Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Rockefeller Provides Capital for Start-Up Aiming to Increase Worker Savings
Matt Fellowes was moving briskly along the standard Washington wonk career path. After earning a master’s in public policy from Georgetown and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he was hired in 2004 by the Brookings Institution. Then just 29, he threw himself into studying the finances of lower-income families. By 2008 he was testifying before Congress and conferring with Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law prof (and now Democratic senator) who conceived the Consumer Financial Protection Board.
Along the way Fellowes, now 40, became convinced that Washington couldn’t protect ordinary folks from abusive lenders who charge 400% a year interest for a “payday loan” or help them to budget better, much less save for retirement. Consumers had to get smarter.
As a self-described math geek, Fellowes’ first instinct was to create a giant paycheck-optimization spreadsheet–just the sort of thing those in need of help wouldn’t use. But his idea morphed into a more promising approach: use big data, electronic communication and insights from behavioral finance to nudge folks to make smarter choices.
Fellowes quit Brookings in 2008 to work on his idea full-time and got a $1 million grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. In 2010 he launched HelloWallet as a for-profit company, with investments from billionaire AOL founder Steve Case, venture capital firm Grotech and his own wealthy relatives. (His great-great-grandfather started office-supply company Fellowes Brands)...