For years I used credit cards so I could pay one bill a month. Then I noticed what was really happening: my paycheck was paying for the past. I was spending more than I earned, carrying a balance at 18%, and the interest cost more than any rewards were worth. Credit didn’t just fund purchases. It built behavioral infrastructure around one word: impulse. The loop is the product. So I went all-in on cash and switched to debit. It helped, until a different failure showed up. Our lives are multi-dimensional, but a bank gives us one dimension: one balance. It looks like truth when you get paid, but it blends rent money, next-week money, fun money, and money that shouldn’t move at all. That’s when it clicked: time is money, yet money can’t tell time. Every system shows a timestamp after you buy, and a thousand apps will help you tag and categorize it after the fact. But almost nothing helps you factor time before you buy, because one balance can’t tell you how a choice now changes what’s true until your next paycheck. The missing behavioral infrastructure is intent. Magnitude encodes it the moment you get paid.

Magnitude visualizes income through a spectrum of purpose-bound reserves, so you can see tradeoffs before you decide to act and the bigger picture snaps into focus.

How it works: The OS resolves your balance, the Protocol enforces the rules, and Sub-ledgers encode intent.

OS — separates a single cash balance into multiple sub-ledgers inside sponsor-bank cash accounts (Column), executable on the same card rails used by debit/credit cards (Visa/Mastercard).

Protocol — enforces rules pre-authorization (reduces fraud, disputes, and chargebacks), lowering overhead and making user incentives structurally viable at scale.

Sub-ledgers — protect spoken-for funds, rebalance daily spending, and auto-fill goals from surplus—intent is re-encoded each payday (so it can change).

Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Setup in minutes. Experience it daily. Economics at scale.

3-Step Setup:
- Download Magnitude—open a bank account.
- Link Direct Deposit—income is pre-allocated.
- Set the gradient—outcomes are clear.

Experience:
- Balance check—intent set.
- Merchant known—context set.
- Tap to pay—funding source set.
- Card settlement—payback accrues.

Economics (Start → Scale):
$2.5k/user/mo debit card spend ≈
$450/user/yr (50/50 payback/net revenue)
4.5k users ≈ $1M net revenue;
45k users ≈ $10M;
450k users ≈ $100M.

Magnitude is raising a pre-seed round Q1, 2026.
Scroll to the bottom to book a call with the Cal link.

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There should be a word like “adulting” for parenting your parents. When I stepped into that role, I tried to help mine set up a will, trust, and medical directives. I pointed them to online templates or suggested hiring an elder lawyer. My parents didn’t trust the forms—they felt confusing and worried they'd make a mistake. And my parents thought lawyers would be too expensive, which is one of many reasons they hadn't done it yet. So I did it all for them with some guidance from my attorney. That’s when I realized: preparing for the future was worth it for people with wealth, but broken for everyone else.

In 2016, former-colleague Dave Hanley, CreditNet-founder Joshua Heckathorn, and I co-founded Tomorrow to make estate planning simple and accessible for the 99%—people who’d never hire a lawyer and would never get around to it unless they could do it on their own—and they did.

We built a network of 100+ attorneys across all 50 states to make the Tomorrow app fully legal—then used illustrations, animation, and storytelling to make it fully human.

Tomorrow helped 1 million people plan for the future by making choices clear and leaving the document until the end—when all the decisions were done. Questions presented adapted programmatically to each family’s unique structure and local laws—no templates, no jargon. In under 10 minutes, you'd get an email with ready-to-sign PDFs that have held up in court to this day.

It wasn’t just beautiful—it worked. Year-over-year growth hit 216%, and users left reviews like:

“Easy peasy. Makes doing adult things easy and fun. If this didn’t exist, I likely would not ever have a will.” – Stacie

In 2022, on our path to Series B, Tomorrow was acquired by digital insurer Ethos. The product is now fully integrated and drives higher LTV by offering estate plans alongside term-life policies. Click the link above to see it.

Update: Ethos has filed for an IPO in 2026 (NASDAQ:LIFE).

As a kid, I watched Seattle Seahawks games in the Kingdome. Years later, I watched that same stadium implode from a rooftop—standing next to Eddie Vedder, coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other. Years later, I learned the Nordstrom family once owned the team—which came full circle when Dan Nordstrom seed-funded my first startup, Playmark, alongside George Aposporos, Amazon’s first VP of Business Development. George had the relationships, vision, and strategy. I had a product plan and the engineering team to execute. Together, we started with one paying customer and built a platform we could sell to every major sports league looking for a way to manage licensing rights and royalty payments.

In 2012, we launched the first online royalty platform for managing likeness rights in commercial products—starting with all 1,800 NFL players across all 32 teams.

The Playmark platform transformed how the NFL Players Association licensed digital likenesses to brands like EA and Topps. We automated royalty collection and payment, putting 8% of sales directly into players’ pockets—often amounting to 6-7 figures of additional annual income.

Licensing approval times dropped from six months to six weeks. One licensing manager could now do the work of ten. CFOs loved it.

But the efficiency that made Playmark powerful also threatened internal fiefdoms—slowing enterprise adoption and stalling sales. Distribution lesson learned. We sold the technology rights to the NFLPA and returned capital to investors. A clean, hard-earned exit.

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