August 2015. This is where it started. We came second.
Wesley Goi and I built a financial calculator at a hackathon — a tool to help people in Singapore figure out how much insurance or savings they actually needed based on their life situation. Simple inputs, clear outputs, no adviser required.
what we built
A calculator that took personal financial parameters — income, dependants, liabilities, goals — and produced a snapshot of coverage gaps and savings targets. The idea was to demystify financial planning for people who found the whole space opaque and adviser-driven.
what happened after
The hackathon version was a calculator. But the conversations we had while presenting it kept pointing at the same underlying problem: people didn't lack calculators, they lacked someone they could trust to ask questions to.
That insight was what became the real product. We spent the next few months rethinking the whole thing, and in January 2016 we formally started fundMyLife the startup — an NLP-powered platform to match consumers with financial advisers based on their questions.
The hackathon gave us the problem. The pivot gave us the business.