Venmo Founder Andrew Kortina and the Birth of a Digital Wallet

Andrew Kortina, the co-founder of Venmo, had a vision to create a digital wallet that would make splitting bills and sending money a breeze. He was a Wharton School student at the time, and his goal was to make financial transactions more social and fun.

Kortina and his co-founder, Iqram Magdon-Ismail, started working on Venmo in 2009, and it was initially a payment platform for the iPhone. They wanted to create an app that would allow users to easily send and receive money, but also share the transaction with their friends.

Venmo's early success was driven by its social features, which allowed users to share their transactions on social media platforms like Facebook. This feature helped Venmo stand out from other payment apps and attracted a loyal user base.

The founders of Venmo, Iqram Magdon-Ismail and Andrew Kortina, were college kids who wanted to simplify the process of sending money to each other.

They were frustrated with having to use checks or cash, and thought, "Why can't we just use our phones like we do with all other apps?" They began to brainstorm a solution to this problem.

Their initial idea was sparked by a lazy Sunday afternoon when they wished they could send money to the band they were listening to without getting up.

Iqram Magdon-Ismail's forgotten wallet in Philly led to a simple yet annoying problem: he had to write a check to pay his friend back, and his friend had to go to the bank to cash it.

This experience sparked the idea to create a way to pay each other back that feels consistent with the other experiences we have in apps we use with our friends.

The founders thought, "Surely someone else must be doing this", but after researching, they found that existing solutions like Obopay seemed clunky and not user-friendly.

In fact, Obopay had recently raised $70M from Nokia, which made the founders think, "Uh-oh."

Their own experience of using apps to do everything else with their phones made them realize that paying each other back shouldn't be so complicated.

The idea for Venmo first came from Magdon-Ismail and his freshman year roommate's wish to send money through their phone to tip the band they were listening to.

Feeling too lazy to go down the stairs, they wished they had a way to send money easily, and this pain point later transformed into a serious endeavor.

This initial idea of convenience soon revolutionized digital payment across the globe.

The founders originally focused on food trucks, charity, and merchants, but the app pivoted to its social media angle in 2012.

As long as users had a person's phone number, they could exchange money, making it easy to split bills or pay each other back.

We got a prototype working pretty quickly, with a simple SMS interface that allowed users to send and receive payments. It worked over SMS, and was dead simple, requiring only a text message with a specific format.

The first version of the note was just a way to keep track of random amounts, but it quickly evolved to include more context. We added a note with each payment, so users could see what the money was for.

The interface was SMS, so we thought it natural for the recipient to see the message, and we updated the recipient message to include the note. This allowed users to see not only the payment amount, but also the context behind it.

Our SMS inbox was soon filled with Venmo messages, which started to look like a news feed of our daily activities. We saw stories about restaurants, bars, and shows we were going to, as well as emergent behavior like buying coffee for a friend.

We decided to share this social context with friends, and added the #p option. This allowed users to share their payments on venmo.com, with the note included in the post.

As the Venmo founder, a major product development decision was made to simplify the user experience. Two months into the project, in the summer of 2013, the team decided to refactor the apps and adopt a new design aesthetic that aligned with the industry trend of flat design.

The goal was to eliminate friction and make payments feel seamless. To achieve this, Helvetica Neue was chosen as the primary font, ensuring it was available on both Apple and Android devices without any lag.

Simplicity was a key aspect of the design. A single blue color was selected to represent Venmo, conveying trust and distinctiveness. A palette of cool grays was also introduced to give the impression of speed and lightness.

The custom line-based iconography was another area of focus, with the goal of making it as straightforward as possible.

Creation is a crucial part of product development, and it's amazing how sometimes the best ideas come from the simplest moments. Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail, co-founders of Venmo, were inspired by laziness and forgetfulness to create the mobile payments service.

Their idea was born at a concert in Philadelphia in 2009, where they met as undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania. They wanted to pay the house band after a good performance, but were too lazy to travel downstairs, so they discussed the concept of giving money to others using only their phones.

Magdon-Ismail's moment of forgetfulness when he forgot his wallet at home in Philadelphia a few weeks later solidified their idea. They determined that making mobile payments via a phone app linked to your bank account was worth investigating further.

In the early days of Venmo, simplicity and speed were key. The team refactored their apps and revamped their design to match the flat design aesthetic of iOS 7 and Android. They chose a single blue color, which became Venmo's signature color, and a palette of cool grays to convey speed and lightness.

The team worked hard on custom line-based iconography that was straightforward and easy to understand. This was a huge evolution for Venmo, and it's a great example of how a simple and intuitive design can make a big impact.

Here are some key design elements that contributed to Venmo's success:

Exploring new product ideas can be a thrilling experience, but it's essential to have a clear process in place.

The founders of Venmo, for example, started brainstorming ideas on weekends, meeting in different cities to hack on different concepts. They were open to trying out various ideas, even if they didn't all work out.

Having a clear set of requirements can help guide the brainstorming process. In the case of Venmo, the founders were looking for a name that was short, 5-6 letters, and met specific criteria.

The name "Venmo" was actually a result of exploring the Latin root "vendere" meaning "sell" and "mo" for mobile.