Weymedia: Growing a Successful Fintech in Atlantic Canada
Background: In this episode, Stephen and Maria Weyman of WeyMedia share their journey of building a successful bootstrapped company in the FinTech industry.
They started by creating a website called How to Save Money, which provided Canadians with information on credit cards and financial products. Over time, they expanded their brand to include Credit Card Genius, a credit card comparison platform, and Money Genius (formerly How to Save Money), a trusted resource for all things money. They also launched Genius Cash, a cash back rewards program. Despite facing challenges and setbacks, they persevered and focused on building trust with their audience. Their advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to prioritize integrity, consistently deliver value, and be willing to do the hard work.
Takeaways:
Building trust with your audience is crucial for the success of your business.
Prioritize integrity and consistently deliver value to your customers.
Be willing to do the hard work and push past comfort zones.
Perseverance is key in the face of challenges and setbacks.
Starting a business requires taking action and not overthinking.
Stay focused on your mission and adapt as needed to meet your goals.
Jonathan Dunnett (00:06)
Hey everybody, my name is Jonathan Dunnett. I'm here with Atlantic FinTech and really happy to have you join us today for this conversation with Stephen and Maria Weyman of WeyMedia. So glad to have you here, Stephen and Maria.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (00:21)
Thanks for having us, Jon. It's real pleasure to be here.
Jonathan Dunnett (00:24)
So we're going to get just jump in at the start and we want to know a little bit about your story. So for those that don't know, where did this all begin?
Stephen And Maria Weyman (00:34)
Yeah, it began quite a few years ago now, way back around 2003, which is over 20 years ago, which makes me feel a little bit like an old man. that was when I was just graduating from university and struggling to sort of put my way through life and figure out a full -time job and get a decent salary.
And you know, I was a technophile and a computer enthusiast and I just loved all things that were new tech. And that was obviously very expensive back then when tech wasn't as advanced as it is today. So, you know, I had to make my dollar stretch. And so I got very interested in doing that. And so I started, it became a hobby.
really, and I would spend hours on the internet just comparing prices and looking at forums and reading endless threads on how to just get a better deal on everything I was buying, as well as getting a start on my credit cards and bank accounts and finding the best one for my needs. So through all of that, I became like a credit card nerd, just really into credit cards. My dad gave me a bit of a help with that in a young age. had a credit card, think when I was 16, which is younger than...
than many. And, you know, I just figured after a while doing that, you know, I was learning a lot of great useful information, but nobody would probably spend the hours that I was to get this information. And it wasn't really easily available on the internet at the time. So I researched the idea of sort of summarizing that into articles and putting it online for Canadians. And nobody was really doing that in Canada at the time.
So I just went full force into that and launched our first brand, which was How to Save Money, and started writing comparison articles about credit cards, made detailed spreadsheets for doing detailed analysis of those credit cards, and writing content on money, saving money, and financial products. And yeah, it's grown a lot since then.
Jonathan Dunnett (02:35)
Hmm. Yeah, obviously. And Maria, when you first met Stephen, was that what drew you to him?
Stephen And Maria Weyman (02:44)
So I first met Stephen in university, so we actually took the same classes. So believe it or not, I used to sit at the front and he used to sit at the back and he had a lot of questions and some things never change. So he's always been the type of person who has a lot of questions. Whenever someone's explaining, you know, something remotely complex, he wants to probe deeper.
So I've always been intrigued about these questions, the voice behind the question. So finally I turned around and I put the face with the voice and that's how it started for me. And that's it, we got there. So no, wasn't the business idea. That came much later, yeah.
Jonathan Dunnett (03:25)
That's amazing.
Right. Because Maria, you've had an interesting journey along the way too, in terms of your background, because you started out as an actuary and then had a few hops, right?
Stephen And Maria Weyman (03:43)
on that. Yeah, so I worked in the insurance company in the actuarial department with actuaries for seven years. And then I decided to go back to school and take HR. So I took a and learned French, actually. So I wanted to learn a new language. I learned French, did a French immersion.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (04:08)
for a few months and then went back to school and take HR management, did that for about a year. And while being back at school, we got pregnant. So after school, after getting that diploma, I actually took a mat leave for almost a year until I was headhunted myself for an HR role and I worked at...
a recruitment firm for a couple of years before moving to Saint John, to work for the public sector, FaciliCorp N B at that time that has now merged service New Brunswick. And, I did HR there for about three to four years before I joined Stephen.
I was a solopreneur at the time and it was just fairly small, but it was starting to grow in terms of revenue and complexity and, you know, talked to Maria about the opportunity that, you know, we could possibly work together. And she helped incorporate Wey Media in 2016, which was, you know, I went full time in 2014 and then brought her on in 2016. And then our other big brands and sort of our endeavor into
hiring people started after that and sort of growing into like a full -fledged startup.
Jonathan Dunnett (05:26)
Hmm. And I find for me, having known you for many years, I find it fascinating sort of the different backgrounds and experiences that you've had. But in many ways, I think that's prepared you very well for being startup co -founders and co -CEOs.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (05:46)
Yeah, for sure. I think the different hats that we've worn over the years has more or less prepared us for being a bootstrapped entrepreneur. More or less, I should say, because even though we thought we knew what we were getting ourselves into, in theory, when you're in the midst of it, there's a lot of unexpected things that happen, obviously. There's a lot of up and down.
And so it's definitely stretched us as people over the years. Yeah, the work never stops.
Well, and I think that's a fascinating thing too. like, and just to go back to the point you made about being bootstrapped, that's a really interesting perspective and strategy that, you know, lot of companies oftentimes just say, well, I'm going to go out and raise money and build a thing. And you've been very successful just building it without raising outside capital. Can you talk to us a little bit about what that journey has been and
Jonathan Dunnett (06:53)
Maybe a little bit on, you know, why have you chosen this path versus maybe more stereotypical path of doing the outside capital raise.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (07:03)
Yeah, that's a really great question, Jon, because I don't think that we've in the beginning intentionally, I don't know if you disagree, intentionally set out to be a bootstrap company. think it just happened because it's better aligned with our values and it's better aligned with who we are as people. I think we both got into this journey because we are both fiercely independent thinkers. so, you know, obviously we wanted to retain that independence and pursue initiatives and projects that we really believe in. And then as for values, we've always believed in, you know, only spending what you've earned. And so being a bootstrap company with no financial backing of investors.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (08:03)
that is very much aligned with how we manage our personal finances. So it just gets extended naturally with our business financial principles as well. It's not necessarily the easiest choice when you think about it because companies with venture capital investment get all the spotlight, right? And rightly, maybe rightly so because the investment that they receive is sort of the validation of the potential success that these experienced, know, well -funded investors are seeing in them. So definitely need to be celebrated. But as a result, I think it has slowed us down as well in the beginning because we were not necessarily getting the spotlight or having the funding to get accelerated and get, you know, and hire and staff up and hire the staff that we need to gain the traction that we wanted. So it's been a slower start for sure. think that's straight off with the independence that we have to only pursue the projects that are aligned with what we want to do. What came the trade of having a slower start and feeling the pressure of not having enough funds to really do all the things that we need to and burning the midnight oil even and pushing ourselves.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (09:47)
maybe sometimes to our maximum to get the things that needed to be done. But I think that allowed us to just be very measured and disciplined with our decision making process that really honed us in weighing the risks and the rewards of every initiative, every decision that we make and only pursue those that yes are aligned with our vision, but also that have higher probability of success. Yeah. Yeah. Anything to add to that? Yeah, I could add a little bit to that. mean, I think, you know, when I was starting in the early days, I saw a clear business model for how I could potentially create revenue out of what I was doing. And I was also a software developer at the time by trade. And so I knew what was going on in Silicon Valley when it came to venture capitalism. But I wouldn't say I knew how it worked very well. Like I knew of the concept, but I didn't really know the process for finding an investor, for going that route. What made an investable company versus something that wasn't investable? So for me, you know, the more straightforward path was just to create a business that made money and then grow it.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (11:05)
And it also aligns with the values, like Maria said, very strongly because, you know, I believe that being a bootstrap company is really a better way to build a company for both the founders and the employees, ultimately, with a venture capital model, although it's definitely produced some really great winning companies. It's also incredibly risky. It's full of uncertainty, extremely high failure rates.
you know, the primary concern of venture capitalists is big profits quickly across a wide range of companies. And if most of them fail, it doesn't really matter in terms of their profits, because if they get a few that scale quickly and win big and can be acquired by an even bigger company, then they're going to make a good return on their investment.
I call this personally planned failure. I feel like it's a model that has a bit of failure planned into it. And not only do these companies fail, but they disrupt the lives of their founders, their employees, and their customers when they do that. So with a bootstrap company, the primary concern is providing the valuable product or service that paying customers will love quickly so that they can be profitable and continue to operate.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (12:18)
So this can be thought of as planned success. And I think ultimately it creates more long -term value and sustainable companies in the world this way, which is really good for diversity when you think about it and competition in the marketplace instead of a winner take all approach, which we see a lot of time in big tech. Bootstrapping and profitability is becoming cool again now a little bit more that access to cheap capital is dried up.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (12:42)
But we wanted to pursue that path from the beginning because it felt it would be better for us, for the company, for our employees, and for our customers ultimately. So, you know, it can be hard to compete against those large venture -backed businesses as a small scrappy bootstrap company. But that's, you know, that's reality today in today's world. And we're playing a long game and, you know, it's been slowly paying off.
Jonathan Dunnett (12:56)
That's awesome. And I commend you for that.
Let's pretend I just jumped on the elevator with you and I don't know you. We got 30 seconds. What is Wey Media? What do you do?
Stephen And Maria Weyman (13:18)
Okay. What do we do? So what we do centers around our vision. So our vision is to make money easy and fun for the everyday Canadian by helping them level up their money and become money geniuses. So that's the elevator pitch. We have three brands. Right now we have Credit Card Genius.
We call it the best credit card comparison matchmaker in Canada. And then we've rebranded How to Save Money, Stephen mentioned earlier, to Money Genius to be the trusted resource and marketplace for everything money. And we have Genius Cash as well, our cash back rewards program that is available through Credit Card Genius and Money Genius.
Jonathan Dunnett (13:45)
I was just going to ask maybe either one of you can take this, go a little bit deeper on Genius Cash. So I'm interested as are many people and having more cash back in their pocket. What does that mean? What do I have to do? How does the program work?
Stephen And Maria Weyman (14:16)
Great question. So did you want to take that on? Sure. So it's basically our in -house custom bill rewards program. So what we do is because we're basically a financial product marketplace, we provide lots of educational content. You can choose credit cards or any financial product through Money Genius and Credit Card Genius. And so we list products from all financial institutions, regardless of compensation.
but we also partner with many of large institutions and that's how our business model works. And so we take a portion of the revenue that we earn through those partnerships and we give it back to the people who apply for those products through Money Genius and Credit Card Genius. And that is what the Genius Cash is, which is a large cash bonus that you get for getting a better financial product for you through us.
I think we're probably getting close to 3 million in cash back that we've given away to Canadians today. Since launching Genius Cash fall of 2021. So almost three years.
Jonathan Dunnett (15:22)
It's amazing. Wow, that's a good number.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (15:26)
It's a good number, yeah. Almost three million in almost three years.
Jonathan Dunnett (15:27)
Yeah.
So you gave away $3 million. You also gave away a Tesla.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (15:36)
Yes. So because why not, Jon, right? Yeah. So, you know, you know, as we're pretty low key as people and I think we've been low key as business as well. We're not the most splashy people or business up there. Growth has been sustainable and organic. However, when we launched Genius Cash a few years ago,
Jonathan Dunnett (15:39)
How and why?
Why not? Okay.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (16:04)
we decided to allocate a majority of our marketing budget into the biggest and splashiest giveaway yet that we've ever done. We've actually done giveaways for over 11 years now. when Stephen was still the one man person running How to Save Money, he started this one huge one thousand dollar annual Christmas giveaway. I think it's what you call it. Yeah. So we've been doing that still ever since. So we've been doing that for 11 years. So giveaway is not necessarily a new thing for us. But the Tesla giveaway for sure was our our biggest giveaway yet.
Jonathan Dunnett (16:46)
Hmm. And so obviously I'm assuming that has really great impact in terms of like marketing and brand awareness and those sorts of things.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (17:02)
It sure it helped a lot. And, you know, we had a goal of getting 5000 genius cash customers to tie into that Tesla giveaway and we exceeded that.
It was a good initiative. It wasn't a Mr. Beast level giveaway. We were happy. Yeah, the news threads on him lately haven't been the best, but I don't think that's going to slow down his popularity much.
Jonathan Dunnett (17:20)
Given recent news, that may be a good thing.
Yeah.
I guess time will tell time is the arbiter, right? Two last questions for you. You mentioned that you didn't quite hit the goal that you had wanted, even though you met your goal. And Maria, you said something earlier that kind of intrigued me as well, sort of along this line. So I'm curious to understand for you, how do you handle failure when you're faced with it? And how do you get through that as not just founders, but you're also married? So how do you navigate that in terms of maybe more from the founder perspective?
Stephen And Maria Weyman (17:59)
I wouldn't recommend working with your spouse. Let's just say that. If I had known how hard it was going to be, you might have... You might not have started. But I think that's a story for every entrepreneur though. Yeah. I think that every entrepreneur starts with having a very rosy optimistic picture of what it's going to be, you know. And then they get into it and then they discover how hard it really is. So I think it's just life.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (18:33)
You know, life is not meant to be easy. know, life is hard. So when you make the mistakes, you just pick yourself up and dust yourself off, ask yourself, what have you learned from it and get back to it. Yeah, we always pivot. So like we don't give up on an idea or a vision very quickly, but we'll tweak it. We gather data, we gather learning and then, you know, sometimes you just keep launching. Right. You know, when the Tesla giveaway didn't get the initial notoriety that we were hoping for. just kept launching, promoting it, kept trying new angles, kept going at it in different ways.
Jonathan Dunnett (19:10)
Hmm. Yeah. Well, and you know, certainly Knowing both of you as I do, traits that's very common between both of you and you have it in spades is determination. So to hear, you know, we relaunch and keep going, I mean, that's not surprising.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (19:29)
Yeah, perseverance is actually one of the founding values of our company, so, definitely just keep going. And if you make small gains over and over again, eventually it turns into the overnight success, right?
Jonathan Dunnett (19:35)
Hmm. Yeah. Those 10, 15, 20 years overnight successes that are just, you know, as you say, yeah, we're successful. yeah, exactly. So just want to leave folks today with a question to kind of help them, especially other founders that are in the FinTech ecosystem. you know, and for our perspective, being in FinTech is either you are directly building a product that has, you know, really leads to financial processes and that sort of thing, or it benefits the financial industry in some way. And obviously you kind of straddle both of those, but for others that are looking to build and grow, I mean, you've had a really great story since, you know, graduating university. What tips, suggestions, advice would you give to others that...
Either they're thinking about the journey, they're in the midst of the journey, they're thinking I might need to get out of the journey. What would you say?
Stephen And Maria Weyman (20:52)
I think at the core of any successful business is trust, you know, so.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (20:58)
We just prioritize the integrity of our products, of our tools, of the content that we publish and focus on delivering value to Canadians. And you build trust over time by knowing your audience and consistently providing high value and great user experience.
For us and I think for any successful businesses trust is foundational and so I Guess that's my high level. That's my high level advice. I think it just grounds every decision that you make on a daily basis Well, I gonna say for those are who are thinking about starting I mean it really is just do it like if you if you look at
Stephen And Maria Weyman (21:48)
all the pros and cons like you may you may never start so just do it and and always be willing to do the hard thing because the vast majority of people aren't willing to do the hard thing so if you're willing to do the hard thing over and over again you basically have no choice but to succeed because people prefer comfort they prefer just a normal daily life so if you're willing to push past that then you basically have no option but to eventually be successful if you do that on a repeated basis.
Jonathan Dunnett (22:22)
Hmm. And we're back to determination. yeah.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (22:25)
Yeah, yeah, full circle.
Jonathan Dunnett (22:28)
Awesome. Well, Stephen, Maria, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing more about your company and more about your journey. I know that other people will take value from this conversation. So again, really thank you for your time.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (22:42)
Thank you so much, Jon. It's always fantastic, fantastic to speak with you and thank you for allowing us to just share our experience with you this afternoon. For sure. And I just add to that for everyone who's watching to keep an eye out for our game changing mobile app that we're in the midst of developing right now. That's going to be very complimentary to our mission of making money easy and fun and helping Canadians level up their financial knowledge.
That should be launching this fall and yeah, it'll be out there soon.
Jonathan Dunnett (23:15)
That's exciting.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (23:18)
Yeah, we're excited, can't wait.
Jonathan Dunnett (23:20)
Awesome. All right. Well, thank you both and we will see you on the other side. Bye for now.
Stephen And Maria Weyman (23:25)
Sounds good. Thank you, Bye, Jon.