By Jennifer Sieg
Jennifer Sieg meets the sisters-turned-business-partners duo behind the Manchester-based budgeting app Financielle for this week’s Ambition A.M. founder profile.
Listing out your finances whenever payday comes around each month is never an exciting chore. For some people, it’s actually a rather dreadful one.
Laura Pomfret and Holly Holland, the sisters-turned-business-partners duo behind the Manchester-based budgeting app Financielle, however, tell me they are on a mission to make it fun – and effective.
Financielle, which was founded in 2018, works by incorporating a community-based forum within a female-focused mobile app that gives users access to easy-to-digest content and user-friendly planning tools.
Now, having hit a milestone of over 200,000 downloads and nearly 10,000 users in 188 countries, Pomfret and Holland – who admittedly have no background in finance, tech, or entrepreneurship – tell me the long journey to where they are now has been worth it.
“Some people are just destined to run a business,” Pomfret says, smiling at her sister.
How the budgeted budgeting app works
The way Financielle works is fairly simple, the sisters are quick to explain, but it was never meant to just be another average budgeting app for people on a budget.
“Everyone’s aligned with what you should do financially, but everyone seems to make it really complicated,” Pomfret says.
You don’t come to us just track what you’re doing already – you can do and it’s nice and it’s aesthetic and it’s a bit different – but you’re meant to come to us to change.
By using a data-led approach, Financielle users are able to see real-time achievements, much like that of physical exercise tracking apps used to monitor progress after inputting a specific goal or milestone.
Pomfret says: “Like Strava, you’re tracking your runs, but then they build up to a total, a target, a longer term baseline of like where you’re at and a lot of habit change in fitness and health apps do that – but finance apps didn’t.
“They’re telling us that they’re becoming debt free, but I don’t see it, they’re telling us that they are building emergency savings, but I don’t see it.
“So I just kept thinking this community data is really cool.”
The app operates on a freemium model, allowing users to use basic tools for free and offers a £23.99 a year premium version for those looking to change their long-term habits.
How to find the right platform and audience
Financielle’s first minimum viable product (MVP), Pomfret says, was “a PDF and a spreadsheet that we initially tried to give away” after building up a rather large social media following with an anonymous Instagram account.
Turns out, people actually wanted to pay for it, and once they put a price tag on it, demand started to grow.
“We then suddenly whacked a price on it of like 50 quid [and] we sold hundreds, like six or 700 in the first month, because it was kind of this product that seemed to finally meet people’s needs,” Pomfret adds.
The natural interest signalled the possibility of a business, the two agree, which is why they got to learning how to turn the idea into the app that it is now – by doing a little bit of research, and of course, asking some questions.
Research suggests that some women make up some 85 per cent of the world’s average consumer spend, the two say, and the numbers highlighted that women looking to budget was an audience worth reaching.
We’ve worked out all the ways in which women are behind when it comes to their personal finances.
“At the time, we were asking our users where are you managing your money? Where are you speaking to other people? Where are you tracking habits?” she adds.
How to spend your money wisely
Starting a business in tech isn’t easy, and raising investment as a female-focused business-to-consumer app is even harder, they tell me, especially as two first-time founders.
“Every fundraiser has a difficult fundraising journey, it’s not easy for any gender, but I think it was stacked against us – first time founders, BTC app, I mean, it’s enough to kind of shut the laptops,” Pomfret laughs.
Now, they’re nearing the end of their first £1m seed round and are looking to expand the team and technology even further.
What’s been most difficult so far, however, was learning how to spend their own money as an early-stage start-up wisely.
“It is expensive to maintain and grow and change and you want to be able to change things quickly for users, you want to be able to do tests, you want to be able to work out what works and what doesn’t, and that takes talented people,” Pomfret says.
“The challenge for us has been we knew we needed capital to invest in some quality people to help us do that [but] the pace at which you can raise that capital is so slow, then the hiring of quality people is slow, and so I think I never envisaged that taking so long,” she adds.
Pomfret and Holland are quick to agree that community is sorely needed when it comes to starting or building any new business venture, and luckily, they say they’ve found their place within their own while building one for others.
CV
Name: Laura Pomret
Company: Financielle
Founded: 2021
Staff: 6
Title: Co-Founder
Age: 36
Born: Wigan
Lives: Culcheth, Warrington
Studied: University of Leeds
Talents: Making intimidating and overwhelming financial topics digestible and relatable.
Motto: You can’t be what you can’t see
Most known for: Being the money girl on the TV
First ambition: Become a lawyer
Favourite book: Invisible Women by Carolin Criado Perez
Best piece of advice: Listen to Michelle Obama on imposter syndrome when she said “I Have Been at Every Powerful Table You Can Think of… They Are Not That Smart”
CV
Name: Holly Holland
Company: Financielle
Founded: 2021
Staff: 6
Title: Co-Founder
Age: 34
Born: Wigan
Lives: Culcheth, Warrington
Studied: Manchester Metropolitan University
Talents: Identifying opportunities and making them happen.
Motto: “They can only say no”.
Most known for: Co-Founder of Financielle
First ambition: To do something extraordinary in my life
Favourite book: I have a new favourite book every week! I love reading.
Best piece of advice: Be scrappy!
