Making Saving Money Fun Using Gamification With Long Game CEO Lindsay Holden

Our current economy is growing. Some would even say it is booming. Are you feeling the financial effects and saving more? My guest today, not only wants to solve the problem of people not saving enough but has found a way to do it that makes it fun. Lindsay Holden is the CEO and co-founder of Long Game an app that combines savings with gamification. With Long Game you get a personalized savings system that includes an FDIC insured account. This account is also interest bearing and is linked with winning prizes and getting free crypto rewards. It also educates users. Lindsay graduated from college with dual engineering degrees, but was interested in entrepreneurship. This is her second company. She has helped Long Game raise $6.6 Million from Thrive Capital and Collaborative Fund. In this interview, Lindsay shares her enthusiasm for the app, the purpose behind the app, and her inspiration. This is a great interview where a young entrepreneur shares how innovation can change our futures. Show Notes [03:17] Lindsay's dad was a huge influence in her life. He ran a pet hospital in San Francisco. [03:38] Being an entrepreneur for Lindsay is a combination of being a die-hard optimist and having a sincere interest in solving problems. [03:58] She started her career caring about problems with the environment. She then became more involved in tech and financial services. [04:29] Most people are extremely bad with their finances. [04:41] This is a huge macro problem. It is taboo to talk about financial stress. You can feel like you are failing when you are failing at your finances. [05:24] Lindsay was watching a John Oliver sketch on the lottery and realized how huge it was. [06:20] This inspired her to take a mechanism that people love and use it to inspire them to save. [06:30] Long Game is a mobile app that is an FDIC insured savings account. When you save money in the account, you get opportunities to win up to a million dollars. [06:49] This is a no risk way to engage in risky lottery type behaviors without risk. [07:07] The app solves the problem of savings and getting finances under control. [07:28] Half of Americans can't come up with $500 to cover an emergency. Most are walking a tightrope without a net. [08:25] A lot of people cope with financial problems by ignoring them. Many people don't budget. [11:08] Why gamification? How we feel really matters. The goal is to bring joy and fun into finances. The strategy to achieve that is to use games. [11:53] there are a lot of sparkles, graphics, characters, and you get to play a game of chance. This makes savings exciting and it feels different. [12:34] There was a lot of resistance at first especially from investors. [13:32] The purpose of the app is to help people make meaningful change by playing games as opposed to grinding through it. [13:57] They had to have a banking partner and convince them that came of was the way to go. [14:25] The first design of Long Game felt like a bank. Then they realized it didn't have to look and feel that way. [15:12] Crypto currency and how it plays a part in the platform. [15:25] Blockchain is a new way of storing and distributing information. People have built currencies on top of this platform. [15:42] It's an exciting time with crypto, but it is still a very volatile market. [16:12] Crypto isn't the most responsible place to put your $500 that you are saving for a rainy day. [16:16] Crypto was added as a reward in the app. You can win ethereum and bitcoin and other crypto currencies. This is an opportunity to encourage savings and to educate consumers about crypto. [16:55] Ethereum is a distributed computing network. It is on blockchain, transparent, and managed by a community of developers. They are building an infrastructure for other platforms to launch on. One of those is ethereum. [18:08] The purpose of Long Game is to attract people to save by enjoying rewards. The average Long Game consumer is under 26 years old and already aware or interested in crypto. This is just a way for them to be rewarded with more in a safe way. [23:29] Working in startups you learn a lot about your strengths and weaknesses. Early on in Lindsay's career she thought she had to be good at everything. She had her team take personality assessments and they all learned about their own strengths and weaknesses. [24:41] For Lindsay the test confirmed her traits like being a number seven an enthusiast. [26:05] Lindsay is willing to give up things that she doesn't do well at. [26:27] Lindsay's biggest accomplishment is Long Game. She is super proud of creating something completely new that is helping a lot of people. [27:18] Mistakes are how we learn. Maybe Lindsay's biggest mistake is not making more mistakes earlier. [29:11] At long game you earn .1% interest. They do plan to move into other financial services. [30:59] Everybody's Long Game account is personalized. And they are all different. [32:00] Lindsay likes to focus on the energy and ...