Goal-Based Investing Ft. Reason [Podcast]

Welcome back to another episode of Fintech, What the Heck?. The best podcast for financial professionals, everything fintech, and the future of data! In this episode, we had the pleasure of interviewing Tara Falcone, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Reason. Reason is a goals-first investing assistant which allows you to define your investing goals, view your investments in one place, divvy investments up by goal, and track your success.

Highlights

Meet the Founder and CEO, Tara Falcone of Reason (:39)

We open the interview with Tara sharing a little about her background and why she founded Reason. Tara shares with the audience a personal story of her own struggles and obstacles she had to overcome growing up and being intimidated by money. She used that knowledge and skillset to figure out a way to apply it to her friends and family. She started out by asking groups of people what motivates them to put their money at risk that hasn’t motivated them before? In 2020, we all saw the ‘Rise of Retail Trader’ and Tara was able to use this as an opportunity to begin to launch her platform. She learned that when she asked most investors what short term goals they have and how they are dictating the investments they are buying or how they are tracking those investments, most of them had no idea and were just following what others were doing. To take it a step further, Tara’s then boyfriend came to her and said, “I have this much saved for an engagement ring, but really want to buy you a bigger ring – anything I should invest in to help make money?” This began the rudimentary prototype for Reason. She was able to put together a spreadsheet at the time that allowed him to play around with different allocations.

Andrew poses the question, “What is the user experience you are going for?” Tara explains that at Reason, investors can sync their investment accounts to the Reason app and drag and drop different investments over into each “reason” bucket and how much of each investment you want to assign to any bucket. She goes on to explain that the app even asks investors at what price would you be willing to sell this asset in the future to realize gains for one reason.

Andrew and Tara go on to discuss short- and long-term goals and how the app envisions users separating those goals. With Reason, you can save for investments in 6 months away all the way to retirement. Another key feature at Reason for those longer-term goals, such as retirement, you can break them up into smaller goals to make it feel more relatable and achievable. Tara’s hedge fund, CFA, and CFP background is unique for the industry and allows her to tap into investor’s why for doing things which sets her apart from other platforms. This then poses the question if this male-dominated industry is leaving a lot of female investors out? Tara 100% agrees and wants to change that with the Reason app.

We close out the interview by Tara sharing with listeners what’s on the roadmap at Reason and her vision for the next few years. She shares some key features of the app: being intentional with your investments, able to see why other people are investing in certain things and should start to receive exclusive perks and discounts for things people are investing for as all things to look forward to using the Reason app.

‍Where to watch previous episodes of Fintech, What the Heck?

Catch up on both seasons of Fintech, What the Heck? at youtube.com/intrinio, and all our episodes are available wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify! If you would like more information on our podcast or are interested in being on the show, email us at communications@intrinio.com. And if you would like more information on our financial services please request a consultation today. Our data experts are here to help and find a solution for your business.

‍