Rally reposted this
Great conversation with Rob Petrozzo, co-founder of Rally about how stories reach people and get them to care before they buy.
I’m a Millennial: give me one‑click to buy t‑shirts and tooth brushes. But for the stuff that’s supposed to mean something, where my money goes, what I own, I don’t want frictionless; I want to understand before I buy. Back in 2016, everyone in fintech was chasing frictionless. Rally buried their purchase button five levels deep. I sat down with Rob Petrozzo, co‑founder of Rally, a platform where half a million people invest in fractional shares of dinosaur fossils, classic Ferraris, and rare comic books. Before fintech, Rob designed 500+ album covers. His first job out of school was building Kanye West’s visual brand from a back‑corner office at Sony. He’s a designer who found his way into finance by building products and teams at startups like ScrollMotion and KeyMe, then redesigning internal tools at a multibillion‑dollar asset manager. And it shows. When you open Rally, there’s no buy button, portfolio view, or transaction screen. Just stories. Photos of a 150‑million‑year‑old triceratops. The video of the fossil being pulled from the ground. The history of a 1985 Ferrari Testarossa, the poster on your childhood wall, now a $10 share. You have to dig through five layers of story before you even see what it costs. Fintech playbooks said to reduce the friction. Rally did the opposite. Rob told me: “I wanted to make people really care about something before they spent money on it.” Almost a decade later, it’s still working. Being a fintech is not the lead, it’s the how. 🔗 Link to full episode (It's amazing!) in comments Produced by the amazing Rose Reid