Startup Interview with Oona Rokyta, CEO and Co-Founder, Lance

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

Before starting Lance, I worked in PR and marketing. Whether working in agencies supporting large multinational companies or helping to launch startups, I loved helping share their stories. I’ve always seen this particular job as being at the center of a lot of different people - and having to figure out how to translate a message and story between them. I think I was drawn to it, having grown up as a first-generation American and having to constantly navigate a mix of languages and cultures.

A handful of years ago, I had the opportunity to dive into an even more intense context of blended languages and cultures. I started coaching startups in Tel Aviv, Israel, through a venture capital firm, Aleph VC, and at local accelerators. As I did this and started freelancing more, I stumbled upon all the challenges inherent in setting up and running your own business. That experience led me to found Lance with my co-founders. We’ve started to build the financial framework we found missing and often stops people from working more flexibly for themselves.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

Lance is the first financial guidance account for creators and flexible workers. Part business banking account and part robo-advisor, Lance can collect multiple, different incomes and accurately calculate and actively allocate toward:

• A personal salary
• Regular tax withholding
• Creating a business expense spending balance, and
• Savings.

Lance can also automatically pay quarterly tax payments, populate custom Schedule C documents, and send a bi-monthly salary to users’ personal bank accounts.

What is the origin story?

My co-founders and I have all been freelancers at one point or another. Since meeting each other eight years ago in Tel Aviv - when I mentored them on their first startups - we started talking about the financial challenges around freelancing. We vented about how our accountants didn’t really understand what we were doing, and the tools out there weren’t really built for us either. We started talking to our freelancing friends to figure out if there was something already out there we were missing.

We started building… And we launched an app that helped you see all your monies and options wherever they were. But then, in 2020, as we held webinars and happy hours, we realized that wasn’t exactly right. That focus on transparency and education was half the problem. What people needed wasn’t more learning and homework to do around their finances. They needed to just have whatever money they were making actually put in all the right places for them - and trust that that was done well. With Lance, freelancers no longer have to research the right way to organize their income, then set up the systems, and then maintain and update them regularly. Lance takes care of all those steps for each freelancer in a customized way as they grow.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

I love two things specifically about our team. The first is that 100% of our team has been a creator at some point. The resulting passion for building the very best framework for flexible work is unparalleled. The other value we share is endless curiosity. We’re constantly thinking about the best ways to build Lance, learn about and integrate financial growth mechanisms, and work as our customers’ best (financial) friends.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

My friends and I have an ongoing joke that at some point, I’ll have a bed & breakfast. I’ve always tried to create a home - across states and countries around the globe now - in which people from all walks of life can feel welcome and comfortable to relax fully. That always includes at least one or two delicious, homemade spreads. Cooking and baking is often my form of creativity that barely holds a candle to my parents as artists.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

Our core metrics measure how much our customers trust Lance to collect different income streams (across their multi-hyphenate pursuits) and put their money in all the right places as a business. We also track and are thrilled every time we hear about how much people love Lance for how simple it is to use and how they hadn’t ever thought about different things we do automatically!

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

What’s most exciting to us about our traction right now is just how much people are trusting us to allocate their income in the ways we recommend. It means that we’re really solving for something people need and in which they see tremendous usefulness. I’d say that, personally, I’ve just really been awed as well by how many people have shown up (repeatedly!) for all our webinars and workshops and started creating a community around business finance curiosity.

What technologies are you currently most excited about and most worried about? And why?

As expected from a startup founder, I’m most excited about what doesn’t exist right now and why. I’m excited about the promise of open banking and how much more control over their finances and financial choices people will have in the future. And, from what I see today, I’m then very mindful about how to make decision-making as easy and automated as possible to any individual’s needs.

More than technologies, maybe, I’m curious about how we’ll continue to look at data and plug it into more thoughtful AI and recommendation engines. I think all of us will be inspired to be more creative and dive deeper into what people really need - and should be afforded - as they work more flexibly across their entire careers.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

Hacker Noon is this crazy, endless collection of discussions about all the things happening - and yet to come - at the forefront of different technologies. I love that you get the most direct - and longer form - opinions and experiences across these technologies. It’s where tech professionals and noobs come to really dig in. It’s incredibly creative and I’m just thrilled to be included in this community.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

I’d just reassure myself that my insatiable curiosity would lead to amazing places and opportunities. I had a lot I wanted to sink my teeth into at that age - and a tremendous amount of trepidation about all the things I didn’t know and wanted to learn. I’d just tell myself, “Work hard and stay curious. It’ll all make sense and come in due time.”

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

It was very interesting to learn that freelancers’ income was mainly unaffected during the pandemic, as most freelancers are hustlers: if the money isn’t coming from somewhere, they will find another path.

It was really surprising to see just how quickly more flexible, multi-hyphenate workers bounced back from the pandemic panic. They’re so used to marketing, sourcing clients, and following new trends in their respective fields that not only did their incomes stay roughly the same in 2020, but they often did this while pivoting into entirely new fields and businesses. Talk about effective upskilling and making the most of a global crisis!