Why We’re Building 1Plan in Public

Most startups hide behind NDAs until launch. We think that’s backwards. Here’s why we’re sharing every decision, every mistake, and every win as we build the operating system for your life.

Here’s a question that should make you uncomfortable: how many apps have access to your financial data right now? Not just your bank. The budgeting app, the credit score tracker, the insurance comparison site you used once three years ago. They all have a piece of you. And most of them are quietly monetizing that data in ways their privacy policies technically allow but would horrify you if you read the fine print.

We’re building 1Plan to be the opposite of that. And we decided early on that the best way to prove it is to build the entire thing in public. Every architectural decision. Every pivot. Every week’s progress, good or bad.

The Trust Deficit in Fintech

The personal finance space has a credibility problem. Mint was supposed to be the dashboard for your financial life, but it became an ad platform. Credit Karma gives you a “free” score in exchange for a firehose of targeted financial product offers. Comparison sites rank providers by commission, not by fit. Users have been burned so many times that skepticism is the default response to any new financial tool.

We get it. When someone says “we’ll manage your entire financial life,” the rational response is: what’s the catch? Building in public is our answer. There is no catch. And we’ll prove it by showing you every line of thinking that goes into the product.

What Building in Public Means for Us

Building in public isn’t just tweeting screenshots. For us, it means sharing the real stuff: why we chose a warm parchment aesthetic over the typical fintech dark mode. Why we built a Most Favored Nation guarantee into our recommendation engine. Why we’re using a domain-entity data model instead of a flat account list. The decisions that shape the product are more interesting than the product itself.

• ●Weekly engineering updates with real metrics
• ●Design decisions explained with the reasoning behind them
• ●Honest post-mortems when something doesn’t work
• ●Revenue model transparency — how we make money, always
• ●User research findings, anonymized but unfiltered

The MFN Guarantee

The Most Favored Nation guarantee is the clearest example of why transparency matters to us. Here’s how it works: when 1Plan recommends a provider — say, a home insurance company — we always show you the best option. Even if that option is a company we have no financial relationship with. Even if we’d make more money recommending someone else.

This is published, auditable, and non-negotiable. If USAA has the best rate for your situation but isn’t a 1Plan partner, we still tell you to go with USAA. Our revenue model depends on earning your trust over years, not squeezing margin out of a single recommendation.

What to Expect From This Blog

This blog will be a mix of product updates, engineering deep-dives, design philosophy, and the founder’s perspective. Some posts will be technical. Some will be personal. All of them will be honest. If we scrapped a feature that took three weeks to build, you’ll hear about it. If our user research contradicted our assumptions, you’ll see the data.

We believe the best products are built in conversation with the people who use them. This blog is the start of that conversation.