A few bucks a month isn’t all that much, which is why many of us don’t think twice when before signing up for a monthly subscription to something like Netflix or Spotify, but when you accumulate several of those subscriptions over a period of time, it starts to add up. The worst part is, your subscription payments are automatically taken care of, so it’s really easy to forget you’re even paying then. This is where Trim thinks it can be of assistance, as simply providing the service with your payment information and phone number allows it to create a list of all the subscriptions you’re paying for, and then cancel whichever ones you no longer want with a simple text message.
Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Birchbox, Spotify, HBO NOW, newspapers, box of the month clubs, meal services, and more: The rise of subscription-based commerce means consumers now pay for a number of items on a recurring basis. But even a few dollars spent here and there have a way of adding up, and eating into your household’s budget. A new startup called Trim wants to help you better track all the subscriptions you pay for, and easily cancel those you don’t need. And it does all this over text messaging. The idea for the startup comes from two Yale grads, Thomas Smyth and Dan Petkevich, whose backgrounds include time spent at Redfin, the Climate Corporation, and in venture investing. Co-founder and CEO Smyth previously worked as an investor at Core Innovation Capital, which invests in finance technology companies like NerdWallet, CoverHound, Ripple and others. The experience had him spending a lot of time thinking about personal finance, he says. But like many founders, the longtime friends experienced the problem they wanted to solve firsthand before starting Trim.