BCBusiness

bcbusiness.ca january 2016 BCBusiness 29 for $200 from "some guy who I'm pretty sure stole it from somewhere and sold it on Craigslist." But when Ramos was pushed to track his expenses, he realized he was doing strange things. He would reject the idea of buying a pair of high-quality boots for $250. But he'd go out with friends for a nice meal and drinks on a Friday night and eas- ily blow that same $250 (indeed, he discovered he was spending a lot more on food and particularly alcohol than he had thought). Ramos's mental math, before his budget- conscious girlfriend entered his life, was typical of one kind of problem people have: not having a good grasp of the amount of money they're spend- ing on small items (the so-called "latte" factor). That's the kind of spending that almost every finan- cial planner will say people need to get under con- trol—the $3 or $4 dropped here and there that isn't tracked but adds up to hundreds of dollars a month. People also have a hard time estimating their spending on big once-a-year or once-a- decade items: a replacement TV for the one that broke, a friend's wedding that entails joining the couple on a cruise or a three-day music festival When people think about their spending, they think about the now, not the future. That's what Sam Ramos concluded was his problem after a new girlfriend made him look closely at his budget a few years ago. He thought of himself as frugal. But when Ramos was pushed to track his expenses, he realized he was doing strange things. He would reject the idea of buying a pair of high-quality boots for $250. But he'd go out with friends for a nice meal and drinks on a Friday night and easily blow that same $250 "My twin sister, Kristine, [steuart], was a marketing man- ager, and she and her colleagues were each managing their own million-dollar marketing spend. They kept seeing the same pain point: they couldn't easily say, at the end of the quarter, what they spent against what objectives. We thought there was a better way. Kristine and i sketched up a little mock-up in a coffee shop and the prototype for allocadia went from there. We funded it with our side jobs: i was an instructor at bciT and also doing part-time work, while Kristine had just had her second child and was doing marketing services. We had a website up, a google ad words budget of $150 a month, and had subleased a tiny shared desk in a place where we could have allocadia space to work from. but the scariest thing was deciding whether or not to jump in with two feet. We knew this was a big risk and the stats were against us. We met at steamworks in gastown. it was a difficult con- versation because it was about understanding what we wanted in life and how committed we were to this. i mean, we were close as sisters, but we really needed to know how much both of us could put in to fund this. ultimately, i decided to quit my part-time job and kept the bciT work to pay the bills. Kristine had already quit her big tech company job and she reduced the services work she was doing as well. after that, it changed completely. our single focus together was allocadia. We had goals to hit, whereas before we always had other things pulling our attention. We developed a prototype and signed our first customer at a trade show. We realized we had to have a version 1 of our product so we accelerated the development and launched in 2010, and we got some customers from that. it was a big day when the business started to fund itself. We had signed our first large enterprise, juniper networks, and we didn't have to put money into the business anymore. That was a really big milestone for us." • K aT He RI N e Be RR Y C P O A N d C O - F O U N d E R , A L L O C A d I A K now n for : Creating cloud software that helps marketers plan and manage their investments and returns 2 two feet. We knew this was a big risk and the stats

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