Jesse Wunderlich

Founder @NovaNetWorth • USMC vet • UAV pilot • Serial entrepreneur • Husband & dad • Building AI personal finance in public 🚀 Win or learn.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

Built this from scratch — a Marine, a laptop, and AI. Nova just got featured on @BetaList. The veteran personal finance space is wide open. 🚀

[Nova Net Worth @NovaNetWorth]

🚀 Nova Net Worth just got featured on @BetaList!

Track your net worth across all your assets with AI insights — banking, investments, real estate, crypto, and more.

Check it out and let us know what you think 👇
https://t.co/pQbW2bJKkX

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

Spent this week locking every database query behind user-level auth. One bad query and someone sees someone else's data. That's not a bug — it's a career-ending breach. Zero shortcuts taken.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

Most people know their credit score. Almost nobody knows their net worth. One of those numbers actually tells you if you're building wealth.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

My daughter is due June 28.

I'm still overseas.

10 commits this week.

She doesn't know any of that yet. But she'll know who I am when I get home.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

Shipped: self-serve API keys in Nova.

Create. Set your scopes. Copy. Done.

No email. No waiting on me.

Your financial data should connect wherever you want it to. That's not a feature — it's a principle.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

Financial literacy programs don't work.

Financial visibility does.

You don't need a finance degree. You need to see your own numbers clearly enough to act.

Most people can't. That's the actual problem.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

My daughter is due June 28. I'm still deployed overseas.

The deadline that actually matters isn't the product launch. It's getting home.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

This week: neutralized prompt injection in the AI layer, fixed a Plaid deadlock, hardened the Supabase webhook.

Deployed overseas. Shipping anyway.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

Financial literacy programs don't work. Financial visibility does.

You don't need another class. You need to see your actual number — in real time.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

Fixed something embarrassing this week:

Nova's CI was swallowing test failures silently.

Vitest would run, log nothing, pass the build.

Added a reporter. Boring fix. But you can't ship quality you can't see breaking.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

5 weeks from now:
→ I'm home
→ Amy arrives June 28
→ Dewey stops FaceTiming his dad

Everything I ship between now and then is buying back time I can't get back.

That's the only metric.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

Your salary is what you earn.
Your net worth is what you're building.

Most people track the first one.
Almost nobody tracks the second.

Which number actually tells you if you're getting ahead?

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

Amy is due June 28. I'll be home by then.

But the real deadline is November 21 — when Dewey turns 3.

That's when Nova needs to be self-sufficient. That's when I stop deploying.

Building with that clock running changes everything.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

Shipped something small this week that might feel big to users:

Nova now auto-heals broken bank connections.

No "please reconnect your account" email. No friction. Just works. 🔧

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

Most couple money fights aren't about money.

They're about not knowing the same number.

One dashboard. Both partners. Watch the tension drop.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

Got my DD-214 with $800 in savings and no financial plan.

That was 8 years ago.

Now I'm deployed, building a net worth tracker, 7 weeks from meeting my daughter.

The gap between those two versions of me is just: I started paying attention.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

This week on Nova:

→ 3 RLS security fixes (one found 2 more hiding behind it)
→ Daily CI drift-cron so prod schema never silently diverges again
→ Decommissioned staging entirely

Building solo means every system has to run itself. Made real progress on that.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

7 weeks until my daughter arrives. Still deployed. Still building. Every line of code shipped is a day closer to being home for both of them.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

Most people know their salary. Almost nobody knows their net worth. One of those numbers tells you where you're actually headed.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

Deployed overseas. Son Dewey is 2. Daughter Amy is due June 28.

The deadline isn't abstract — Nova needs to sustain itself before Dewey turns 3 on November 21.

Building from here so I can be home for that.

[Jesse Wunderlich @JesseWunderlich]

10 commits shipped from overseas this week.

Most notable: renamed "Potential Savings" → "Potential Federal Savings" in the tax estimator.

Why? State taxes exist. False precision in a financial tool erodes trust.

Getting the small things right is the whole thing.