Interview Question: Design a product for malls

1. Assumptions

US only

Age 5-18

2. Product landscape and motivation

Product landscape

  • Most people have venmo or paypal
  • P2P transactions; online transactions
  • Gap: Venmo's brand is fun, social, and trusted by Gen Z — but it has no offering for under-18s and lacks family or parental control features

Competitors

  • Direct
    • Cash App for Teens
    • Apple Cash Family
  • Indirect: Zelle (Backed by big banks and native), Google, WhatsApp, Bank accounts for teens

Strengths: Really easy use, Social component, Real time or semi-real time vs banks 2-3 days have transaction limits

Weaknesses: Not directly hooked to bank account, Not trusted as a bank

Opportunities: Help kids open up bank accounts; Become a bank

Threats: Risks around financial transaction, especially with kids

Company Mission: Helping world and people connect financially

str Help younger people transact financially online and spend responsibly

  • Kids are increasingly transacting online
  • Gen Z and Gen Alpha are growing up cashless, and parents want tools to teach them financial literacy early.
  • Venmo already owns young adult mindshare

4. Customer segments

Kids (primary users)

  • Young kids (5-12); education and responsibility might be challenging (use cases: P2P, Buying stuff online, Buying stuff inperson)
  • Highschool kids (13-18); have unique needs but less likely to be take advantage of then young kids

Parents (gatekeepers)

  • With young kids
  • High school kids

Banks (similar use cases as normal venmo): Partner, Transact with them, Become one

Merchants (similar use cases as normal venmo): Online, In person

5. Pain points

Sending money (kids do stupid stuff so big pain point)

  • Manual Allowance Tracking: Many parents give cash or track allowance verbally or on spreadsheets.
  • No Real-Time Visibility: Hard to know how/where kids are spending money.
  • Lack of Controls: Parents fear misuse of money or unsafe digital purchases.
  • No Financial Education Tools: No easy way to teach budgeting, saving, and responsible spending.

Receive money (not a big pain point)

  • Need to be able to easily give kid money for allowance or chores
  • Want kids to feel the benefits of having a job
  • Want to teach them how to save money, make money, earn interest and transact in real world
  • Know who is giving your kid money and for what (no illegal / sketchy activity)

Opening up bank accounts / saving / investing (not core to mission and product)

Fragmented Tools: Allowance, chore tracking, and spending are managed in separate apps.

Connecting kids account to parents account for easy transacting

Determining how to invest money

6. Solutions

ApprovedFriends - can only send money to approved friends and people on a list; parents have to approve any new friends or merchants before kid can send money

Kids get their own limited-access Venmo account linked to the parent's account.

SpendMonitor - Parents get alerts (similar to fraud alerts) whenever their kid is spending money on something potentially sketchy (either because of the person or the emoticon that they use for the transaction); would likely have to focus more on the who the money is going to because emoticons are hard

FrugalityGame - Help encourage kids to not spend too much by gamifying the spending process. Kids and parents can see how much money is spent on food vs books vs other stuff and they can win awards or stickers when they don’t spend money.

  • Create and set budget
  • Gamify making money as well
  • 1 player

Social Contests - Could have leaderboards with friends and parents about who is the biggest saver

SaversClub - share tricks and tips to help kids find good deals and share with friends

Allowance + Chores Automation

  • Tie weekly allowance to completed tasks
  • Use simple templates like “$5 if you complete your chores today”

7. Evaluate

Pre-mortem

  • People don't want to talk about saving money online
  • Large portion of finances aren't using venmo so savings contest encourages off-Venmo transactions?

MVP

  • Centralized control panel where parents can:
    • Send recurring allowance
    • View transaction history
    • Set spending limits
    • Freeze or unfreeze funds instantly
  • Kids get their own limited-access Venmo account linked to the parent's account.

Success metrics

  • WAUs
  • Discounts used
  • Discounts used / WAU

Guardrail

  • DAU retention
  • # of DAUs that have been retained

Follow-up question: should kids have their own account or profile that's part of their parents account?

  • Profile - different logins but linked to one bank account and can access kids account
  • Kids only account - parents can't see kids account
  • Pros of own account
    • Kids would feel more comfortable and use it more
    • Parents could still see output of social contest
  • Cons of own account
    • Parents would have less control and visibility