FinTrack: From MVP to 50,000 Users in 8 Months

The Challenge

FinTrack's founder needed a middle ground between basic price trackers and Bloomberg Terminal ($24K/year). Budget: $150K pre-seed. Timeline: 12-week MVP to prove product-market fit and raise seed.

Our Approach

Weeks 1-2: Architecture

Next.js (SSR for SEO + fast app loads), PostgreSQL (ACID for money), Redis (market data cache), Plaid (bank integrations). Dark-mode-first design.

Weeks 3-8: Core

Account Aggregation — Plaid for brokerages + API keys for crypto exchanges. Unified data model normalizing all sources.

Real-Time Portfolio — WebSocket live prices, smart updates prioritizing held assets. Value, P&L, and allocation update without refreshes.

Advanced Charting — Canvas2D-based custom library rendering 10K+ points at 60fps. 50+ indicators, overlays, trend lines.

Performance Analytics — Time-weighted and money-weighted returns, Sharpe ratio, drawdown, correlation matrices. Server-side calculation with Redis cache.

Weeks 9-11: Differentiation

Automated tax reporting with specific lot ID, FIFO, and average cost. Tax-loss harvesting suggestions. Price/portfolio/dividend alerts.

Week 12: Launch

500 beta users from r/investing and r/cryptocurrency.

Technical Highlights

• Data Pipeline: Provider → Normalization → Redis (5s TTL) → WebSocket → Browser
• Decimal.js: Zero floating-point errors in financial calculations
• Security: AES-256 encrypted tokens, AWS Secrets Manager, TLS 1.3, PostgreSQL TDE

Results

Metric	Result
Time to MVP	12 weeks
Active Users (8 mo)	50,000
Portfolio Tracked	$2.8B aggregate
ProductHunt	#1 Product of the Day
Seed Round	$2.1M raised