Capman

Manifesto · version 0.1

Most people can’t tell you what they’re worth.

Not exactly, and often not even roughly. This is why we built Capman, and what we hold ourselves to. If we break a line of it, tell us.

That isn’t laziness. A normal adult life scatters money around.

There’s a brokerage account, a pension from a job you left years ago, a savings account at the bank your parents picked, a flat or a house, a car, a loan or two. Maybe a watch, a trust, something you inherited and never really looked at. Each has its own app, its own login and its own statement. Nobody lines them up side by side, so nobody knows how much risk they’re carrying, or whether any of it adds up to a plan.

Companies sorted this out long ago, because they have finance teams. Wealthy families sort it out with an advisor. Everyone else makes a guess, and the guess tends to go wrong one of two ways.

Some people think they have less than they do. They stay stingy for years, saving for a version of the future that will never need it. Money is worth the most to you while you still have the time and energy to use it, and we think that’s an argument for spending it well. Other people think they have more than they do and take risks they can’t afford. That one hurts more.

What Capman does

You connect your accounts or upload statements, from any bank or broker. In a few steps you can see everything in one place, sorted into four buckets by when you will need the money, with a short list of what we would change.

There is also an AI advisor you can ask almost anything about your own finances. It works from your real data, and it can help you think through the awkward things, like a divorce or a move abroad. It does the reading and the arithmetic. It does not replace judgment, yours or the kind that has been tested over decades.

We couldn’t have built this a few years ago. Reading a messy PDF from any bank and working out what’s in it only became realistic recently, and it’s the thing that makes the rest possible.

You pay us once a year. That’s the whole business model.

How we are paid

What we believe, and will do when it costs us

  1. You are not the product.

    You pay us a yearly fee, and that is the only way we make money. We take no commissions, no referral fees, and no payment for putting anything in front of you. We won’t point you at a broker, a fund or a bank because it pays us to.

    An advice app that is paid by the thing it recommends is selling something. We’ve set Capman up so that the only person we can let down is you.

  2. We have opinions.

    Capman isn’t neutral. We think a few ideas have earned the right to be the default: spread your money widely, keep what you’ll need soon somewhere safe, and leave long-term money alone so it can compound. We also hold views about life, such as that dying with a pile of money you could have enjoyed is a failure of its own.

    When we recommend something we’ll say why. You can overrule us any time. We’re independent, which means nobody pays us to lean one way. We are not neutral about what works.

  3. We’ll tell you the truth.

    If your portfolio has a serious problem, we’ll say so plainly and tell you what we would change. We won’t cushion it or tell you it’s a great start.

    Plenty of software is built to make you feel good so you keep opening it. We’d prefer you came back because it helped. The same goes for the AI, which is there to be useful, and agreeing with you isn’t the job.

  4. Finance should be boring.

    Compounding, diversification, automation, and a little patient fine-tuning. For nearly everyone that is the whole game. We assume you have no special edge, and most professionals don’t either, so we don’t build for stock picking, crypto trends or day trading.

    If you want to play anyway, there’s a small slice for that. It is capped and it stays separate from the money you’ll need. Boring is the point. It works.

Where we want to end up

We want Capman to be the last personal finance tool you need, and one you’d feel odd not having. We’re a long way from that. This page is how we’ll know whether we’ve got closer.

This is a draft and it will stay one for a long time. We change it when we learn something.

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