Built by investors, for investors

We're building Greenline together and lead a small team. We've each spent over a decade shipping products at YC-backed startups (including one of Canada's first-ever YC companies), VC-funded scale-ups, and public tech companies, across edtech, childcare, eCommerce, and Big Data. The common thread: building software people trust with their data.

We're also self-taught DIY investors and personal finance geeks. Friends, family, and friends of friends have been coming to us with money questions for years. That's how we know what other DIY investors actually struggle with, and what nobody is bothering to build for them.

I grew up in an immigrant family where personal finance was never part of the conversation. Not at home, not in high school, not in university. Nobody ever sat us down and explained how money actually works.

For a long time, investing felt like something rich people did. Something you figured out after you "made it," not the thing that actually helps you get there. When I moved out on my own, I had no idea how much rent could cost. What was cheap? What was too much? I had no frame of reference for any of it. I deposited every paycheque into chequing for years. Didn't even know there were better options.

One day a bank teller I'd never met stopped and asked why I kept everything in chequing. My answer: "Where else would I put it?" The teller said: "Anything else. High interest savings, GICs, mutual funds, whatever." That one conversation changed everything.

That led to months of reading, researching, and slowly figuring things out. Moving money into low-cost mutual funds. Then one day I checked my account and saw a balance of $5,520. I was genuinely confused. Did I put in $5,500? Where did the $20 come from? When I realized I'd only put in $5,000, it got even crazier. I don't think $520 had ever just fallen on my lap before. That was the first time money had worked for me instead of just sitting there.

After that, I went deep. Read everything I could. Watched every market move. Wanted to understand what my money was actually doing. I tracked everything in Mint at first. Then I learned that using it was voiding my banking guarantees. So I stopped, and built what I needed in spreadsheets instead.

Over time, friends and family started asking for help with their finances. I'd send them my spreadsheets. One friend even suggested I help her invest and offered me 10% of the upside. I was like, that's crazy. No way am I taking that. But it told me something: too many people have no frame of reference for what's fair. Is 1% good? Is 3% bad? Nobody teaches you this stuff.

My spreadsheets worked, but they were exhausting. Formulas on top of formulas. Constant maintenance. The moment I tried to expand my analysis, I risked breaking everything.

Mint shut down entirely in 2024 anyway.

I kept thinking: there has to be a better way.

Around then I teamed up with Luis. He grew up in an immigrant family too, figured out personal finance entirely on his own, and had the same turning point I did: realizing how much changes once you understand where your money is going and what it's doing. We came at it from different directions, but landed in the same place.

So we built one. We use it every day. And we keep working on making it better, alongside our community of users who give us feedback and ideas.

We hope you'll join us too.