The Psychology of Money: What Most Fintech Apps Miss

When Kelsey Willock walked into The Pitch Room, she opened with a stat that most of us can relate to:

👉 88% of Americans feel anxious about money.

So… basically everyone.

U.S. employers are losing $500 billion per year in productivity to financial stress. Millennials and Gen Z are demanding better support — 80% of Gen Z say financial education is a must-have from employers.

Yet, here’s how most companies "solve" financial wellness:
🧾 Hand you a 401k brochure
📞 Maybe throw in a hotline to a financial planner

But as Kelsey points out, “Most individuals don’t need a certified financial planner. They don’t have complex financial situations.” What they do have? Deep-seated money hangups.

And most fintech tools ignore them completely.

A Coach for Your Money

Kelsey’s pitch flipped the table.

“When we pitch Aura,” she said, “it’s the first time they’ve ever heard the word ‘psychology’ and ‘money’ in the same sentence.”

That might sound fluffy — until you hear about Aura’s approach.

With help from behavioral scientists at Georgetown and Cornell, the team built what’s essentially a Myers-Briggs for money. Just eight questions, but it gets to the heart of why someone behaves the way they do with money. Unlike typical budgeting tools that only address surface-level spending habits, Aura tackles the deeper psychology driving financial behaviors.

Because let’s be honest: the person who hoards cash in checking isn’t the same as the one day trading meme stocks on Robinhood. You can’t coach them the same way.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Aura’s psychology-first model? It seems to be working:

• 37% of users take meaningful financial action within 30 days

• Only 1.8% churn among employer-sponsored users

• Average user age? 33 — squarely in the Millennial "I've got responsibilities now" zone 👶🏡💼

• Strong traction with first-generation Americans, a group often left out of traditional financial systems

• One client (a Fortune 100 company) replaced their old wellness vendor with Aura and hit their annual enrollment target in a single day.

As Kelsey put it, “You need to feel the pain… of having to provide for a household, buy a home, take care of a child or a parent” to truly change your money habits.

What’s next?

Aura is now training its own AI money coach, using anonymized behavioral data to personalize interventions even further. Think Noom meets Wealthfront, but grounded in your personal psychology.

They’re also helping HR teams understand what their people actually want — using predictive analytics to surface insights like: Dental hygienists in Chicago are trying to buy homes. Maybe your comp strategy should reflect that.

There is a catch…

Selling to HR is difficult with long sales cycles. Investors hate long sale cycles.

But Kelsey’s got that figured out too.

"We knew we couldn't go through the front door. We would have to go through a side door"

Instead of banging her head against that locked corporate front door, Kelsey discovered a back channel: Employee Resource Groups (ERGs).

If you’ve never heard of them, think of ERGs as internal communities—like women in tech, Latinx employees, or first-gen professionals—that often have their own budgets and a surprising amount of autonomy.

By starting with ERGs, Aura found a wedge into companies that usually take a year or more to close. And once inside, they had real user data, engagement rates, and testimonials to convert the rest of the org.

In other words, a founder’s dream.

🎥 Watch Kelsey’s pitch on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app 🎧

What The Pitch investors said…

They liked:
✅ Kelsey’s deep understanding of behavioral psychology and money
✅ Strong early traction with enterprise customers
✅ Unique go-to-market via employee resource groups (ERGs)

They didn’t like:
⚠️ Retention risk when users change jobs

The Essentials

• Company: Aura Finance

• Founded: 2022

• HQ: San Francisco, CA

• Current Raise: $3M seed at $15M post-money

• Industry: Fintech + HR Tech

• Business Model: B2B SaaS, per user subscription

• Annual Recurring Revenue: $830K (as of January 2025)

• Notable Customers: LinkedIn, Pinterest, Figma, Fortune 100 enterprise

• Founders: Kelsey Willock (CEO), Courtney Carden

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Josh Muccio

Host of The Pitch Show // general partner at The Pitch Fund

Josh is a founder-turned-podcaster-turned-VC at The Pitch Show & Fund. Josh founded his first company in 2010 after pitching his e-commerce idea to a panel of investors in college. After exiting the business four years later, Josh ventured into the world of podcasting and started The Pitch. Which sold to Gimlet Media in 2017... which sold to Spotify in 2019.

Now the plot twist! In 2022 Josh & his cofounder/wife Lisa bought the show back, took it independent and started The Pitch Fund. A public 506(c) fund for listeners to invest in the startups featured on the show.