In 2014, I pitched YC partners on an idea I called Nino, a personal assistant that could actually get things done for you. I got a rejection from Justin Kan the same evening. He said it was too early. He was right. The same year, before OpenAI existed, I met Ilya Sutskever. We discussed what AI products were commercially viable to build based on the state of the art in deep learning and AI. We both concluded the tech wasn't quite ready yet.
In 2017, with my co-founder Chandan, we decided to revisit building a personal assistant but this time narrowed it down to money. But we hit another wall. Money had to move between a user's accounts, and with the payment APIs available to a consumer app back then, transfers took days to clear and the fees added up fast, especially on small transfers. We got excited about crypto as a means to upgrade our antiquated financial rails. Crypto was early too, and not yet very usable by the mainstream population beyond speculation. We decided to solve taxes and accounting first. That turned into CoinTracker (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16386419), and took up much of our last 9 years.
Now, AI is ready and we have better financial rails. We are no longer blocked. We have the opportunity to build a product that provides sound, sophisticated, personalized financial planning to everyone. Our mission is to unlock everyone's financial potential so they can build the life they want.
How it works: First, Nino connects to and ingests all of your financial accounts and information, including uploaded documents like tax returns, estate planning docs, etc; it keeps these up to date. Second, we have built modules for each part of your finances: equity compensation that knows about ISOs, AMT, and exercise timing; real estate knows about cash flow and cost basis; and so on. Third, an agentic AI layer that works across your financial data and understands your goals and needs; e.g. "when should I exercise" or "can I afford to take a year off?". And fourth, dedicated licensed humans (CFP and CPA) who shape the way the agentic system works based on their domain expertise, plus get looped in when their judgment and review are needed, with access to the full context.
We are currently focused on people with $1M+ in net assets, but plan to expand to a wider audience soon. Pricing is flat fee from $2,000/year, no AUM. We want to deliver maximum value to your financial life and avoid bias from managing your money. We are not a registered investment adviser; the CFP/CPA focus is tax and planning, not managing your assets. Financial connections are read-only, your data isn't used for training, and we don't sell it.
To check it out, see:
- Homepage: https://www.usenino.com/
- Demo: https://www.usenino.com/demo
- Product video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTzNKlaG9a0
We are in beta and onboarding from a waitlist as capacity allows: https://usenino.typeform.com/to/QSnf29CZ
Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear your honest feedback.
halfmatthalfcat•56m ago
I have it all backed up in Git, so as things evolve, there’s a paper trail and context.
All of this is to say, what does Nino provide beyond someone setting up something similar to what I did?
jonlerner•31m ago
The core things Nino adds are:
1. Automatic data ingestion. Connections to your financial accounts keep everything current without you maintaining the pipeline. This also lets Nino surface insights proactively.
2. Licensed humans in the loop. CFPs and CPAs review the AI's work, which could be especially critical for consequential decisions and filings. Working with them is low friction because they have direct access to the customer's data and interactions with agents.
3. It's built for you, so you don't need to do the work.
Over time we're building deterministic engines for financial planning and tax calc underneath the AI layer, since these aspects need to work 100% of the time.