Bad Alternatives & Positioning
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Bad Alternatives & Positioning

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1. Bad Alternatives

What’s a bad alternative you ask? The fundamental reason someone uses your product—aka some pain they’d have to go through (or are currently going through) to fulfill their intent or desire.
When a user faces a bad alternative, they experience problems with it. Those problems have implications about how their life will get worse. We pitch features to solve those problems so our users benefit.
Color Legend: Scenario → Intent → Bad alternative → problems → implications → features → benefits
(credit:
GotUsers
⁠
)
Bad Alternatives
0
Scenario
Who
→ Intent (of customer)
Model
→ Bad alternative
Pain
→ Problems
→ Implications
→ Features
→ Benefits
1
You had a <great idea for a finance app>; the only problem is: you don’t know how to code! You’ve never set up any sort of developer tooling before and just the thought of it makes you super uncomfortable.
You could learn how to code, but that’s risky & takes a lot of time & skill. With Venice, you get finance data in minutes, saving weeks of setup frustration and months of learning to code.
Non-technical fintech founders
No code startups
Development agencies
Frontend / mobile engineers
Solutions engineers
Build a finance app
Needs business financial data asap
Easily analyze personal finances
Track startup burn
B2B
B2D
B2B2C
Learn how to code
5
Doesn’t know how to code
Needs to quickly get value & de-risk what they’re building
Needs it now
A lot of effort to do this alone
Can’t set up any sort of developer tooling themselves
Makes them super uncomfortable to even imagine doing this themselves
Hosted finance data layer in minutes
Zero setup
Saves days / weeks / months of setup frustration
No need to learn how to code
Easy data layer to plug into:
no-code builder tools
spreadsheets
charting tools
scripts
frontend apps
2
You had a great idea for a finance app, the only problem is: you’re a [frontend / mobile engineer]! Backend / infra makes you nervous... how will you scale? Or fix things when they break?
You could learn backend / infra, but that’s risky & takes a lot of time, skill and confidence once you start charging customers money. With Venice, you get a hosted finance data layer in minutes that you can easily query and build upon, saving weeks of dev work and helping you sleep better once launched.
Frontend / mobile engineers
No code startups
Development agencies
Solutions engineers
Build a finance app
B2B
B2D
Learn backend / infra
5
Doesn’t know backend or infra (e.g. is frontend / mobile / analyst)
Needs to quickly de-risk what they’re building
Needs it now
A lot of effort to do this alone
Makes them very nervous to manage backend / infra themselves
Afraid something will break and they can’t fix it
Doesn’t know how to scale infra
They don’t feel comfortable charging customers if it’s unstable
Hosted finance data layer in minutes
Minimal setup
Saves weeks of dev work & setup frustration
No need to learn backend / infra
Easy data layer to query & build upon
3
You need financial data, but there’s a catch: no easy way to get it, especially where you need it!
You could implement Plaid / Yodlee yourself and figure out a way to pipe the data in, normalize it, etc... but that’s painful and not worth the effort, especially when you need this right now or as your data needs evolve! With Venice, you get financial data in minutes—continuously synced wherever you need it with just a few clicks—saving you weeks of time while giving you infinite flexibility as your data needs grow.
No code startups
Non-technical fintech founders
Development agencies
Frontend / mobile engineers
Solutions engineers
Data analysts
Personal finance geeks
Needs financial data asap
Build a finance app
B2B
B2D
Implementing <Plaid, Yodlee, etc> yourself
5
Difficult to get access to financial data
Difficult to learn each new data source’s APIs
Difficult to normalize data
Needs it now
A lot of effort to do this alone
Painful to implement N data sources & pipelines
Hosted finance data layer in minutes
Minimal setup for each data provider you need to add
Data gets continuously piped into other services (e.g. your own database or places like Coda)
Saves weeks of dev work & setup frustration
No need to learn backend / infra
Easy data layer to query & build upon
Easily add new data sources as needs evolve
4
You need to manage finances or constantly update spreadsheets & reports, but it’s painful to keep manually copy/pasting data in when you have so many accounts & services to keep track of. There are so many better uses of your time!
You could keep doing the export → import → update → error check dance forever, but that’s error-prone & could cost your company thousands (and even get you fired ☹️), plus doesn’t scale as more transactions and accounts get added! With Venice, you get financial data in minutes—continuously synced wherever you need it with just a few clicks—and can even bring your own data if your bank isn’t supported or you want more privacy. Venice saves you hours of work every day, so you can focus on what you do best & what drives impact.
Data analysts
Startup finance teams
Personal finance geeks
Heads of family finances
Financial advisors
Solutions engineers
Needs to manage finances
Needs to constantly update spreadsheets & reports
B2B
B2C
Manually exporting data
Manually importing data
Manually updating spreadsheets
5
Painful to keep spreadsheets updated
Has way too many accounts / transactions to keep track of
Drowning and needs help / better use of time
Error prone
Could cost their company thousands of $ from avoidable mistakes
Could cost them their job if they make big mistakes in avoidable ways
Manual entry doesn’t scale as the team / transactions / accounts grow
Hosted finance data layer in minutes
Data gets continuously piped into other services (e.g. Coda)
Can bring their own data (e.g. CSV or database)
Minimal setup for each data provider you need to add
Saves hours of manual input & data correction/checking
Save money—and their job—with fewer mistakes
Allows them to focus their time on more impactful tasks
Empowered w/ flexibility to manage their finances in the way they’re most comfortable
Can plumb in data that would otherwise be unsupported by Plaid et. al.
5
You need to manage finances, but it’s painful to keep spreadsheets updated & every service you’ve tried to connect to your bank either keeps breaking or isn’t supported. Can you even trust people with your bank credentials?
You could just give up and not track finances at all, but that’s costly and risky... you could easily lose thousands of dollars! With Venice, you get financial data in minutes—continuously synced wherever you need it with just a few clicks—and can even bring your own data if your bank isn’t supported or you want more privacy. Venice empowers you to manage your finances, your way.
Data analysts
Startup finance teams
Personal finance geeks
Heads of family finances
Financial advisors
Solutions engineers
Needs to manage finances
B2B
B2C
Not tracking finances
3
May not trust people with bank credentials
Painful to keep spreadsheets updated
Bank connections keep breaking (e.g. on Yodlee)
Your bank / data source isn’t supported by <Plaid, etc>
Needs it now
Loses money through their inaction (potentially thousands $)
Can bring their own data (e.g. CSV or database)
Hosted finance data layer in minutes
Minimal setup for each data provider you need to add
Data gets continuously piped into other services (e.g. Coda)
Empowered w/ flexibility to manage their finances in the way they’re most comfortable
Choice of privacy if they don’t want to share bank credentials
Can plumb in data that would otherwise be unsupported by Plaid et. al.
There are no rows in this table
⁠

Think about which features (products / services) you can build to enable the benefits people need to stop using their bad alternatives.

The goal is not to build all of these; it’s just to keep a list of some possibilities. Ultimately, your
thesis
⁠
should summarize what you build and for whom (and what the market size is you could capture).
Potential Products To Replace Bad Alternatives
0
Product
Description
1
Venice Link
Your users can easily connect their financial institutions within your app with our drop-in Venice Link SDK, all of which gets piped into Venice’s unified database to power your app’s user experience. Leave the hard stuff to us & let Venice be your backend.
2
Hosted Database Pipeline
Developers/Startups/Analysts can use Venice directly as a hosted data layer, piping data in from tens of thousands of financial institutions & data sources (but they may not care to pipe it out to Excel etc)
3
Unified API
Developers/Startups/Analysts can access all their disjointed financial data via a unified API.
4
No-code tool Pipeline (Coda or similar)
Analysts/Finance Teams can pipe data from tens of thousands of financial sources & data sources into Venice and then out to Coda, Excel, etc.
5
ELT Pipeline
Developers/Startups/Analysts can pipe data from tens of thousands of financial sources & data sources into hundreds of disparate destinations.
6
BYO Database Pipeline
Developers/Startups/Analysts can bring-their-own-database, and use Venice as a streaming service to pipe data in from tens of thousands of financial institutions & data sources.
There are no rows in this table
⁠

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