From the first sketch at the end of 2017 to the first Coop payment in spring 2020. A story about naming, community, earned media and why a brand is not created in the agency.
Yapeal was not one marketing story among many. It was a Swiss premiere. The numbers tell why.
Christian and I knew each other from a joint project at UBS. At some point it became clear to both of us: we wanted to do something meaningful, something of our own. We quit. Yapeal wasn't the first thing we had on the table. But it was the idea that stuck.
A Swiss bank that is not built on legacy systems, but is cloud-native and real-time from day 1. No customer account that night processed becomes. No three-day wait for transfers.
I was one of the first people in the core team. Bootstrap, your own money, no backer in the background. In June 2018, Yapeal entered the commercial register with fifteen co-founders. Unusually many. But the idea from the start was to anchor the company broadly, not to build it as a one-man vision.
My mission: give the thing a face. Before there was an app. Before there was a license. Before there was even an official company name.
We wanted a name with substance. Yap is a Pacific island famous for its stone money: massive boulders that serve as currency without ever physically changing hands. A story about trust, consensus and symbolic money. Exactly what a digital bank is all about at its core.
Then I wanted it too appealing sounds. This became Yappeal. When designing the logo: which I made myself: I decided to delete a p. Yapeal seemed cleaner. I purchased the free URLs at the end of 2017.
The brand was born before the company even existed.
The start was tough. A Swiss neo-bank without a banking license, without backing from a major bank, without a finished product. The industry didn’t really take us seriously at the beginning.
I started shooting this. About community building. About transparency instead of PR gloss. About personal visibility on LinkedIn, in podcasts, in interviews, on stages. MoneyToday has been with us “since the first line of code”. I became the face of Yapeal: not because I planned it, but because a brand without people doesn't work in the Swiss financial center.
The alpha community grew to around 100 early testers, the later community to around 2,000. During our first crowdfunding, we collected almost 1 million CHF in 6 days, with low barriers to entry, because we weren't interested in capital, but in turning the community into co-owners.
The turning point came in March 2020: FINMA license. The first ever. The FINMA work itself was in the hands of a colleague. I accompanied them communicatively. But the impact was to the brand what a moon landing is to NASA.
From then on all eyes were on us.
We delivered.
A brand is remembered not by roadmaps and KPIs, but by moments. These three remained.
Yapeal was a team project from day 1. What the people I worked with say about working together.
Great technology is nothing without a great story. Working with Andy Waar at Yapeal allowed us to... just another app to become a movement. This synergy between digital-first engineering and authentic community building is the reason why we were ranked one of the most innovative SMEs in Switzerland.
A brand is not built in the agency.
It is built in the Community built and carried by people.
We compared each roadmap item with the community. Which features, in what order, with what priority. For us, customer focus was not an advertising promise. This position is more expensive, slower and more strenuous. At the same time, it is the only way to build a brand that lasts.
Today, when a FinTech founder or an established CMO knocks on my door, this is the first question I ask: Who is your community? Not target audience. Not persona. Community. The rest follows from that.
One contact person, from strategy to launch. Direct line to me.