Team OinOi sought to build a peer-to-peer lending platform to facilitate lending between friends and family. Over 11 weeks and 139 interviews, they refined their target customer segments and value proposition. Initially aiming to improve overall financial health, they pivoted to focus on facilitating short-term loans between recent graduates. Realizing issues around fraud and regulation, they concluded further market testing was needed before developing an MVP. Key lessons included the importance of domain expertise, clear customer focus, balancing thinking and execution, and accepting differing opinions.

1. Team OinOi
Provide same convenience as
a bank savings account with better
returns
Market type: Resegmented
Market size: SAM = $3 B / TAM = $17 B
Interviews: 139
Antoine(MBA) Yacine (M.Eng.) Apurv (EECS) Bill (CS/Econ)

2. Our journey : Building a startup in the Fintech space …
w2: 32 itws
w5: 79 itws
w8: 109 itws
w11: 139 itws
w0: 0 itw
Help people save money by
making it fun, easy, and
social
Help people improve their
financial health
F2F : Friend to Friend and
Family to Family Lending
Manage the process of F2F Lending
Provide same convenience as
a bank savings account
with better returns
w3: 50 itws

3. Original hypothesis was that everyone wants to save
money if provided with a convenient solution
Week 0
0/139 Interviews
o Build it and they will come
o Segment is ALL the millennials
o MVP is iWatch app because it’s cool
CREDIT
WEALTH
EXPENSES
Financial Health

4. ‘‘I don’t want an app to control my
financial decisions’’ Aneesh w1
‘‘I want more savings, but I wait
for after college. I am too
stressed out now.’’ Andrew w2
We boiled down the ocean and we learned that no one
cared about our product
Week 2
32/139 Interviews
• Reimburse their
debt
• Save up for a
specific long-
term goal
• Reduce their
expenses
• Improve their
credit-score
• Pay less fees
• Develop good
habits (budget)
• Gain interest
income
• Too complex
• Feel anxious
about financial
security
• Too abstract
• Time consuming
to keep tracks of
expenses
• Financial
fitness coach
that helps
you improve
your
financial
health
• Prevents people
from having to
track manually
their $$$
• Unique financial
health score
• Engaging financial
experience through
missions
• Creates good
financial habits such
as skip coffee
Initial Value proposition:
Help people improve their financial health
What we did NOT do well
• Too broad customer
segmentation
• Didn’t interview with clear
hypothesis to (in)validate
Lessons learned:
• Don’t boil down the ocean
• Target interviews with
hypothesis to test
• Hard to validate any hypothesis
w/o segmentation
• Ban the word “people”
Red mark-ups = insights from interviews

5. Restart our BMC based on an Ahah moment
Week 3
50/139 Interviews
Her face turned WHITE !!!
Memorable interview RESTART so we can fix her problem
Customer
segments
Value
proposition
• Remove social awkwardness
• Save time
• Report credit bureau
- default risk + credit score
• Int’l student that wants to stay LT
in the US and need to build up
their credit score
• 25-35y that had issues lending
$400-$10,000 to a friend

6. Tested several segments and found a suitable niche
Week 5
79/139 Interviews
Dismissed 4 segments but
found 2 segments who
valued our product
Refined our value
proposition for these
specific segments
MBA student that
borrows his tuition
from his parents
Undergrad student
that borrows his
tuition from his
parents
Berkeley provides
short-term 0% loans to
students
Lent to a friend and
need help to get it back
MBA student want to
build my credit score
Undergrad int’l student
want to build my credit
score
FUNDRAISING
• Many:1
• >$5,000
BRIDGE LOAN
• 1:1
• $100-$2000
CREDIT
INVISIBLE
Move fast. Pick one. Just do It.
‘‘That would be fabulous to build my
credit score’’ MBA student w4
‘‘Asking to be paid back is very annoying!
And it happens so often!’’ Karl w6
CUSTOMER JOBS
- Be a good friend
- Get their money back
- Build CS
GAINS
- Save time
- Preserve relationship
PAINS
- Sending reminders is awkward
- Wasted time administering loan
- Loan terms unclear
- Never get paid back
- Ruin Friendships
- Quick and easy
way to issue a
LOAN
- Facilitate the
payment collection
PROCESS
PAIN RELIEVERS
- Create leverage
- Remove social annoyance
GAIN CREATORS
- Automate recovery
process
- Preserve relationship
Value Proposition:
Facilitate F2F Lending
Customer Segment:
LENDER (Friend 25-35 y.o. with money)

7. Too few customers seemed ready to pay enough to
offset the CAC and so we pivoted
Week 8
109/139 Interviews
Referral 10%
CR 2% 30%Source Mix
Organic 25%
Social 20%
Branded PPC 15%
Keyword PPC 5%
TV 5%
Radio 5%
Mail 5%
Referrers 20%
Churn 5%
“Generate leads”
Assessed our key
metrics based on our
competitors
Realized that our
TAM/SAM was too small
at this price point
‘‘It's a high volume / low margin business’’ Steve Rabago (ZimpleMoney)

8. Pivot to address the CAC concerns of previous idea
Week 9
119/139 Interviews
Lessons learned:
• K.I.S.S.
• Complexity shows a lack of
refinement
• Low-fidelity can get you far
 Lender 1
 Lender 2
 Lender 3
 Lender 4
 Lender 5
5%
expected
return
Safeguard
equity
fund
BORROWER
Recent grad 30y
who has $100
savings per
month
LENDER
Recent grad 25-35y
who needs 3-6 month
loan of $500-$10,000
Automated
deposit
Automated
matching
Cushion for safety
& liquidity

9. Activity NMA.com ZimpleMoney LendingClub Acorns/Digits
Customer Rel. Organic growth 0.5 FTE sales rep In-house In-house / PR
Loan Risk
assessment
Outsourced to the
lender
Outsourced to the
lender
In-house n/a
Regulation Outsourced to
external lawyers
Outsourced to
external lawyers
In-house legal
team
Mix of both
FTE (#) 5 3 1,000 90/ 10
Payment Partner (clearing
house)
Partner (clearing
house
Partner
(WebBank)
Partner
(WebBank)
Finance Self-funded Self-funded IPO-ed Raised
Identify how our
competitors solve their
execution challenges
Studied the feasibility…
and realized we forgot two major show-breakers
Week 10
129/139 Interviews
Lessons learned:
• Been there done that.
• Nothing like competitors to show how oblivious you are.
We forgot Fraud and discovered how complex the regulation was
‘‘Fraud almost killed our
business’’ Tim Burke (NFM)
‘‘You need to register at the SEC and to obtain
lots of certificates ’’ Gabriel Kleiner (Acorns)

10. So here is where we ended up
Our MVP Our BMC
● Good understanding of key activities
● Still in a marketing play / no real technological edge
● What would we do next?
● Drill down on the segments to find early adopters outside F&F
● Test different MVP to integrate better this concept of “social lending”

11. Lessons learned from other teams
• Domain expertise
• Anchor
– Technology
– Existing product
• Passion

12. One more thing …
• Audience-focused communication
– Team
– Faculty
– Office hour
• Balance thinking versus execution
• Everyone will have a (different) opinion

13. !!! This is a Big Idea !!!
Faculty
All the teams
Mentor