Quirk Helps You Save And Spend Smarter In Ways That Match Your Goals And Personality

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Quirk is a financial education and personal finance app. To learn more about the company we sat down with Nikos Melachrinos, CEO & Co-Founder of Quirk:

Q: For those who have never heard of it, how would you describe Quirk?

A: We’re taking a new approach in that we combine psychology with money management and focus on helping people understand their personality type when it comes to money, and how they can best tailor their approach to their finances based on that. We provide both educational content to help people learn more about money and finance, as well as, letting users connect their bank accounts in order to get insights, track their spending, and set up a budget (we call it a spending plan). My co-founder and I are designers, who’ve had our own problems with the state of financial literacy and the way financial services operate, and we’ve set out to create a very honest, easy, and enjoyable experience that can really alleviate a lot of the stress from the process of your money management and help you grow your knowledge, and grow your money.

Q: Can you give us more insights into your unique personality test?

A: Definitely, the money personality test was developed over the course of 2020 with the help of expert academics and psychologists. It combines already established measures from psychometrics and personality tests, but we’ve combined that with a unique set of financial behaviours like risk appetite, saving tendencies, impulsivity and some others. We then surveyed 5,000 people across different demographics and were able to build some general profiles (the money personality types) and find the questions that were most predictive of a person’s type. We’ve created 4 main personas right now, the Artist, the Blissful, the Optimizer, and the Explorer, and there are different strengths and weakness to each. The personality test is not meant to be prescriptive, which is why we show in the results how someone has scored across all the different parameters that make up a personality type and really those are where the real value comes from. Once someone takes the personality test, in the app we then tailor the user experience according to that so they get a personalized view on things.

Q: Who would be your ideal user and why?

A: Quirk has been designed with young people in mind who’re just getting started on their journey of financial independence and who are on their first or second job, managing money for the first time. It’s for people interested in self-development and who want to set a good foundation in their finances, right from the start. It works really well for them because there is little trust in established financial services or banks, so its important to be speaking to people in everyday language, being honest, and using good design to genuinely provide a value add to their life. It’s also who we are, we’re young people who are figuring out money and are frustrated that we didn’t get access to tools like this when we finished university!

In practice, however, I will say that we’ve seen older folks use Quirk too and I think that’s a function of how important financial education is and how much it’s been lacking in people’s lives, even if they’re very advanced in their careers.

Q: What’s your revenue model? How are you funded?

A: Quirk recently closed a pre-seed funding round of £300k led by SFC Capital, Koa Health, and some really phenomenal angel investors. As for the revenue model, we’re establishing partnerships with other financial services that we really value and trust to recommend to our users. If a user signs up for one of those services we get paid a referral fee. Quirk is free for everyone right now and we’re focusing on improving the experience as much as possible. Eventually, we’ll introduce a premium subscription for some advanced features that we’re working on, but the standard experience remains free.

Q: What is next on the roadmap for Quirk?

A: We’re working towards a public launch of the app in the next few months as we’re still in closed beta. You can sign up for early access on our website. We’re also hiring some new roles to grow the team! As for product features, we’re initially focused on creating the best money management experience in the market, but soon after we have some really exciting features around community and personalized recommendations.

Last Updated on May 7, 2021

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