Building the financial platform business owners deserve
The founding team came together in 2022 with a shared frustration: why do small business owners have to choose between good banking, useful accounting tools, and affordable bookkeeping? They built Holdings to answer that question.
Leadership
Jason founded Holdings in 2022 after living the problem from both sides of the table — as a CFO wrestling with business finances, and as a fintech executive building products that tried (and often failed) to solve those same problems. His approach to finance is simple: break it down, make it actionable, and put the business owner in the driver's seat.
As a CFO at two startups (Strala and SalesRabbit), Jason dealt with the same frustrations most business owners face:
- Paying $50/month for business banking that earned 0.01% interest
- Wasting 10+ hours monthly reconciling transactions across disconnected tools
- Managing bookkeepers who needed constant hand-holding
- Scrambling to pull clean financials when investors or lenders asked
As a fintech operator at Mercury, Divvy (acquired by BILL for $2.5B), and Silicon Valley Bank, Jason spent nearly a decade building banking and finance products for tens of thousands of businesses. He saw exactly where traditional solutions fell short — and where fintech still left gaps. Along the way, he became known for breaking down complicated financial topics into practical, digestible guidance through his INTRO to Finance newsletter and speaking engagements.
Holdings is the platform Jason wished existed when he was running finance: banking that earns you money, accounting that stays current automatically, and bookkeeping when you need it — all connected in one place. No fairy tales, no unnecessary complexity. Just tools that work the way your organization actually works.
Early in his career at Goldman Sachs and KPMG, Jason learned how institutional finance operates. His accounting degree from Arizona State University gave him the technical foundation. But it was running finance at startups and building products for business owners that taught him what actually matters: tools that save time and make money instead of costing both.
Mahalia co-founded Holdings to build financial tools that don't require a finance degree to use.
She leads product and design at Holdings, turning complex banking and accounting workflows into experiences that feel effortless. Her philosophy: if it takes more than a few clicks, it's not done yet.
Background:
Before Holdings, Mahalia spent over three years designing fintech products at Mercury and Clearco, where she built tools used by thousands of small business owners daily. At Clearco, she led design for funding products—onboarding flows, data dashboards, and customer lifecycle experiences. At Mercury, she designed banking experiences for startups managing millions in transactions.
She saw the same pattern everywhere: financial products were either powerful but overwhelming, or simple but limited. Holdings is her answer to that false choice.
Unique perspective:
Mahalia's background in architecture (Master's from University of Waterloo) gives her a systems-thinking approach to product design. She doesn't just design screens—she designs the entire user journey, from first impression to daily workflow to long-term trust.
That architectural mindset shows up everywhere at Holdings: in how accounts connect to transactions, how transactions flow into reports, and how every feature anticipates what you'll need next.
Hunter leads engineering at Holdings, building the technical infrastructure that powers the entire platform.
He oversees the full stack—React, TypeScript, Rust, and SQL—ensuring banking and accounting experiences are fast, secure, and reliable. His mandate: zero downtime, instant transaction syncing, and data customers can trust.
Since joining Holdings in 2023, Hunter has architected and built core systems from the ground up: the transaction processing engine, the accounting reconciliation system, and the integrations that connect banking data to accounting workflows in real time.
Before Holdings, Hunter built scalable web applications at Claravine and Blue Matador, where he developed expertise in high-performance systems, microservices architecture, and complex data integrations.
Our Story
The problem we kept seeing
Jason, Mahalia, and Hunter each witnessed the same pattern across their careers: business owners were wasting time and money on financial tools that made everything harder.
The banking problem
Monthly fees, wire transfer charges, and interest rates so low they might as well be zero. Most business checking accounts cost you money instead of earning you money.
The accounting problem
Either spend hours every month categorizing transactions in spreadsheets, or pay $300-600/month for accounting software you still have to manage yourself.
The bookkeeping problem
Hire someone full-time (expensive), use a service that rotates your bookkeeper every few months (frustrating), or do it yourself and hate every minute of it.
What we built
In 2022, we decided to build something different: a financial platform where banking, accounting, and bookkeeping work together instead of against you.
Holdings gives you:
- •Business banking that earns 1.75% APY† with zero monthly fees^
- •Accounting software that syncs every transaction automatically
- •Optional bookkeeping service with a dedicated pro (not a rotating team)
- •Everything connected in one place
The result: Business owners spend less time on admin and more time on what actually matters—running their business.
Why we built it this way
Most fintech companies pick one thing and do it well. Banking OR accounting OR bookkeeping.
We chose to combine all three because that's how your organization actually works. Money flows through your bank accounts, transactions need to be categorized, and books need to stay current. These aren't separate problems—they're one workflow.
By building them together, we could make each part better:
- •Banking feeds directly into accounting (no manual imports)
- •Accounting stays current because transactions sync automatically
- •Bookkeeping works faster because your bookkeeper sees real-time data
It's not just cheaper and faster—it's how it should have always worked.
Who Holdings is for
We built Holdings for the business owners who keep getting squeezed by traditional banking:
Freelancers and consultants
who pay $25/month for a bank account that earns nothing
Creators and agencies
who waste hours categorizing transactions in spreadsheets
E-commerce sellers and contractors
who need clean books but can't afford $5K/month for a full-time bookkeeper
Any business owner
who's tired of juggling multiple tools that don't talk to each other
If you're running a business and spending more time on banking and accounting than you should, Holdings was built for you.
Ready to see how it works?
Open a free account in under 5 minutes. No credit check, no monthly fees, and accounting software included from day one.
Holdings is a financial technology company and is not a bank*. Banking services are provided by i3 Bank, Member FDIC. The Holdings Visa Debit Card is issued by i3 Bank pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. and may be used anywhere Visa cards are accepted.