2019 Wharton graduate Yuval Shuminer founded a new personal finance app Piere, that launched a public beta version in September.
Piere combines shared expenses, budgeting, and artificial intelligence to make personal budgeting easier for its users. The app makes use of machine learning to analyze the user’s income, expenses, and spending habits.
The Daily Pennsylvanian sat down with Shuminer, who currently serves as Piere's CEO, about the new app and its capabilities.
Shuminer said Piere's aim is to create an "incredibly personalized experience" that looks at your profile, the money you are making, and your life goals; it then provides the "best financial decisions" that users can feel confident in.
Shuminer said that she wanted a platform that could provide precise visibility about where her money was going and how much she was spending.
After graduating from Penn in 2019, Shuminer went on to work for Boston Consulting Group. After working at BCG for a few years, she decided to shift her focus to Piere, then a startup.
“I was looking for a platform that could give me clarity that gives me confidence in the financial decisions I was making,” Shuminer said.
Shuminer founded Piere with the goal of helping users to realize ways in which they could use their finances to elevate their quality of life, rather than letting their budgets limit them from experiences.
“I wasn’t looking to constrain my life," she said. "I was looking to do more: travel, eat out with my friends. I was so excited by all the things that I could do, and so I was really looking for this financial platform that helped me empower my life instead of constraining it."
Shuminer took issue with how other personal budgeting apps could not recognize group payments and compensations.
Shuminer gave an example of a group of people putting one card down to pay for a $300 meal. After leaving the restaurant, the rest of the group proceeds to pay back the person who paid. However, according to other financial budgeting apps, that person still paid $300 despite being compensated after.
Shuminer said that Piere, however, has the technology to automatically recognize these payments and not deduct from the user’s expendable income, again emphasizing Piere’s value of not constraining their users' spending.
Shuminer also explained the “pools” feature of the app. The feature lets people set their budget based on activity or an amount they need to collect, which can then allow people to contribute to the pool.
“Everything is automatically tracked,” Shuminer said. “All you have to do is create a pool where they will automatically track and let you know who’s contributed and who’s paid money.”
On Oct. 24, Piere released new advanced budgeting and net worth tracking features.
“We have built a functionality that looks at your income and spending history, and then recommends what would be the best budget for you," Shuminer said of the new budgeting feature. "So, this idea of this process that used to be incredibly manual and cumbersome is now easy. With two clicks, you have a budget."
According to Shuminer, the new advanced budgeting feature means that Piere will create a budget with unique spending goals based on the user’s financial history. The net worth tracking feature allows the user to link Piere to all aspects of one’s finances – including credit cards, loans, and investment accounts.
College junior Noah Katz currently serves as an intern for Piere, where his primary role concerns market strategy and how to best spread the word about the app on Penn’s campus. He also has the app downloaded for his personal use.
“It’s been a really educational experience," Katz said. "I joined the team super early on, maybe two weeks after the app was launched on the app store. So, it’s been really cool to see a business truly start from day one."
Shuminer said the journey toward launching Piere was motivated by identifying unmet opportunities.
“Be driven by where you see the biggest opportunities to guide your decision to become an entrepreneur," Shuminer said. "Don’t just become an entrepreneur to become an entrepreneur, but understand where in your life you see the opportunities to make things better."
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