do we create an experience that really enables parents to invest for their kids to build the best future they can, allows friends and family to really easily and meaningfully participate and remove some of that discomfort for both parties involved?

At the center of all of that, of course, is always the EarlyBird kids who are on our platform and how do we create an experience that gives them the financial start, but also the emotional support so that when they have access to the account, when they're adults, they have access to take on whatever their dreams are, but they also have the emotional support. They feel that confidence in moving forward and saying," Look at all of these people who helped get me here. I believe that I can do this because these people believed in me". So it's really bringing together those different needs and desires and thinking about, how do we really help parents and families create the best future for the kids that they care about?

Jordan Wexler: That's awesome. When you think about building something so large like Earlybird 2.0, and this idea of a community and having multiple users and family members under one platform, there are a ton of complexities when you go through it, what were some of the largest challenges that we experienced or you had to navigate as we were delivering such a robust feature like this?

Laur Mohler: Yeah, on the experience side, I think it's that we really have these two different core user groups, that have different understandings and comprehensions of what EarlyBird is specifically, and what we are building generally. And so, how do we really communicate the experience to both of these two user bases meaning parents and the non-parents on our platform, with this new concept all at the same time? So that, to me, was one of the bigger challenges.

In the background, one of the other large challenges is always: how do we effectively allow people to contribute into these various investment accounts? So there's a lot of how money moves in the background and having other people be involved in this experience. Making sure we're really building the right infrastructure behind our platform to allow friends and family to both contribute emotionally and financially in this integrated experience. Working through how we would make that actually function and work, was probably the other big challenge.

Jordan Wexler: When you think about bringing on – most apps have one core user, right? If you think about some of the apps that we use. I think, as we were digging in here, the idea of bringing in potentially 10, 15, 20 different users, that all have different engagements with the child – an aunt, an uncle, a grandparent, a best friend. There's just so much to consider in that experience and then, of course, also trying to navigate what and how we can deliver something as fast as possible so that you all can really experience it and give us feedback, and we can learn from you – what it is you're really looking for. How the engagement works has definitely been an amazing learning experience. So the last question that I wanted to cover was: Now that this is live, which is awesome, what are you most excited about that we are looking to build next?

Laur Mohler: I think one of the biggest things is really expanding and improving our co-parent access. We know it's one of the most important features for our users, but also for kids that do have two parents, having both of those parents be able to build their account and add moments and contribute to their child's future feels really, really important. So, that's one that I'm excited for us to continue to expand over the next few months. I think also continuing to just improve our moments feature. I think we were still sort of figuring out exactly how we position that feature and create the experience so that people feel like they're really investing these moments into a time capsule, that their child will have this organized and  well laid out collection of contributions from their friends and family. So I think continuing to improve that experience, continuing to create what our vision is there. I'm really excited about.

I think the last thing is just continuing to listen to our users. I think, as an investing platform, that is something we can help guide our users to make the right investing choices for their families, by really listening to our families and hearing, what do they want? What does building the best future for their kid look like to them? How do we help all of the people in a kid's family feel included and feel comfortable, participating? Really, our users are the ones who are going to be able to tell us that So I'm just excited to continue to listen and learn from all of our users and now we have a lot more. With people joining the 'nest', we have this whole new user base that we have a lot to learn from and we're excited to have conversations with those folks over the coming weeks and months.

Jordan Wexler: Awesome. Yeah, I think we definitely learned the importance of that full co-parent access as we started with the 'nest', being able to invite your co-parent into the nest. But that is a different experience that you really want that shared experience as a co-parent. What we also learned is that parents bring different behaviors to the platform. One parent might be much more heavy on the investment side, that they care about and the other parent might be much more heavy on the emotional capital side and logging and building this time capsule of love and support for the child. So, really having both of those is going to be critical, in a seamless way.

So that is what is coming up next, which we are deeply focused on and hopefully delivering in the next couple months to everyone. So, thank you so much for taking a little time, Laur, and talking through some of the decisions made and the story behind EarlyBird 2.0. We really appreciate it. For anyone else on, if there were any other questions that you had about EarlyBird and what we were building – either the functionality, what's coming up next, things you'd like to see, experiences you've had – we would love to hear.

Q&A

Nishit Sadhwani: Hi Jordan.  I can go, and I've already discussed this with Caleb, but a lot of 'nest' members for me and my kid are not in the US or not in North America but I'd love for them to be able to essentially be part of this journey. So I would say at least, even if you don't open up contributions globally, just being able to comment and look at the moments as another social media, I think that would be great.

Jordan Wexler: It's a great comment, great points. The global nature of, I think, the world now, there's a Definite need there and one that we will take into deep consideration. I think there might be limited abilities – so you might not be able to actually invest but some visibility for those 'nest' members would be awesome.

Nishit Sadhwani: Yes, and I understand the investing aspect There are much bigger things, different currency – there are a lot of variables in play but just being able to add moments or at least comment on those, I think that would be great.

Giana Korth: Hi guys, I'll jump in. First of all, huge congrats. It looks fantastic. I haven't been using the app in a little while, so it's pretty cool to see. I'm trying to get reinvigorated.

I'm familiar from a while of knowing Jordan and the team which is fantastic, more through Pace Line, I think. But then I downloaded the app to start using for my goddaughter, which has been, I guess about six months or so. And then just recently I became an aunt about two weeks ago, and it just came back on my radar that this is exactly what I need to do and set up for my niece. So, I guess my question is forgive me for being a little bit of a novice at the moment, but is this something that I need to recommend my brother set up first? Is that the more appropriate way and I should say, "Hey, Vince, you should create this and then I want to be a key part of the nest and start making the bigger contributions", or would it be something that I could actually set up for my niece and then they could join. What's the appropriate, best way to do it?

Laur Mohler: Yes, I think it depends on how you are envisioning the account being managed. So the person who opens the account is the custodian of that account or is essentially the owner of that account in the benefit of that child. So, that would be the person – you'd have to have the child's Social Security Number to be able to open that account, and then you would be responsible for managing that account. Other people could then be invited to participate. So you could do that, just like you've done for your godchild, or you could recommend to your brother, "Open this account for your niece. I'd love to be included. I'd love to participate". Another way to sort of recommend EarlyBird in that scenario is you can actually send a gift to your brother for your newly-born niece. And say, "I wanted to kickstart your EarlyBird account and they can then actually go in, accept that gift, create their account and add you to the 'nest' sort of in that flow. So that's another way to share EarlyBird with your new parent friends.

I think Jordan will be fine with me saying this, if you were interested in sort of actually giving the gift of EarlyBird, we are working on ways to enable that, but we could work with you one-on-one to actually do it so that you could pay for a year of EarlyBird for your brother and gift him the gift of EarlyBird so that he could kind of use it without having to pay that management fee for a year. If that's something you're interested in, I can shoot you a note after this, and we can work with you kind of doing it in the hacky way that we can today, and let you truly give the gift of EarlyBird if that was interesting for you.

Giana Korth: Love that. Remind me the cost again?

Laur Mohler: Typically it's a monthly fee for parents but we are able to offer an annual fee or give you the option to gift an annual membership for a single child. I believe it's $28.99 for the year.

Giana Korth: For the year, fantastic. And then are there times, even for you Jordan or you Laur – I'm sure you have accounts too, where a child would have one from a parent and one that's managed from an aunt. Or is it really ideal to have it all be one and just try to get people – ?

Laur Mohler: It's ideal to have one. So one person has the custodial account, they manage that account so they select the portfolio, they choose how the funds are invested, but then anybody can contribute to it. Typically a parent would be the person who'd open the account but we do see non-parents do that. They say, "My sibling doesn't want to do that or maybe that that's not something they're going to do, but I really want my niece or nephew to have this account when they're older, so I'm just going to open it for them".

Giana Korth: Okay, awesome. I love the idea of gifting so can I drop my email in here?

Laur Mohler: Yes, and I can follow up with you.

Giana Korth: I think that sounds like a perfect option. I can gift it to get them going. I should probably do that in hindsight. I didn't really get as far as I wanted to with my goddaughter, so this is a great opportunity to reset. So I'm thinking maybe I'll just take your advice and do the gifting for both and it seems like a really awesome way. I'm sure that's a great way for you guys to be getting the right kind of owner in through a bit of a referral type of situation, which seems great.

Jordan Wexler: Yeah, we see a lot of people – I mean that's the idea. Any baby in your life that ever comes around, the first thing, you think of is EarlyBird to send that gift. They don't need an account, they don't need it set up. You would send a gift and then you get a group thread text message with your number, their number and the EarlyBird number. The EarlyBird number has a link in it, they click on it, it opens up a web experience. They can see the gift. They can engage and look at EarlyBird and they can accept the gift, download the app, and then create their account. And now, they can invite you directly into the 'nest', so that you also have visibility into the account and you can be part of that experience, you can upload moments, you can share so much through the new platform. That's the best way to engage people to get started.

Giana Korth: Perfect. Sounds awesome.

Jordan Wexler: Amazing. And now we are at time. If there were any other questions, please just shout them out but if not, there's going to be a ton more coming out over the next couple weeks about EarlyBird 2.0 and we'll be sharing more tutorials and different ways to engage and get involved. So we really appreciate everyone taking time on a Friday, we hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will talk soon.

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