NFL Player Carl Nassib and Financial Finesse Ventures CEO Liz Davidson join Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the Rayze mobile platform, funding fintech startups, and financial wellness.

Video Transcript

- Financial Finesse Ventures is zeroing in on socially responsible fintech, announcing its first portfolio company will be Rayze. That's a social media network that's focusing on nonprofit engagement. Rayze founder and NFL player Carl Nassib and Financial Finesse Venture CEO Liz Davidson are with us here in the studio right now. You guys, thank you for being here in the studio, first of all.

CARL NASSIB: Thank you for having us.

- Carl, talk to us about Rayze, how you started it, what you were trying to achieve. By the way, I downloaded it. I had the chance to play around with it a little bit.

CARL NASSIB: I love that. Yeah. Absolutely.

- You have a lot of non-profits listed on there.

CARL NASSIB: I do. Yeah. It's been a great process. I first thought of Rayze about four years ago. I was volunteering down in Tampa. And we were volunteering through the Bucs. And we had an experience where we went and met with kids who were in a juvenile delinquent center. And some of them were as young as 13 years old in jail cells just wanting a new book to read. And a lot of them were there just because they were running away from a violent home environment.

And what was incredibly moving and really impactful for me it was a half a mile from where I went to work every day. And nobody knew that they were there. So I left that experience, and I said to myself there needs to be an app out there. There needs to be a quick way for anybody and everybody to see all these people in need to see every nonprofit, see every volunteering opportunity.

And within a month, I had Rayze trademarked. So it's been a great process of workshopping ideas, getting to meet amazing people. It's been so encouraging. So much passion comes from these people who dedicate their lives to serving others. And I'm just really, really excited about where we are and where we're going and just really excited to be here today.

- And so, Liz, how did you two come to work together on this and Financial Finesse Ventures as well, the part that you're playing in this broader kind of bringing Rayze to the market, making sure that people have this opportunity as well?

LIZ DAVIDSON: Yeah. So really quickly, I'm also CEO of Financial Finesse, the parent company that is funding the venture arm, and started the company in 1999, disrupted the financial services industry with unbiased financial wellness coaching as an employee benefit. Uphill battle. At that time, I would have loved to have had a socially-minded investor. And I had to bootstrap because it was always a conflict between doing what was right and doing what was going to get the fastest growth.

So that was the inception of Financial Finesse Ventures is now that we're at this level of success we have the ability to enable other firms that are socially minded to have that freedom to grow, but grow in a way that's aligned with their mission. Meeting Carl happened through the NFL Players Association. They're a client of ours. We do the education for NFL players. And he was an extern for us.

So we saw him on "Hard Knocks" doing that awesome financial workshop and said, we want to get this guy in as the extern-- really, an intern, for three weeks, formed an amazing relationship, stayed in touch. He brought me this idea over dinner. And I was like, OK, obviously, we need to check out the financials and where you're at. But if this is what you're representing it is, this is a game-changing idea. We want this to be our first investment.

- It's a very cool idea. But let's talk about the financials for just a hot second, Carl. How does this make money because even though it's partnering with nonprofits, it is not a nonprofit. This is a business enterprise.

CARL NASSIB: Yeah. Absolutely. So we generate revenue by, really, increasing the impact for nonprofits through their donations. We have a very small platform fee where we're actually more cost effective than any individual website for nonprofits. It's not even close. So through that, when we scale through the business acumen that Liz brings to us, I think that we'll scale and become very profitable very soon.

- OK. And so this is something that you're doing in tandem with also being the National Football player.

CARL NASSIB: Absolutely. Yeah.

- So how do you really kind of maintain correlating the correct amount of time towards a clear venture that you have a lot of passion about, but also making sure that, of course, there's a focus-- we're mid-season right now.

CARL NASSIB: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's been a great bye week. Yeah. I have a great team. My CTO, Jim-- shout out to him-- he is unstoppable. And I have a great support system. It kind of reminds me when I was in college football. You have two full-time jobs. You're a student and you're an athlete. And now I'm a CEO and an athlete.

And it's been an incredible experience. All my teammates are excited for me. And I want to get their foundations on. NFL players really are some of the most passionate people and the most highly driven people out there. And to get their nonprofits, get their foundations on Rayze is a really cool opportunity.

- Carl, what type of financial mistakes you see players still making nowadays.

CARL NASSIB: I think that we've all seen the horror stories that have happened. And we're all kind cognizant of it. But there is a culture of overspending that isn't just super specific to football players. It's everywhere. Everybody overspends. We make money to spend money. And what we fall into is just the expectations of you're supposed to do this. And I think, slowly but surely, we're getting smarter. We're learning from our mistakes, but also in a better way we're learning from other people's mistakes.

And I'm glad that we've had great partners like Financial Finesse and Liz who have offered many-- I don't know how many, but dozens of externships to NFL players over the years. And we're learning to really not be afraid of losing our money, but being really conscious about what earning this money at such a young age can do for us and do for our legacy and generating generational wealth for our families.

- And Liz, just quickly to if you, if you put that hat on for a moment, the Financial Finesse hat on, you deal with professionals, not just NFL players, but professionals across the world. What still surprises you the most about what people don't know about financial wellness?

LIZ DAVIDSON: It's not what they don't know. It's what they don't do. And so this is heavily behavioral. And we work all the way from partners at major consulting firms, C-level executives at technology firms. The same behaviors are pervasive in terms of as you make more, it's very easy to spend more. It's very easy to-- especially if you're confident-- to bet on yourself. So to incur debt with the idea that--

- We say a very prominent example of that recently, didn't we?

LIZ DAVIDSON: Yeah. Yes. Let's not go there. But it's the behaviors of just getting people to realize that financial freedom is really I think the ultimate goal. And to have cash in the bank and the ability to make decisions that are in integrity is huge.

And so I think we're starting to see a shift. When we started the company, it was about material things. Then it became about experiences. Now it's about having that freedom to live life on my own terms. And I think that's the most powerful driver. And Gen Z gets that. And so we're seeing a major shift. And I think it's very promising.

- Absolutely. Promising work that you're both doing together. Thanks for taking the time. in this here bye week as well. I mean, you've got some great team members that you play with. Tom Brady, I mean, the fountain of youth there. Is he coming back next season?

CARL NASSIB: Oh, I have no idea. You're asking the wrong guy. I have no idea.

- You talk to him every day, I feel like.

CARL NASSIB: Next season-- we got a game this week. We got my former team, the Browns, in about 10 days.

- He's got a few things to focus on.

CARL NASSIB: We're focused on that. Yeah. Always looking to the future. I'll tell him you say hello.

- Please. Please. We're close friends. Thanks so much for joining us here on set. We've got Rayze founder and NFL player Carl Nassib and Financial Finesse Ventures CEO Liz Davidson. Thanks so much.

LIZ DAVIDSON: Thank you.