Who?
Nosso – formerly known as Hapi Plan – was founded by Youssef Darwich (pictured above) and Sigurjon Isaksson, who met in 2020 at Entrepreneur First. Darwich was the second employee at the digital banking service Tide and Isaksson was an early employee at Eigen Technologies.
Why?
The financial services industry is dominated by single-user products, designed for individuals managing money on their own. And whilst this works for a certain group of people, Nosso believes digitally native parents want a more collaborative approach.
What?
Nosso’s app offers children investment accounts that two parents can track, manage and contribute to together. It also provides each user with a unique contribution link that they can share with anyone. This allows grandparents – as well as other family and friends – to contribute directly and seamlessly with no additional paperwork or even the need to open a Nosso account. Family members can also leave messages and pictures with their contributions allowing them to pass down memories as well as wealth to future generations.
How?
The app has been operating in beta over the last few months, working with a group of 1,000 families – 95% of which are investing for their children for the very first time – to hone and build out its product offering. It is now fully live and available to download on the App Store and Play Store.
Where?
The startup is based in London.
They say:
Darwich: “The main hurdle for many parents to effectively save for their children’s future is a lack of awareness about what they can do and a lack of tools that help them do that easily. The [£2.1 million seed round] money we’ve raised today is going to give us the opportunity to change this, providing better education to families and building financial products and tools solely designed for families.”
Farhan Lalji of investor Anthemis: “We’ve been exploring how families collaborate around financial services for some time now. When we met Youssef and Sigurjon and saw their commitment to building products that would enable parents to build and manage wealth for their children with an opportunity for the wider family to participate, we knew it was a company we wanted to be part of. We’re excited about changing the way parents save for their children and how families support the younger generation’s financial health.”