The Entrepreneur’s Wallet
From looking at someone’s wallet, you can tell you a lot about that person. Do you think can guess which one is Mike McDerment’s, co-founder and CEO of FreshBooks?
I’ll give you a hint. Before starting FreshBooks, Mike ran a slightly disorganized web consultancy. He was always wondering who owed him money, how much was due to him, and did he update that invoice to paid or not. His wallet was full of checks and bank deposit receipts.
Mike managed his invoices in Microsoft Word. It was a pain to get quick snap shots of his receivables and to simply update invoices (changes, payments etc). He would have to go into his invoices folder and eventually find the information he was looking for. There was no summary or dashboard. And then the inevitable happened: one day he accidentally copied over an invoice trying reuse an existing client’s address. He lost the original invoice forever and said, “@#$%#@%# – there has to be a better way.” Thus, FreshBooks was born.
So which wallet is Mike’s? I bet you can tell now. It’s the Costanza to the left, or as Mike likes to call it, “the entrepreneur’s wallet”.
Even though he still is a bit of a scatterbrain rat pack (his words, not mine) he surrounds himself with tools and people to get the job done so he can focus on what he’s good at (not creating and sending invoices). Can you guess whom the other wallet belongs to? Bachelor number two needs to be efficient and organized to keep things on schedule and avoid any “feature creep”.
That’s right, it’s our Product Manager Casey McKinnon’s wallet. He needs to keep the product clean and efficient for you – so he keeps the rest of his life pretty simple and sleek as well.
So, what’s in your wallet?
sends more invoices than there are 
9:24 am
My wallet is the one on the right. It has cash, drivers license, credit/debit card, and starbucks card. That’s it.
And yes, I do use Freshbooks to keep me organized with all that other stuff you mentioned.
9:51 am
Mine is definitely the one on the left. I try to go through these receipts every month or so, and shoot them into Freshbooks’ “Expenses.”
10:06 am
A mix of the two, thankfully not as fat as Mike’s wallet there. Receipts get emptied out on a weekly basis and input into Freshbooks and I just haven’t found a good replacement for my wallet that can keep all my cards!
1:33 pm
If you’re wondering what that papery looking thing sticking out of my otherwise-sleek wallet is… its a paint sample chip from some paint I bought a few weekends ago. Its gone now
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6:58 pm
Mine, luckily, now looks like the one on the right. I bought a small wallet that could fit only my credit card, debit card, insurance card, and ID. It was the first of many of my moves towards being more of a “minimalist” in certain aspects of life.