Mark Zmarzly of Hip Pocket teased a new product at last year’s Startup Voodoo in St. Louis and now he is revealing that product—Hip Money. This new financial app links to consumers’ checking and savings accounts, helping users to make savvy financial decisions throughout the day to achieve long term goals.

“Millennials are just starting out, getting their first paychecks. How are they making decisions on paying debt, like student loans or credit cards, balancing that with retirement, plus also just the need to pay bills and have drinks with friends? There’s a problem here, and we have a simple and effective and elegant solution,” said Zmarzly.

Since building the first lo-fi prototype in September of last year, Zmarzly has been awarded the Nebraska Department of Economic Development Prototype Grant to develop a more robust version of the app.

“38,000 dollar grant was able to generate over 60,000 dollars in revenue”

Zmarzly had previously been awarded an NDED grant for his original product Hip Pocket.

“We had about a $38,000 grant the first time through,” said Zmarzly.

That grant was able to keep his initial efforts from going under.

“If we hadn’t had that grant, I don’t know how we would’ve pushed forward initially with our company, and that 38,000 dollar grant was able to generate over 60,000 dollars in revenue for the company,”said Zmarzly.

The Pipeline experience

Zmarzly was selected to join the Pipeline community in their 2015 selection, class and he participated all year in their modules.

“I was determined to make sure that I was all-in all year. All-in to me meant not just supporting my fellows and the members, but being totally open to any level of work required to make the company better,” said Zmarzly.

His first year of fellowship culminated with the Pipeline Innovator of the Year competition, based on a business plan competition, a pitch competition, and overall growth from the past year. Though the IOTY award went to Dusty Reynolds of RaceNote, which Zmarzly said he couldn’t have thought of a more deserving recipient, Mark did win Pitch of the Year.

“Just your 8 minutes on stage for your pitch, and your 8 minutes Q&A,” said Zmarzly. “I worked my ass off for that, because I enjoy pitching, and they gave us an amazing coach named Nathan Gold., He’s called the Demo Coach out of San Francisco.”

Hip Money coming soon

Zmarzly’s latest product Hip Money will be available some time later this year, but to assist with product awareness and to finance the completion of the app, Zmarzly plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign in March.

“We’re not working with banks, because banking is broken. We’re using kickstarter as a way to take that idea to the streets as they say.”

Zmarzly wants to utilize kickstarter to create a movement that supersedes the product itself.

“It’s not to throw banks under the bus, but to say, ‘Hey, you know what? Millennials or anyone who wants to save better, the system is actually not designed to help you with this, so we think there’s a better way, but you have to vote with your wallet, you have to join us,” said Zmarzly.

Along with being able to be one of the first people to get the app, the Kickstarter campaign will have lots of cool merchandise and stuff to give to donors says Zmarzly.

“T-shirts that just say Hip,” suggests Zmarzly. “Who doesn’t want to be hip? [To be] hip is [to be] in the know, doing the right stuff, but not thinking too much about it. You’re just hip. It’s inherently cool. Boom, plug your phone, save some money, you’re done.”

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Jake Hull is the Lincoln Editor for Silicon Prairie News and a Community Builder for AIM in Lincoln, Nebraska.