Monarch Money · B2C · personal finance and budgeting app
Publish a founder blog post the night a rival's shutdown leaks, with an importer ready
Daily signups jumped 20-30x and stayed there (shutdown itself drove most demand)
Workedcontentpr-launch
What they did
Had already built a Mint importer. When Mint posted on its support forum that it was going away (spotted on Reddit), the CEO wrote a blog post that evening as Mint's first PM: why pay for a personal finance product and why consider Monarch. Revised it when Mint officially announced the next day and published; it was picked up on many channels and by press.
What happened
The post 'lit the fuse'; daily signups rose 20-30x overnight and held for five months.
- Stage
- growth
This shipped together with other changes, so the result can't be credited to this alone.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Learning and Profiting from Black Swan Events — Val Agostino, Monarch Money“And then, we had no idea what was going on, but we already had built a Mint importer. And I wrote a blog post that evening”
“And we posted that, and that got picked up on a number of channels, and the press, and that kind of thing. And that's sort of what lit the fuse.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
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- Monarch Money: Let users vote on your roadmap from a Feature Requests link in settingsOver 15,000 votes and long comments that guide what gets built
- Monarch Money: Show clickable prototypes to the users who voted for a feature before buildingSlower up front but fewer release cycles; founder's claim
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- Monarch Money: Define user types, from students to retirees, and choose which to targetFounder says it helped decide focus and messaging; no numbers
- Monarch Money: Run a year-long private beta with a few hundred power usersPublic beta followed in early 2021; growth took off from there
- Monarch Money: Talk candidly on Reddit to a closing rival's users about your plans and gapsFounder says users found it authentic and trusted them; no separate numbers
- Monarch Money: Pause promised features and re-rank everything when a sudden opportunity hitsNew import extension shipped in ~48 hours vs 6+ weeks for rivals; ~70 minutes downtime
- Monarch Money: Grow the support team from 3 to 20+ people during a signup surgeBacklog of days to weeks at first; now back to 24-hour replies
- Monarch Money: Open Canada in beta after Canadians fake their location to sign upMixed: weaker bank connections frustrated some users, who were offered refunds
- Monarch Money: Build a content team teaching the personal finance basics schools skip
- Monarch Money: Keep the team small and aim for break-even even after raising VCTeam of 13 was ready when demand spiked; no financial numbers
- Mint: Offer a free finance app paid for by credit card offersLost money on every user due to data costs; offers hurt the product
- Monarch Money: Keep an 'open role' on your jobs page for people who don't fit a listingNearly half the team was hired this way