Building Toya: What I Learned Shipping My First Fintech Product

Toya didn’t start as a business idea. It started as a problem I was living inside of. In 2021, I was carrying over $140,000 in debt - student loans, credit cards, money borrowed from family. I had a good job, but I had no clarity on how to get out of the hole I was in. Some of that financial pressure is its own particular weight as an immigrant, but a lot of it is just the universal experience of staring at a balance and not knowing what to do next.

The financial apps that existed were either too simple or too intimidating. None of them told me the one thing I needed to know: what do I do next, right now, with the money I have?

From frustration to MVP

I started building Toya in evenings and weekends while working full time. The first version was embarrassingly simple - a few screens, manual data entry, basic debt payoff calculations. But it answered the question I actually had: if I put $500 extra toward my debt this month, what’s the impact?

The best validation isn’t a survey or a waitlist. It’s someone using your product to make an actual decision about their actual life.

The fintech lessons nobody warned me about

Trust is everything and it takes time

Fintech is not like other products. You’re asking people to give you access to their most sensitive information. The bar for trust is much higher than a productivity app or a social tool.

The emotional weight of money

I thought I was building a financial tool. What I was actually building was an emotional support tool that happened to use financial data. People don’t just want to know their numbers - they want to feel less anxious about their numbers.

What almost made me quit

Six months in, Toya had users but not growth. I was exhausted. I was juggling a demanding full-time job, visa paperwork, and a product that felt stuck. What got me through it was a message from a user who said Toya had helped her pay off her first credit card. That was enough.

What I would do differently

• Talk to users earlier - I spent too much time building before getting real feedback
• Ship smaller, more often - I kept trying to get to a polished state before releasing, which slowed everything down
• Don’t underestimate the distribution problem - getting people to find it, trust it, and use it consistently is a completely separate and equally hard problem; writing in public about the journey ended up being the most durable distribution lever I had
• Protect your energy ruthlessly - building a startup while working full time is a genuine endurance sport