Buyers remorse: We’ve all experienced it at a point in our lives. For some, you may look back on the years past and wished you’d skipped the Starbucks every day so you could have splurged on a trip to Spain. Or maybe, you should have gone for that apartment in the less sketchy part of town rather than using the cash to buy a car you never drive.
"You can meet your budget, but if you’re not spending your money on things you truly want or value, then it’s meaningless.”
If only you had something to tell you to step away from the shoes because they won’t really make you happy in the long run.
Fortunately, there will be soon enough. Meet Charlie, the latest app being created by serial entrepreneur Jim Caralis.
“There is a saying ‘show me your budget and I’ll tell you your values,’” Caralis explained to me in an email before we chatted. “We have found that very often the way we spend our money doesn’t truly reflect our values and our goals, and we want to help people more closely align their spending to their values, which in turn will help people ‘spend more on what makes them happy!’”
Bearing this Bidenism in mind, Caralis consulted Paul English, with whom he worked at now-secret-travel-startup Blade. The two brainstormed an app that could help people spend their money in the most meaningful way to them. They’ve been working on Charlie since early July and are in the middle of beta testing. Caralis aims to launch the app in December or January – just in time for people to think about their New Year resolutions and 2016 budgets.
“Research has shown that over 65 percent of Americans don’t have a budget, and while Charlie is not strictly a budgeting app, we see an opportunity to help people better manage their money,” Caralis wrote.
During our conversation, he wanted to stress that Charlie will do far more than simply track your finances. The app strives to delve deeper and ensure that you use your funds for optimal contentment. We’re talking profound stuff here.
Caralis clarified that, "You can meet your budget, but if you’re not spending your money on things you truly want or value, then it’s meaningless.”
Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur
Charlie is not Caralis’ first startup rodeo by any means. Over the past decade, he’s been behind a couple of key creations in the tech community.
In 2012, Caralis created Cannonball, an app that gives your unattractive and overwhelming inbox a much needed makeover. Before that endeavor, he channeled his entrepreneurial inclinations by founding Geocade, a social platform that helps developers refine user experiences and drive downloads for their mobile game creations. Geocade was acquired by MocoSpace in 2011.
Most recently, Caralis served as the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Blade, LLC, for 5 months this past year. Even though he and English came up with Charlie during this time, you’ve probably heard that Blade has put the kibosh on nurturing other startups. Instead, English's org is opting to dedicate all of its resources toward one project: a travel company about which details are being kept tightly under wraps.
As English focuses on his own gig, Caralis has decided to spin off Charlie into its own company. When I pulled Caralis aside to chat about Charlie, he touched upon not only the passion surrounding the app-to-be, but he also touched on his local roots and complicated schooling.
Everyone has a past
“I had an interesting path," Caralis said. "I started as a Computer Science major at UMass Lowell, but I ended up dropping out because I wasn’t ready for school,” Caralis told me. "When I went back to college, it was evening classes at Northeastern.”
“I had no way to pay for college unless I worked full-time,” he continued, "so I worked during the day and then took classes in the evening. I couldn’t have done that anywhere else than in Boston. I was born and raised here. I was a local boy from Everett. Northeastern was close to both work and home, so I could manage it.”
Since his time at Northeastern, Caralis has encountered a share of students from his alma mater. Perhaps what sets the school apart most, in his opinion, is how it offers students opportunities to leave the classroom for hands-on work experience.
“I’ve found the most unique and helpful part of Northeastern to be the co-op program,” he explained. "I’ve worked with many Northeastern students through the program, and they were great.”
It’s not a one-way street in terms of benefits. From his perspective, the school-structured co-ops have set up a symbiotic relationship between students and startups around Boston.
"They provide a lot of support in the startup community. These young women and men have exposure to real-life business experience, and at the same time, startups have the manpower they need that they otherwise might not have been able to get.”
Image provided.
