Entrepreneurship is not foreign to Cal Poly alum Jonathan Allen.
After a successful run as sole operator of his childhood lawn-mowing business, Allen began the journey to where he is today: co-founder and director of WizeFi, a new personal finance software.
“With a strategic spending guideline and wealth-building strategy to holistically show where your money should go each month, we hope to get people out of debt quicker than any program out there,” Allen said.
Helping students make the most of their money
During college, Allen lived paycheck-to-paycheck with various side jobs, from flipping and selling cars and motorcycles to working at Domino’s and Naked Fish.
“I thought, ‘What’s the point of having a plan when I can’t do anything more with my money?’” Allen said. “Which was totally the wrong mindset.”
Allen’s personal struggle with money management led him to a deeper passion for solving a problem many college students face.
“There’s plenty of software helping the one percent, and so much money being moved around,” Allen said. “But who is helping the 99 percent? And that’s what our software does.”
Allen said WizeFi has particular benefits for college student because it increases financial literacy and helps users understand how to make money and consolidate debt.
The affiliate program is one distinguishing feature of the app. It offers a monetary incentive to users who support the product and share it with others. This referral network is also a manifestation of WizeFi’s mission to help consumers realize their maximum net worth, according to Allen.
From exclusive use to public launch
The backbone of WizeFi’s intelligence is an algorithm developed two decades ago by Allen’s father, Sean Allen, an investor and financial planning strategist.
At the time, the software was only accessible to professionals in the finance industry.
Allen saw great potential in bringing this product to a bigger market and approached his father with the idea of making this software available to consumers.
Allen and his father partnered, and Allen took on the task of developing the consumer version of the product.
The app first started coming together in Kauai, Hawaii, two years ago, then relocated to the mainland at the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s SLO Hothouse in downtown
San Luis Obispo.
“I’ve been working on everything the app looks like, and how it functions,” Allen said.
A development and marketing team was also brought on, and WizeFi officially launched to the public Oct. 3.
According to Allen, the company has received overwhelmingly positive feedback; several influencers, including a Hollywood star and NFL players, have contacted Wizefi in hopes of promoting it.
Despite this early success, the WizeFi team is still hard at work responding to and resolving customer complaints.
“Updates are happening every three days and we’re fixing bugs,” Allen said.
A promising future for consumers and Wizefi
The team was able to showcase WizeFi in Dallas Oct. 25-28 at FinCon, a national financial tech conference that brings together more than 1,500 money media enthusiasts searching for the next big financial service.
“People come to us looking for stories to write about,” Allen said.
Allen plans to continue refining and promoting Wizefi with the end goal of assisting as many consumers as possible with their personal finance goals.
“The plan isn’t to get acquired, but to change the world, and we have the plan and ability to do that,” Allen said.