When President Obama stood before our nation today to accept the honor and burden of his office, he issued a very specific and important call to our national character:

“starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”

As the Thrive team gathered together to watch the inauguration, it is perhaps not surprising that there was a solemn moment in the room at this call to action, as it is precisely the one that we so often make to our users – that no matter how bad your financial situation may be, things can change. You can stand on your own feet.

Thrive was founded with this same standing up, brushing off, and remaking mentality in mind. Our founders didn’t leave profitable careers because they thought Thrive would make them rich: they make less here than they did in previous jobs. Instead, they started Thrive because it was there way of doing what they could to help solve a problem that they saw affecting the world around them. They built the product from the ground up on feedback, and research, and good solid science on how people think about money, always with the aim at making a sustainable difference.

But it wasn’t the whole answer. I talk with hundreds, if not thousands, of people each year about their finances, and while Thrive is working hard to take a bite out of their problems, help them to help themselves, I don’t have any illusion that we’ve been the complete picture for anyone.

We’ve all been challenged today by our new leader to start fighting harder to make a difference both in our own lives and in the lives of others. And so I wanted to share just this brief moment of where I think Thrive fits in, and why I left academia to work here. Around the office, we call this moment “just a little easier” and it goes something like this:

There is a conversation in the fourth season of the The West Wing, in which a bit character meets Josh and Toby at a bar, and start talking about taking his daughter out to look at colleges.

“…I never imagined at $55,000 a year, I’d have trouble making ends meet. And my wife brings in another 25. My son’s in public school. It’s no good. I mean, there’s 37 kids in the class, no art and music, no advanced placement classes. Other kids, their mother has to make them practice the piano. You can’t pull my son away from the piano. He needs teachers. I spend half the day thinking about what happens if I slip and fall down on my own front porch, you know? It should be hard. I like that it’s hard. Putting your daughter through college, that’s a man’s job. A man’s accomplishment. But it should be a little easier. Just a little easier. ‘Cause in that difference is everything.”

That was what Thrive was founded to do: make it just a little easier. We can’t solve all the world’s problems, but with enough smart people working sixteen hour days, pushing and stretching and talking to people about they need and think and feel, we feel like we can make a difference in this one.

I’ll close with another quote from Obama’s speech today that I think applies both to our national endeavor and our personal ones. Working towards a responsible financial life is work worth doing, not just for you, but for all the people in your life that depends on you to stand on your own two feet, right alongside them.

“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. “