Meet SortMe's CEO, Carl Thompson on the 2 Commas podcast

You trust SortMe with something most people won't bring up at dinner: how much money you have, and where it goes. So it's worth knowing who's building it.

SortMe's founder, Carl Thompson, just told the longer version of how he got here on Josh Comrie's 2 Commas podcast. The honest, open run-through of his entrepreneurial life is full of great takeaways.

The short version starts in January 2011, when Carl flew to Singapore with $3,000 to his name, no employment pass, and a prototype nobody had asked for yet. He and his co-founder shared a bedroom because they couldn't afford two. They lived on $4 hawker centre meals, worked 18-hour days, and stayed in the office until the early hours so they could call New York while it was awake. The company was TradeGecko. It later sold to Intuit during COVID for US$100 million, off an acquisition offer that had been sitting in his co-founder Cam's spam folder.

Carl wasn't there for that part. He came home two and a half years in, halfway through his vesting schedule, and left millions of dollars on the table. He says he'd make the same call again.

That decision is what the episode digs into. 2 Commas is a New Zealand show where founders who've sold for seven, eight and nine figures talk through how the exit happened: what went right, what nearly broke the deal, and what they'd tell you before you start. Host Josh Comrie has had twelve exits of his own, so he pushes past the polished version. The conversation covers the Singapore origin story, the product-market-fit moment that changed everything, the vesting decision that cost Carl a fortune, and what he has learned since. He has ADHD, and had been cycling in and out of burnout for twenty years without a name for it, a thread that runs straight into the company he runs now.

That company is the reason any of this matters to you. SortMe started with a number Carl couldn't get past: 60% of New Zealand households can't cover a $1,500 bill without borrowing. Often that isn't an income problem. It's that the full picture of a household's money is scattered across six different apps, and nobody has ever pulled it into one place. The people who feel that most aren't always the ones you'd expect, and building the tool those households need is the work Carl rates above the exit he walked away from.

If you've ever wondered who's behind the app you check on a Tuesday morning, this is a good way to meet him.

Listen or watch wherever you are

• YouTube: Watch the episode
• Apple Podcasts: Listen on Apple
• Spotify: Listen on Spotify

If you like it, the whole 2 Commas catalogue is worth a follow:

• YouTube: @2CommasByJoshComrie
• Apple Podcasts: 2 Commas show page
• Spotify: 2 Commas show page

See what they built

If you want one clear view of your money, every account, every subscription, what's coming in and going out, you can try SortMe for $1 at sortme.com.