About Whale
Whale is the first fintech platform designed specifically for the 100 million+ renters in the U.S., offering a suite of financial products to help renters build wealth. Its flagship product is the market’s first high-yield savings account for security deposits, enabling renters to earn while they rent, while relieving property owners of deposit management—at no cost. Future offerings like Whale Grow will allow renters to invest excess funds in ETF portfolios, further growing their wealth.
Context
When Jamie approached Stackpoint in 2024, he brought a clear vision for revolutionizing security deposits: let renters earn interest on their deposits while simplifying management for property owners.
Whale is great venture idea, (we go into details on how Stackpoint determines if a venture is worth pursuing here), but the key question for Jamie was whether he wants to build Whale alone or partner with Stackpoint to build it and take it to market faster before someone else does. This case study examines specific decisions that shaped Whale's development and illustrates how Stackpoint's cross-functional team collaborated with Jamie Petraglia, founder of Whale, to lead its path to market and build Whale in a way that reduced risks in a heavily regulated space.
"From day 1 Stackpoint surrounded me with an all-star team of engineering, design, product, growth, and finance experts who have “been there, done that” before, love building, and are super hands-on in the trenches. With this team at my side I can build a better product faster and save a ton of time, money and equity.” - Jamie Petraglia
Early Product Decisions
What seemed like a straightforward proposition – letting renters earn interest on security deposits – quickly revealed itself as an intricate puzzle with numerous interconnected pieces. Jamie's initial vision for Whale encompassed multiple products working in concert: Whale Deposit would handle the core security deposit functionality, Whale Grow would provide additional investment opportunities, and Whale Ledger would give property managers the tools they needed to oversee it all.
The technical architecture required to support this vision was equally complex. Each renter would need both a bank account and a brokerage account, with a sophisticated money movement system orchestrating the flow of funds between them. Security deposits would first land in the bank account, then move to the brokerage account for investment, with a mechanism for property owners to pull funds back when needed. This dual-account structure seemed fundamental to the entire system.
Imaged blurred to protect IP
The complexity extended beyond technical architecture. The team needed to navigate relationships with multiple financial partners, each with their own regulatory requirements and technical constraints. Particularly, the banking partners were uncomfortable with the proposed structure – they'd never done anything quite like this before. Three months into development, the banking partners were hesitant to commit to the proposed timeline, and each conversation revealed new regulatory hurdles. Whale faced two choices: push forward with the original vision, hoping to eventually overcome these obstacles no matter how long it took, or take a more creative approach.
During a late-night conversation between Jamie and the Stackpoint team, they landed on a key question that changed the course of the company: "Do we actually need the banking partner to make this happen? Could we find a brokerage partner who's willing to do it the way we want and just have one account for residents?"
This seemingly simple question led to a breakthrough. By challenging the assumption that two accounts were necessary, the team found a way to drastically simplify the system while preserving its core value proposition. The single-account structure eliminated a major dependency, reduced operational complexity and renter account creation costs, and accelerated their path to market.
"Stackpoint eliminated so many early-stage operational hurdles. From figuring out our engineering contractor strategy to structuring competitive compensation packages - having their experienced team to lean on meant I could focus on building the business rather than getting caught up in operational details." - Jamie Petraglia
💡 Stackpoint's Value Add: Be the founder's partner in crime to help identify and question assumptions that might otherwise go unchallenged until much later in the development process.
Research-Driven Development
The path to product-market fit required more than just solving technical challenges. Stackpoint's design and user research experts implemented a systematic approach to supplement Jamie's existing knowledge about the users and market.
Stackpoint's research and design teams created detailed storyboards showing three different security deposit experiences: the traditional approach of using paper checks, a competitor's alternative approach, and Whale's proposed solution. Instead of simply asking users what they thought about Whale, they invited them to compare and contrast these different approaches. This method revealed insights that might have remained hidden without the storyboards.
The research uncovered several crucial insights that challenged initial assumptions. One of the most significant revelations concerned the admin tool that Jamie had envisioned as a core part of the platform. The original assumption was that property managers would want sophisticated tools for managing security deposits. However, through careful conversation and observation, the team discovered that property managers were actually drowning in tools. They weren't looking for another dashboard to learn and maintain – they wanted solutions that would integrate seamlessly with their existing workflows.
This insight led to a shift in product strategy. Rather than prioritizing Whale Ledger, the team realized they could create more value by focusing on the core deposit functionality for renters and finding ways to integrate with existing property management systems. This decision not only simplified their development roadmap but also aligned better with how property managers actually worked.
The research also helped resolve an ongoing debate about pricing strategy. The team had been wrestling with how to set processing fees for renters, and whether to charge processing fees at all, concerned that fees might deter adoption. Through structured interviews that explored users' expectations and value perceptions, they discovered that renters actually expected to pay fees in the $40-50 range for this type of service. This finding gave the team confidence to set their initial processing fee at $20, knowing they were providing strong value while leaving room for future adjustments based on market response.
💡 Stackpoint's Value Add: The systematic research approach helped Whale avoid the common startup trap of building features based on untested assumptions. While intuition is important, each major product decision was also grounded in actual user feedback and behavior. The studio's experienced research team knew how to ask the right questions that revealed not just what users said they wanted, but what they actually needed.
Evolution of Go-to-Market Strategy
The initial go-to-market strategy for Whale was to launch the complete product suite, focus on organic user acquisition (i.e. renters moving into a unit), and target individual renters. However, as the team dug deeper into implementation details, they discovered that this approach would significantly slow their path to meaningful market adoption.
When analyzing market segmentation, Whale had three potential target markets: multi-family housing, student housing, and single-family rentals. Student housing initially appeared to be the most attractive entry point because the high and predictable turnover of students created significant security deposit management challenges for property managers. Furthermore, helping students invest early aligned closely with Whale's mission of building wealth for renters. However, starting with student housing would force the team to solve one of the most complex use cases first: managing multiple roommates contributing to a single security deposit. The deposit collection and return process presented significant technical challenges. Beyond user experience considerations, this scenario raised complex questions about account ownership, fund distribution, and regulatory compliance: Who would own the brokerage account? How would returns be distributed? What would happen when roommates changed?
Through close collaboration between Jamie and the Stackpoint team, a clear strategy emerged: focus on multi-family housing properties where Whale could convert entire buildings at once. The team then developed a dual-track approach to accelerate adoption, combining the conversion of existing residents' traditional security deposits to Whale while simultaneously pursuing new user acquisition. This strategy balanced the need for growth with operational feasibility.
On the marketing front, Amily He, Stackpoint's VP of Marketing, recognized that Whale's initial positioning as a "security deposit alternative" was limiting its potential and creating market confusion. Security deposit alternatives typically referred to surety bonds or credit products that helped renters bypass traditional deposits – but Whale was doing something fundamentally different.
Working closely with Jamie, Amily developed a new positioning strategy that would better capture Whale's unique value proposition. Instead of competing in the crowded space of security deposit alternatives, Whale would create an entirely new market category. The product would be positioned as "the first high-yield savings account for security deposits" in the short term, with a longer-term vision as "the first digital wallet designed for renters."
This repositioning accomplished several strategic objectives. For landlords, it presented Whale as a real estate fintech product that eliminated administrative hassles while ensuring compliance. For renters, it offered a clear, familiar analogy – a high-yield savings account – making the product easier to understand and trust. Most importantly, it distanced Whale from the sometimes negative associations of existing security deposit alternatives, establishing the company as an innovator in the real estate fintech industry.
💡Stackpoint's Value Add: Reduce GTM risk and accelerate user adoption. Strategically position the company to create market differentiation.
Technical Execution and Risk Management
The studio's systematic approach to technical development helped identify and mitigate risks that might have otherwise gone unnoticed until much later. Each technical decision was evaluated not just for its immediate impact, but for its implications for future scale and regulatory compliance.
For instance, the decision to integrate with existing property management systems rather than build a separate admin tool wasn't just about current user preferences – it reflected a deeper understanding of the technical landscape in real estate technology. The studio team recognized that property management systems were becoming increasingly sophisticated platforms, and building a parallel system would create long-term integration challenges.
The team also applied this forward-thinking approach to their banking infrastructure. Even after simplifying to a single-account structure, they needed to ensure their technical architecture could support future expansion. They designed their systems to maintain clean separation between core banking functions and user-facing features, allowing them to add new financial products without disrupting their existing infrastructure.
💡 Stackpoint's Value Add: Stackpoint’s engineering team ensures the product is built for future scale. To learn more about how Stackpoint supports founders from the engineering perspective, check out this article.
The Impact of Stackpoint on Whale
As Whale continues to grow, the early decisions made with Stackpoint's support have laid a robust foundation for expansion. A streamlined technical architecture, a focused product offering, and a well-defined go-to-market strategy have set the stage for sustainable growth.
"Beyond just building the product, partnering with Stackpoint has been an incredible journey. Their team brings deep expertise across every aspect of company building, and their ability to open doors has been invaluable. When they make introductions to VCs, even pre-launch, they get responses that would be impossible to get otherwise. Their network and reputation have accelerated our entire process significantly." - Jamie Petraglia
The results speak for themselves: In just 7 months, Whale reached a $14M valuation, secured $2M in funding, and signed contracts for 75K units.
As a founder looking to build the next venture, Whale's journey highlights the advantages of partnering with Stackpoint. With an expert team by your side, Stackpoint helps founders tackle complex decisions faster and with greater confidence, minimizing both technical and market risks.
About Stackpoint
Stackpoint is a venture studio that partners with experienced founders to launch companies in high-barrier, mature industries. We actively source business concepts and pain points by conducting internal explorations and collaborating with founders, category-leading VCs, and strategic industry partners. We accelerate growth and produce unfair advantages for our portfolio companies and founders by providing resources and capital including:
[Team] Full-stack in-house team with decades of experience building and scaling companies
[Process] Proven techniques to build a winning product, bring it to market, raise capital and hire a stellar team
[Network] Design partners, customers, advisors, investors and talent to de-risk and accelerate your path to success
[Capital] Seed and follow-on capital to get you started and let you focus on building, not fundraising, in the earliest stage
Our proven approach delivers a Seed to Series A graduation rate 3X the industry average—while ensuring founders retain more equity than traditional paths.
If you are new to the venture studio model, learn more about it in our Venture Studio 101 article.
