It wasn’t long after graduating from UConn that Andi Duro ’21 (ENG) started to feel overwhelmed by financial anxiety. The New York City–based computer science whiz had left a steady position at a consultancy to take a leap of faith as a freelancer. His days of dependable checks were gone; now he had big payouts followed by months of scraping by.
Though budgeting apps were already widely used to link to users’ bank accounts and provide net worth, they didn’t answer the questions Duro was wrestling with: How did he compare to his peers? How much money should he be saving and investing? Was he doing all the right things for a 20-something? Was it a dumb idea to quit his job and bet on himself? He wondered if existing technology could be used to create a social network where people could have conversations that usually feel off-limits, compare financial pictures, and see the stories behind the numbers.
In December, Duro launched twocents, a first-of-its-kind social media app that replaces your username with your verified net worth. In this pseudonymous environment structured similarly to X, Yik Yak, or Reddit, you might come across a user with seven figures in their username whose bio reads “startup founder” or a user with a modest net worth who describes themselves as “into lentils lately.”
