Boston-based startup LearnLux, founded by Rebecca Liebman, won the PerfectPitch competition at the 2018 SXSW film festival.
The competition was comprised of five finalist startup teams chosen from almost 200 applications, according to VentureBeat. Finalists pitched their companies to a panel of judges including Ashton Kutcher from Sound Ventures, Marc Benioff, the chairman and CEO of Salesforce, and actor Matthew McConaughey.
LearnLux is an online tool that teaches the basics of personal finance to people who never had formal education on the subject. The company was started in 2015 by Liebman, whose resume includes founding two other startups while attending Clark University and a spot on the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2016.
“The financial services industry is hugely outdated and not relevant to society as it stands today,” said Liebman, in an interview with VentureBeat. “Most people think they’re bad at making financial decisions, when in reality financial services aren’t made for an evolving society.”
At the competition, LearnLux received $400,000 in investments. Sound Ventures invested $200,000, which was double their initial offering, and Benioff added on the additional $200,000.
The other four finalists were AI Softwares, Daymaker, IssueVoter, and Omnivirt.
