What Keeps Me Up at Night

What keeps me up at night and what wakes me up in the morning 🌙☀️

What keeps me up at night:

The people who desperately need this and do not have it yet. 💔

The person standing at a checkout counter right now whose card is about to decline. Not because they do not have money. Because a subscription they forgot about, a bill that hit early, or a fee they did not see coming wiped out what was supposed to be there. And now they are standing in line carrying shame they did not earn.

What keeps me up at night is knowing that adults with ADHD are four times more likely to attempt suicide, and that financial stress and trauma are major contributing factors. ⚠️

What keeps me up at night is the person who fought like hell to get sober. They did the work, re-entered the workforce, and still faced late fees, overdrafts, and chaos. And they relapsed. Not because they were weak. Because nobody gave them a tool that actually worked for their brain. 🧠

I lay awake at night thinking about all the ways we can help reduce the risk of relapse.

What keeps me up at night is wanting to build the best product in the world for these people. Is it safe enough? Smooth enough? Truly trauma informed? We will not settle. And yes, it keeps me up at night that we are building this without funding yet. 🏗️🔥

What keeps me up at night is the harm.

What wakes me up in the morning is the hope. ✨

Someone who has been incarcerated, did everything right, and is trying to rebuild their life with whatever job they can get. 💼

And then the same financial stress hits them too. Maybe they have neurodivergencies that were never diagnosed. The job is not enough, but it could be with the right support. A tool that keeps them from falling back into old patterns.

I dream of reducing the risk of recidivism. 🔁

I think about the aging population. People who were good with money their entire lives, but cognitive decline does not care. One missed bill becomes a cascade of stress for them and their families. ⏳💳

I dream of stopping the bleeding.

I dream of stopping the depression and shame spirals. 🌪️

What gets me out of bed in the morning is the hope that someone will see the value and importance of what we’re building and invest.

What gets me out of bed is YOU. All of you who have come alongside this vision because I want to make it a reality for us all.

That is what gets me out of bed every single morning. That, and figuring out which pitch deck slide to fix before my next investor call.

This is not a feature. It is a correction to a system that has been failing people for decades.

That is why we are building Pistachio Pay. The first trauma informed financial automation platform. If it’s not safe, we don’t ship it. 💚