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13 tactics from Val Agostino
Learning and Profiting from Black Swan Events — Val Agostino, Monarch Money
Watch the full episode“I love these direct models and especially subscriptions because it reinforces the ongoing evolution of the product... when you look at an ad supported product you're constantly trying to drive more and more ad revenue and then people wonder why did this thing get so crappy over time.”
Subscription Model Aligns Company Incentives With the User — Ad-Supported Does the Opposite
Val saw this dynamic firsthand at Mint: once acquired by Intuit, the product stagnated because the real customer was the advertiser, not the user. Building Monarch on a subscription model from day one meant every product decision aimed at making the user more successful — not maximizing ad impressions. The alignment is not just ethical; it compounds as a competitive moat over time.
“I honestly think the MVP not just in our category but I'd say most categories the whole concept of it is rarely applicable... the viable part might actually take a little more time these days than it ever has in the past.”
The Viable Bar in MVP Has Never Been Higher — Plan More Time, Not Less
When smartphone apps were new, curiosity drove downloads and a rough MVP could find an audience. Now people install fewer than 10 new apps a year and are set in their habits — so competing in any mature category means the product must be genuinely complete before expecting anyone to switch. Val spent years building Monarch's data-cleansing intelligence layer before launching publicly because in personal finance that infrastructure was table stakes, not a v2 feature.
“we have a roadmap... people can submit requests they can view the road map... we have I think over 15,000 votes on different items and people write like dissertations around their theory of how they budget.”
Build a Public Voteable Roadmap So Customers Co-Create the Product With You
Monarch uses ProductBoard to run a fully public, voteable roadmap any user can access from the settings menu. Beyond feature prioritization, the system lets the team reach out directly to voters of a specific feature and walk a clickable prototype past them before any full build begins. This tight feedback loop means fewer wasted iterations and a customer base that feels invested in the product's direction.
“the five y's... if you drill down five times you'll often get to that root cause... people often ask oh I want this I really needed to do XYZ and if you kind of ask why five times... you'll come to some sort of often core emotional problem that they're trying to solve.”
Ask Why Five Times to Reach the Real Emotional Driver Behind Any Feature Request
When Monarch users asked to 'see everything in one place,' the surface answer was convenience. Drilling down three to five levels of why revealed the real driver: a need for control, a feeling of order from chaos. That insight changed how the team approaches messaging — instead of showcasing the dashboard view, the real product to sell is the feeling of financial control and calm. The five-whys method surfaces the emotional job the product is truly hired to do.
“a lot of people like sell the flower but what you really want to sell is the badass with the Fireballs attacking the boss... you're selling Mario actually being able to save the princess and so it's cool that as you get through those wise it's not just about building a better product but it's actually about better marketing the product that you've built.”
Sell the Princess, Not the Flower — Market the Outcome, Not the Feature
The Mario analogy maps exactly to consumer finance: showing a clean dashboard is selling the flower; showing someone who no longer fights with their partner about money is selling the princess. Every marketing touchpoint — App Store screenshots, onboarding copy, ad creative — should anchor to the end state the user is desperate for, not the specific UI feature that delivers it.
“I wrote a blog post that evening just saying hey as the first product manager at mint we don't know what's happening but this is why we think you should pay for a personal finance product... then the next day they officially announced... I revised my blog post pretty quickly.”
Draft the Blog Post the Night the Rumor Drops — Revise When It's Official
When the Mint shutdown first surfaced on a support forum (before official confirmation), Val drafted a response post the same evening from the angle of Mint's original PM. That pre-work meant Monarch had a polished, credible piece ready to publish within hours of the official announcement — capturing the critical window when millions of Mint users were searching for alternatives. The lesson: preparation at the rumor stage converts black swans into launches.
“you kind of have to just stop yourself and say okay what does the new reality look like and divorce yourself from your previous decisions... we basically had to really stop doing everything that we had told our investors and our customers and everything else that we were going to do.”
When a Black Swan Hits, Divorce Yourself From All Previous Commitments Immediately
Monarch had promised investors and users a major goals-and-planning feature overhaul. The Mint shutdown forced a complete roadmap freeze to handle infrastructure scaling, Canadian expansion, and the massive CS backlog. Sunk-cost bias makes it psychologically hard to abandon committed plans, but the teams that win in black swan moments are the ones that wipe the slate and re-stack-rank from scratch based on the new reality.
“what we did do well was we really communicated with the mint folks primarily through Reddit and just said hey here's kind of our philosophy... people like that okay these folks sound authentic they sound like they're here to like actually listen to us.”
Use Reddit to Rebuild Trust With an Audience That Just Got Burned by a Competitor
Former Mint users arrived distrustful — they had just had an app they relied on ripped away by a company that did not care about them. Monarch's response was not polished marketing but direct, honest engagement on Reddit, leaning into the founder's history as Mint's first PM. For any app capturing users from a disrupted competitor, authenticity on community platforms matters more than ad spend during that critical window.
“we wanted to get to break even and control our destiny like even though we have raised Venture money we wanted to get to break even and control our destiny so we're not constantly on that Loop.”
Aim for Break-Even to Control Your Destiny Even When You've Raised VC
Monarch raised venture funding but deliberately managed toward break-even — keeping the team small (13 people when the Mint windfall hit) rather than burning toward a raise milestone. That discipline meant they entered the black swan moment from a position of financial stability, not desperation. It also preserved optionality: they could choose to invest in the opportunity rather than being forced to by a runway clock.
“it's a combination I think of having a the talent the team that's able to move quickly and the sort of urgency and the wherewithal to make those decisions and just get aligned as a group... when good stuff happens it was the same thing.”
Speed of Execution Is a Muscle — Build It in Crises So It Is Ready for Opportunities
Monarch had lived through SVB collapsing, COVID disruptions, and California wildfires displacing team members before the Mint shutdown arrived. Each fire drill built the team's capacity to triage fast and realign. When the positive black swan came, they launched a full Chrome extension rebuild in 48 hours while competitors took six-plus weeks. The crisis response muscle is the same one that captures windfalls.
“to solve this problem for people yes you need like a product and a tool but you also need some of Education to help folks understand some of these Concepts... our hope is that we can provide sort of the missing personal finance course.”
Build Financial Education Content to Solve the Problem, Not Just Market the Tool
After the Mint migration spike, Monarch reinvested revenue into a content team with the mission of teaching personal finance fundamentals — not just growing the app. This strategy works doubly: it attracts users still in the problem-awareness stage, and it deepens the product's value proposition beyond the software itself. For any app solving a complex behavior-change problem, owning the education layer creates a content moat that compounds over time.
“try and pick a problem that you want to work on for 10 years even if it were to fail and that's kind of how I feel like even if Monarch were to fail I would feel good that we like move the ball forward.”
Pick a Problem You'd Work on for 10 Years Even if It Failed — That's Your Filter
YC's framing is that startups die because founders quit, not because they run out of money. Val uses a personal filter that sidesteps that risk: choose the problem you would keep working on with no exit in sight. For Monarch, that was household financial health — a space Val cared about before Mint, cared about while funding it personally, and cared about through multiple black swan events. The 10-year test surfaces real commitment before you invest real years.
“there was enough Canadian Mint users that were super frustrated... many of them were like hacking Monarch and changing their IP address... we finally just said okay we're going to turn this on.”
Demand-Led Expansion: Let Users Hack Around Geo-Restrictions Before You Build
Monarch had no Canada plans for the next 12 months. But when users actively spoofed their location to sign up, the team recognized an unambiguous demand signal and did a quick beta toggle. The experience was not perfect — Canadian institution data quality lagged the US — but Monarch offered refunds to dissatisfied users and built goodwill. Demand-led expansion with a clear quality caveat beats waiting for a perfect rollout.