Co-founders Katrin Kaurov and Aleksandra Medina bring a 1.6 million-person community and an organic creator network to Acorns.
Acorns, the financial wellness company helping everyday Americans grow their money, announced the acquisition of Frich, a community where young Americans learn about money from each other. Frich co-founders Katrin Kaurov and Aleksandra Medina join Acorns as Co-Leads of Education & Community.
The deal reflects Acorns’ broader goal of giving everyday Americans a real chance to grow their money. The acquisition brings Acorns a community of 1.6 million people and an organic creator network producing financial education content, extending the company’s approach to reaching new investors through creator-led education.
Many people avoid investing because they feel like it’s a club they don’t belong to, and they assume everyone else understands it and they don’t. That feeling often forms years before someone opens an investing app. This acquisition meets people in the peer conversations where they’re already shaping their money habits. It also continues a pattern for Acorns: bring in strong fintech builders and let them build.
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“Investing is intimidating,” said Noah Kerner, CEO of Acorns. “Doing it with others can help people get past that. Katrin and Aleksandra helped a lot of people say ‘I don’t know’ out loud, and that’s a good place to start. We keep betting on builders like them.”
Kaurov and Medina founded Frich in 2021 to address a gap in financial education for young adults. The company was built around the premise that people learn how to manage money from each other, through real, diverse stories from people like them, shared in group chats, comment sections and creator videos, rather than from spreadsheets or formal instruction. Along with its active community and organic creator network, Frich also developed a peer-benchmarking feature that lets members compare their financial habits with their peers’, answering a question many young Americans ask: is my situation typical?
“We spent five years getting people to talk openly about money,” said Katrin Kaurov, co-founder of Frich. “Acorns is the natural next step, because it lets us pair that conversation with investing and saving.”
“Money feels like culture when it’s honest, relatable, and social,” added Aleksandra Medina, co-founder of Frich. “That’s what we built at Frich. It’s what we get to keep building at Acorns.”
Acorns has spent more than a decade building products for financial wellness across life stages, including offerings for kids, teens, young adults, and families. The Frich acquisition adds an entry point built on peer conversation, reaching people where they are already talking about money, often before they have decided to invest. It also gives Acorns a way to start reaching specific communities more deeply, through the conversations those groups are already having with each other.
Existing Frich community members will be welcomed to Acorns. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Kaurov and Medina joined Acorns this month.
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