Founded in 2021 as a pre-IPO investing platform, Stonks later pivoted several times. When I joined in 2025, we were a team of six building a mobile fintech product for content creators. The mission was clear: help creators get paid daily instead of waiting roughly 50 days for YouTube payouts.
The concept was simple in theory. We would advance creators their estimated daily earnings based on AdSense performance, then reconcile when YouTube issued the official payout. In practice, however, this meant we were building something much more sensitive than a typical fintech app.
The app itself was intentionally simple: a transactions tab to track transactions, a card tab to manage spending, and a payout tab to provide full transparency over advances and reconciliations.
We deliberately avoided reinventing banking UX. The value of Stonks wasn’t innovation in interface, it was speed of payment. Familiar patterns reduced cognitive load and increased trust.
To make the model work, we needed significant access: identity verification, revenue visibility, and eventually the ability to receive YouTube payouts on the creator’s behalf. We were asking users to trust us with the tools their entire career depended on.
If we asked for too much too early, users dropped. If we explained too little, users hesitated.
Onboarding became the most strategic part of the product.