You, me, and the money: How ex-Stripe Emily Luk built a financial management app for couples, Plenty

Managing money alone is hard enough but when two people and their respective money stories get married, things can get a lot more complicated.

This is the problem Plenty’s CEO and cofounder Emily Luk set out to solve after she got engaged. She noticed a lack of financial tools for couples and decided to build Plenty, a financial tool that helps couples manage their finances in one place.

Plenty allows couples to track shared and individual finances, as well as save and invest towards shared and personal goals.

“There was one thing that was really different from how we thought about things as a generation. There wasn’t really an expectation that one person works, one person manages all the money. No, we’re both working. But it was so hard even to do the simplest thing – we both use a credit card, and I want both of us to know what we’re spending on it,” said Luk.

This is how Emily Luk built a finch that has seen 8x growth in users since December 2024.

From fintech employee to fintech founder

Luk is no stranger to the financial industry. She was one of the first 20 members of Stripe’s growth team and in her three years at the company ran initiatives like pricing merchants across the different geographies and forecasting for all the firm’s software products.

“Stripe really was one of the first companies to take a part of the financial industry and really digitize it. I think that was one of the things that I saw: for so long, payments was such a legacy business, and yet they were able to modernize it,” Luk said. After Stripe, Luk joined Even which was later acquired by Walmart for its fintech venture, One. At Even, Luk was the VP of Strategy and Operations running the company’s goal setting efforts as well as fundraising and investor relations. “Even was really focused on helping people living paycheck to paycheck, reach a point of stability. What was really exciting there is we ended up building a product that reached a million and a half people. Through that, I had a chance to see how big of an impact we could make making software,” she said.

While the hard and soft skills that Luk built in her time at Stripe and Even have a clear carry over effect to Plenty, her connections within the industry have had an effect too.

The following are all investors in Plenty:

• Adam Nash, ex-CEO of Wealthfront,
• Brian Delahunty, Head of Engineering at Anthropic
• Mark Goines ex-SVP at Intuit and ex-VP at Charles Schwab are all investors in Plenty.
• Kevin Durant, all-star professional basketball player

Choose the right talent

When it came to building Plenty’s team, Luk and her husband Channing Allen, who is also the CTO at Plenty, prioritized hiring people whose work and drive they were already familiar with. “Builders come from this background where there’s a session of getting both the big picture building something that hasn’t existed before, as well as getting the details right. That was a combination of skills that we were looking for,” she said.

Have a north star but know that the road map can change

Plenty initially launched with a subscription model – which can be tricky for PFM tools. “It’s clear from surveys and research that, generally, customers don’t want to pay for dedicated budgeting and PFM tools,” said fintech product consultant and fintech builder, Jas Shah, about Intuit sunsetting Mint.

Plenty was seeing considerable demand for this budgeting product, according to Luk. Based on this feedback the firm decided to launch a “freemium” model, which gives access to the financial management tools to couples for free. The firm makes money when these couples decide to invest with the firm, e.g. through direct indexing and tax-loss harvesting, with a 0.20% investment fee.

Following this announcement, the firm has seen 8x growth in users, since early December.

Marketing to couples

Unlike most PFM’s Plenty’s product is built for two. The firm’s marketing philosophy has focused on keeping a polished but approachable tone, says Luk. Traditional FIs have mostly focused on building tools and products for the ultra-wealthy, and Plenty positioned itself away from this trend early on but has then used its understanding of couple dynamics to onboard new customers. “For most relationships, one person plays a bigger role in managing the money. So that one person is more likely to say, I want to try out this new product, and that person is ultimately the one who convinces their partner to use our product. So that makes it a bit easier,” she said.

Layer additional resources on top of the core offering

The firm also recently announced Esther Perel, psychotherapist, New York Times bestselling author, and a leading voice on managing modern relationships as an advisor to the brand.

Perel currently contributes to Plenty by providing educational materials for the firm’s blog, newsletter, and podcast, and has recently put together a list of questions couples should ask each other regarding money.

Perel’s involvement brings some star power to Plenty and also points to the firm’s strategy to encourage conversations about money.

Traditional financial institutions rarely go beyond TV adverts when it comes to acknowledging money is an emotional and critical topic in consumers’ lives. But fintechs on the other hand have not been afraid of actively engaging with how it feels to manage money. Recently, Chime launched a budgeting coloring book for adults and Ally Bank launched the Money Roots campaign, which focuses on assisting consumers unpack their feelings and narratives about money by engaging in virtual workshops with experts.

Plenty’s approach builds on the same strategy, but in the form of regular newsletters, blogs, and podcasts, the latter of which, Luk hosts herself usually with an expert in the field as a guest.

“I get a chance to not only learn from experts directly, but then also bring that knowledge to people who are listening. I think one of the big motivations for it is the reality that money is not purely rational as well,” she said.

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