Vera Tzoneva

COO at @CoinTracker, #peoplenotthings

[Suhail @Suhail]

SpaceX feels like a bet on rooting for humanity's grand ability to invent, thrive, and far surpass our wildest imaginations. Bravo to you all that made this happen.

[David Marcus @davidmarcus]

Congratulations to the entire @SpaceX team. On a day like today people only see the success. Not the grit, determination, ingenuity, blood, sweat and tears over 24 years to get to this point. Every bit of this success today has been hard earned and deserved.

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

Very good article, especially on a day like today.

I especially like this advice:

"So if the jeans eventually just feel like jeans, and the leisure doesn't fulfill, and the scoreboard is optional, what should you actually do with the money?

First, find a financial advisor. Once you have money it's far easier to earn more, and there are a lot of arcane pitfalls having to do with taxes and investing strategies and who and what you can give to that is worth understanding."

[Julie Zhuo @joulee]

https://t.co/TjJDFgynKm

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

@joulee People, not things.

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

A few months ago, I was at dinner with close friends and the conversation turned to money.

Within a few minutes, we were talking about taxes, equity, shared accounts, and who's doing what. One friend had thousands of dollars in options and did not realize they could expire after leaving his company. Another didn't know what was on his last tax return. Someone else said their spouse handled all of it and then mentioned they did not have access to their accounts. Another friend was not sure whether her company equity was RSUs or options.

These are smart, accomplished people. One runs an engineering team. Two have graduate degrees.

I kept thinking about that dinner after I went home.

Most people’s financial lives are scattered across a dozen places. Brokerage accounts, tax software, equity portals, mortgage statements, budgeting apps, spreadsheets, old folders, advisors who each see one slice.

So you can be responsible, employed, educated and still not really know where you stand.

That dinner is a big reason we are building @use_nino.

We did this for crypto with @CoinTracker. Now we're doing it for the rest of your financial life: assets, cash flow, taxes, equity, planning, and filing in one place, with vetted CFPs and CPAs who can see the full picture.

I’d love for you to read the full story and join our waitlist here: https://t.co/RpjkbRYrT3

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

Join the waitlist here: https://t.co/lQULX68gpT

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

Most senior engineers I know can explain exactly how their compiler works. Ask them to explain their ISO vesting schedule and the room goes quiet.

The strange thing about tech compensation is that people negotiate it like it's money, then manage it like it's trivia.

I've watched smart people leave significant value on the table because the picture was never in one place. ISOs from a private company in one portal, RSUs from a public employer in another, a vesting cliff approaching, AMT exposure they haven't modeled. Each piece looks fine in isolation.

Together they tell a different story.

The most expensive decisions usually are the defaults. Like selling RSUs the moment they vest because that's what everyone does, not exercising ISOs early because no one explained what that window actually means, holding concentrated equity because diversifying feels like giving up.

None of those are obviously wrong. They're just decisions made without seeing the full picture, which is a different thing.

The people I've seen handle equity well aren't necessarily more sophisticated. They just have someone who looked at everything at once and told them what the interaction actually meant for their situation.

That's what Nino does. If you're a tech employee with equity across private and public companies and no coherent view of how it fits together, that's exactly who we built this for.

Waitlist link is in the comments.

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

Join the waitlist here: https://t.co/a5Mer1RrZe

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

I had a Charles Schwab robo-advisor for about four years before I seriously looked at how it was doing. I set it up early in my Google tenure. It felt like the responsible thing to do.

Automated, diversified, out of my hands. I moved on and stopped thinking about it.

A few years in, I finally called. Asked a simple question: how am I tracking against the market?

The answer I got was something like: your risk profile evolves year over year, so direct comparisons to the S&P 500 aren't really appropriate for your situation.

I remember thinking: that's not an answer.

I looked into the numbers myself. The account had underperformed for years, while I was also paying fees I hadn't really factored in. No one had ever flagged it. Not once.

What bothered me wasn't the performance gap. It was the absence of any accountability for it.

I've talked to a lot of people in tech since then. Most of them have a robo-advisor account they set up years ago and haven't revisited. When I ask how it's doing, the usual answer is something like "pretty well, I think."

They don't actually know.

Setting it and forgetting it isn't a strategy. It's just not paying attention.

The question worth asking, either yourself or your advisor, is: what am I actually earning net of fees, and how does that compare to just holding an index fund? If you don't have a clear answer, that gap is worth looking at.

Nino was built around that kind of direct accounting. One team, looking at your full picture, telling you what's actually working and what isn't.

Link to the waitlist is in the comments.

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

Waitlist: https://t.co/a5Mer1RrZe

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

Somewhere out there is a senior PM with:

- $900k net worth
- $400k unvested RSUs
- three advisors
- zero clarity
- and a 12-tab spreadsheet called “wealth plan maybe”

I will find you and convince you to let Nino help you.

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

“financial literacy should be taught in school”

true

I personally would have benefited from a 9th grade class called

“What Happens When Your Employer Pays You In Six Different Ways And The IRS Is Weird About All Of Them”

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

Waitlist: https://t.co/WAOovFQ8P8

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

Ask your financial advisor this question: how is my portfolio performing relative to a simple index fund, net of your fees?

Their answer will tell you whether they're managing your money or managing your relationship with you.

When I asked this of my own advisor, the response was something like: your risk profile evolves year over year, so direct comparisons to the S&P 500 aren't really appropriate for your situation.

That sounded reasonable. It also didn't answer the question.

I went and looked at the numbers myself. The account had underperformed for years, while I was also paying fees. No one had measured it against that standard, and no one had volunteered the comparison.

A real answer sounds like: over the last 3 years, your portfolio returned X%, a comparable index returned Y%, and here's why the difference is or isn't justified for your situation. That's what an advisor who is actually paying attention sounds like.

Most advisors aren't dishonest. They just aren't incentivized to make that comparison for you, because the way they're paid doesn't require them to. You have to ask directly.

If you ask and get a clear, honest answer, you have a good advisor. If you get a version of what I got, that's useful information too.

Frame charges a flat annual fee with no AUM component. Our advisors will give you that comparison directly, alongside the full picture across your taxes, equity, and investments.

Waitlist link is in the comments.

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

The modern financial stack:

- bank app(s)
- brokerage app(s)
- equity portal(s)
- crypto wallet(s)
- tax folder
- spreadsheets
- calendar reminder titled “do money thing”

This is a perfectly normal way to manage a complex financial life, if you hate yourself.

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

Check it out 👇️ https://t.co/GWuqmXMafA

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

Almost everyone around me at Google sold their equity the moment it vested. I kept mine.

The logic for selling made sense. But I also knew my own situation: what I had elsewhere, how much concentration I was comfortable with, what I actually needed in cash. The immediate sell didn't account for any of that.
So I held. It did well.

Selling the moment you vest isn't automatically right. Holding isn't either.

The answer depends on tax timing, concentration, cash needs, and conviction. Generic advice skips all of that.

That’s what Frame is built around: one team looking at your taxes, investments, equity, and cash needs together for a flat annual fee.

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

Every high-income tech person eventually becomes the CFO of a small, badly documented family office.

There are RSUs in one place, a 401(k) somewhere else, a brokerage account opened during a different personality era, a CPA who replies seasonally, and one PDF from 2021 that all stakeholders agree is important but can’t find.

I talked to someone recently who runs a business and knows exactly how the company is doing.

Then we looked at his personal finances and he had no comparable view.

It's funny because a lot of smart people would never tolerate this at work.

At some point the question is simple: If your personal finances were a business, could you tell how it was doing?

That’s the gap Frame is built to close.

Join the waitlist here: https://t.co/mc4F7tBXeK

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

I spent 4 years building Google Assistant partnerships. I think many AI assistants today are repeating a mistake from that era.

The vision was simple to describe and hard to build: software that understands your situation well enough to help before you have to explain everything from scratch.

Most of my work was on the partnership side. Search and Assistant were moving toward something more predictive and proactive.

If you had a flight, Google could tell you when to leave based on traffic. If you had a dinner reservation, the assistant could connect that moment to Uber. If you were hosting people, it could suggest a Spotify playlist at the right time.

What the user experienced was one small, helpful suggestion. What it took behind the scenes was coordination across product, APIs, partners, permissions, and flows that had to behave in a very specific way.

The product vision was right. The technology wasn’t there yet.

That’s why the current LLM moment feels familiar to me. A model becomes the interface. Third parties connect into it. The assistant routes you toward the next useful action.

For some problems, that works fine. Getting a ride to the airport doesn’t require Google to become Uber. The handoff is enough.

But some problems don’t survive the handoff cleanly.

When a decision depends on your history, your documents, your constraints, and the downstream effects of several connected choices, borrowing context for one response and then dropping it is not enough.

That was the limitation of the first assistant era. We got good at making individual moments feel smart. Maintaining continuity across the full situation was the harder problem.

It still is.

[Vera Tzoneva @veraTZ]

A client came to Frame recently who'd worked with various CPAs and CFPs over the years. On their first call with us, we found $6,800 in tax savings nobody had ever flagged.

The savings were sitting right at the intersection of taxes and investments.

That’s the whole idea behind Frame: your accounts, equity, taxes, and investments reviewed together. Year-round.

If you work in tech and your finances have outgrown the tools, spreadsheets, and once-a-year tax conversations, we should talk.