SoFi Blog

In our #SoFiStartups Q&A series, SoFi co-founder Dan Macklin sits down with startup founders who have gone through the SoFi Entrepreneur Program, where we offer mentorship, access to investors, and student loan deferment for founders of young startups. In a candid conversation, he speaks from one entrepreneur to another about their experiences founding a company.

Medications can improve the quality of your life—when you remember to take them, that is. This is the insight at the heart of Pillsy, a smart pill bottle that syncs wirelessly to your phone and beeps when you forget a dose. The set-up lends an effortless, tech-assisted hand to help you keep track of your vitamins and medications.

But if this solution sounds deceptively simple, that’s because it is. In fact, it took the Seattle-based startup two years to get to where they are today, on the verge of launching their product. Challenges like manufacturing cost-effective hardware, wrestling with Bluetooth, and developing a user-friendly format didn’t make Pillsy easy to bring to life. As co-founder Otto Sipe describes the process, “It was long and there were a lot of rewrites along the way. Along the lines of—Oh, this is completely not going to work.“

If you haven’t yet reached the point of sitting in your cubicle and counting sticky notes out of boredom or because your workplace has become so grueling, you can’t be bothered to pay attention anymore—congrats. You’re one of the lucky souls not suffering from job burnout.

But even go-getters can suffer from career stress—the feeling that work has become a series of mindless repetitions and frustrating situations. And once it hits the burnout stage, that feeling is no joke. Left to fester, burnout can wreak havoc on your health, happiness, productivity, and performance. According to the Staples Business Advantage 2016 Workplace Advantage Index, 91% of U.S. and Canadian workers surveyed for the report put in over 40 hours a week, at least some of the time, and 22% have changed jobs because of work-life balance issues, including decreased family time and battling work pressures that seep into their personal lives. In addition, 3 out of 4 respondents reported they aren’t provided with the latest technology and are expected to do more with less, and only 35% have a wellness program available at their current job.

Snapping back from job burnout and once again becoming excited about your career is doable, but you must first take a deep dive into how you’re feeling to identify the source.

Protecting your personal information is one of SoFi’s top priorities, which is why we are excited to introduce two-step verification (aka two-factor authentication or 2FA) for your SoFi account. 2FA provides an additional layer of security to help protect your account from unauthorized access.

We use tech for just about everything these days. If the need exists, as they say, “there’s an app for that”—whether it’s food delivery, laundry service, or borrowing a car.

So for the complicated process that is searching for your first home, it’s no surprise that a few innovators are giving it a tech upgrade. Apps and online tools simplify the more labor-intensive parts of house hunting, from learning real estate lingo and weighing mortgage options to finding new listings and investigating neighborhoods.

Here’s a tour of some of the most useful house-hunting websites and real estate apps to use on the path to buying your dream home.

It’s no secret that the average doctor is saddled with tons of student loan debt when starting practice. In fact, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the average doctor graduates medical school with $190,000 in student loans—6x the national average.

Having a strategy to quickly and efficiently pay down your student loans is critical to long-term financial success, so we’ve put together a few personal finance tips and tricks for doctors to help them pay down student loans faster in 2017. These tips are relevant to all doctors, regardless of specialty or income.