VaultStreet is a clever new company that you'll instantly get if you're sick of dealing with paper financial records from your bank, brokerage, employeer, and so on. It's s simple pitch: You sign up for electronic statements from your financial providers, and direct them to be sent to VaultStreet. It then collects them for you and keeps them organized.
Of course, you can sign up for electronic statements without using a third-party organizer. Few people do, however. VaultStreet CEO Carter Kirkwood says it's less than 10 percent of U.S. consumers, despite the growing awareness of the environmental benefits. There are reasons to stay away from electronic documents, some of which may be the reasons consumers are doing so. For one, getting statements via e-mail is a good way to lose them: You might not see them when they come in, and there's an even better chance they won't be archived in any useful way. Also, the electronic statements are not usable as proof of income or assets if you're trying to sign up for a loan.
VaultStreet organizes your electronic statements. Beats e-mail by a mile.
(Credit: VaultStreet)ValueStreet solves these and other problems. It organizes your statements and keeps them safe, although you do have to trust the company a great deal if you send it all your paperwork. If you later need official financial documentation, Kirkwood says banks will accept the veracity of a statement from VaultStreet.
In the future, VaultStreet will offer a scan-and-shred service to help you deal with your paper archives, as well as new statements.
As someone who's sitting on more than 15 years of financial statements that I can't throw out and don't have the in-house shredding capacity for, I dig the VaultStreet pitch. What I don't dig is the price: $200 a year (a free trial is also available). That's a lot for a service that most people will see as insurance, not something they use every day. VaultStreet is useful, and needed, but at that price it's going to be a very tough consumer sale.
Selling to corporations and banks as a value-add service might work, though. Kirkwood told me he's in negotiations.
VaultStreet was one of my preview picks from the Launch Silicon Valley conference.
See also: Mint, Quicken Online, and other online financial services.
I'm heading to the Launch Silicon Valley 2008 conference later this morning, where 30 new (or newish) companies will be doing the usual pitch to investors, analysts, and jaded journalists like me. But I did pick out seven new-to-Webware companies from the lineup that I want to learn more about. These are the most interesting ideas from my Web 2.0 perspective.
Cognisign does image matching. It can tell if two images are related by content, or pick out from a pool of images one that matches an input picture. Could be useful for organizing photos or enforcing copyrights.
Dayak is a service that helps employers find not people to employ, but rather recruiters to work with, who then find people to employ. In other words, it's a middleman site for middlemen. Wins my Chutzpah 2.0 award for the month. And it's probably a great business.
Dial2Do is a text-to-speech service that front-ends your e-mail app, Twitter, a dialer (like JahJah). Will have to try this one. See also: Jott.
Emphasis Search helps medical professionals generate appropriate referrals for their patients. Need a good podiatrist? Instead of relying on internist to hook you up with his squash buddy, this system will match your medical needs with a provider's expertise, location, availability, and so on. Smart.
Modiface "after."
Modiface will make you look better. It's a tool that takes your pictures, and then smooths your wrinkles, slims you down, adds body to your hair, etc. It is being marketed as a tool for medical professionals and stylists, and will likely also be used successfully by all manner of snake oil salesmen. Somewhat related: Big Stage.
Previmed is being built to coordinate information about overseas medical care for people considering "medical tourism" to address their needs. Booming business. Very smart. However, barriers to entry for Previmed are not very high.
uTest collects the crashes of the crowds. It's a service that software developers can use to get just the beta testers they need to pound on their products. uTest coordinates all the bug reports and helps developers track them.
Vault Street helps users store their financial documents. You contract with it and then it acts as your proxy to collect bank and other financial statements for you. Better than having all those statements go to your e-mail, and much better than trying to keep them all in boxes in your basement. I don't know what it can do about the documents you already have, though.
Companies at this event that we've already covered include: Capzles, Triggit, and Zuora.
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