The Rules:

Every week I breakdown startup pitches with the added hook that you can invest whether you’re accredited or not (if you don't know what that means, click here).

I base my review on a 3-minute founder pitch and some light diligence.

My scoring system is not a validation of idea, or grading for likelihood of success. It just means, all things being equal at launch — this startup has these boxes checked.

What I look for:

1. Founder — ability to lead, sell into and influence a given market

2. Idea — is it inevitable or solving a BIG problem in a scaleable way

3. TAM — how big is the total addressable market

4. Traction — do they have meaningful early traction

5. Unfair Advantage — do they have a competitive edge

★★★★☆

Company Overview

FitBUX uses analytics and AI to plan your finances 👉 Watch The Pitch 📺

Key People: Joseph Reinke (founder and CEO, a CFA with more than a decade of investing and wealth management experience.) Other team members include alums from companies such as PayPal, Lockheed Martin and Dell.

Traction: FitBUX is on a roll, recently exiting beta with more than $1.5B in AUM from more than 10,000 members 👀 with a new partnership launching that could potentially introduce them to another 130k members — which is incredible. But, what’s even more incredible is the cash efficiency… only $225k raised to-date.

Terms & Takeaway

Invest in FitBUX here 👉 Term Sheet

Security Type: Crowd Safe

Pre-Money Valuation: $10,000,000

Raised (as of publishing): $33,175

Minimum Investment: $150.00

Here's what I like: Obviously, if you’re reading this you know that I place a high value on investing, particularly at the retail level. That said, the barrier to smart investing (despite the many awesome tools, M1 Finance, Robinhood, Acorns, etc.) is still reasonably high. And, the main reason for that is financial literacy and fear of screwing up. That is why I really love the mission FitBUX has — its goal is to enable ANYONE to invest smarter — by allowing AI and human capital analytics to identify the unique needs of any person or family, rather than a cookie cutter approach. For example, I loved Acorns, it’s how I got started, but I was a single guy making a tiny income, so who cares as long as I was saving/investing something (anything really, lol). Imagine starting now, with 2 small kids, a decent income, a wife with a pension and a house… that is a little different ballgame and FitBUX exists to tailor my specific investment plan to exactly what my current and future lifestyle requires. I absolutely love it.

Also, from an investment perspective, I am obsessed with how efficiently the team is growing the user base and the fact they’ve already got more than $1 billion in assets under management means people are seeing real value and continuing to move more money onto the platform.

Here's what I don't love: Literally, the only thing to poke at here is how crowded the robo-investing space is (and will continue to become). There is an auto-invest tool for literally every stage of life… but, the good news is every human being on Earth is a potential customer.

To truly be successful, FitBUX will need to do two things incredibly well — a) continue to sign up new members at a ridiculously cheap rate and b) effectively get those members to move much of their wealth over to the platform (and keep it there). If they can do that, they’ll become an incredibly attractive acquisition target for large financial institutions losing market share to apps. If not, they could quickly become just another finance platform to choose from.

Who should invest and why: The $10M value cap is extremely attractive to me given the early signs of growth and operational efficiency. The buy-in is low at $150 minimum and the margins are fantastic. Overall, I think the approach to finance that FitBUX is introducing is extremely smart and effective and in a way they separate themselves from most self-directed investing tools by providing a more custom approach — only without countless hours on the phone with a financial advisor and the useless annual gift of a desk calendar.

As always, startup investing is super high-risk, anything can happen.

Invest in FitBUX here 👉 Term Sheet

Questions, DM me 🤳 @kitun.

Disclaimer: It goes without saying, but this information should not be constituted as financial advice, my investing opinions are my own and all diligence is the responsibility of each individual investor.