issue 004: maximizing SNAP with Rishi Ahuja, founder of Benny

Happy new year!

It’s great to be back. You might be wondering what happened to this newsletter over the past few months, so let me start with a bit of explanation (you can also click here to skip over this whole ramble and read the interview):

When I started this newsletter, I envisioned it as a way to consolidate all news pertaining to tech startups working in the space of economic mobility. What I didn’t anticipate is how AI would open the floodgates to who built a startup and what got built. Suddenly, I was struggling to keep up with everything going on. Don’t feel bad for me though, it’s a great problem to have!

Today, my goal for this newsletter remains the same: to grow and connect the community of people building for economic mobility. But in this increasingly noisy industry, I also want to provide a platform for the ideas and organizations I think will shape this space. To do so requires exploring higher-level questions, including:

• How can funding sources (VCs, grants, incubators) better support founders working in economic mobility?

• How can the government better serve its constituents, especially now with AI in the picture?

• In the era of AI, what separates “good” approaches to economic mobility from “great”?

If any of this resonates with you, please don’t hesitate to give me a shout! I love collaborators and would be eager to hear what you have to say.

It’s with this in mind that I’m excited to share this interview with Rishi. I first noticed Rishi after reading his response to the Big Beautiful Bill on LinkedIn last October. With experience spanning the CFPB, Cash App and now Benny, he’s spent his career building financial products for low-income consumers. I sat down with him for a conversation to understand how that background shapes his thinking on the role of the private sector in delivering civic benefits.

Interview with Rishi Ahuja, founder of Benny

When most people think of government benefits, they imagine clunky apps and confusing rules—a system that makes you feel like your money isn’t really yours. Benny is an app that aims to change that, by enabling the 42M Americans on EBT, SNAP, and WIC to earn cash back on their benefits. 

In this interview, Rishi breaks down what it means to build a first-class product for government benefits, the unexpected challenges of working in civic tech, and why the two-sided marketplace works as a successful business model for his mission.

Tell me about yourself. How did you get involved in this space?

I came of age during the financial crisis. In high school, I remember wondering why we give mortgages to people who can’t afford them, only to evict them when they default. That really stuck with me. I ended up studying political science and economics in college, and my thesis focused on how to deliver financial services in ways that aren’t predatory toward low-income consumers. So it's been my interest since college and that just hasn't stopped. I was lucky to find a problem that I immediately latched onto.

What was the genesis of Benny?

I’ve been building financial products for low-income consumers my whole career, starting on the government side and then moving to startups like Cash App.

If you spend enough time talking to people about their money in this income demographic, benefits come up constantly. And here’s the thing: it’s their money. But the experience treats it like it’s not—it’s fragmented, it’s on this legacy app. But why? I should be able to look at this dollar just like any other dollar I have. Why is it not in one place?

I wanted to deliver an experience where benefits are treated as part of your overall financial life. At the same time, we noticed that CPG brands and retailers are interested in growing sales with this demographic, so we could secure deals to maximize value for consumers. We want to help high-quality brands lower prices for low-income consumers. So our app bundles all of that together: a Visa card, your benefits, deals from food brands, and exclusive offers from retailers. It’s a single platform to track and maximize benefits. That’s how the product idea came together.

Turning an idea like this into a startup sounds challenging. What was the actual process of building Benny into what it is today?

It’s always about selling, in one way or another. You’re selling to prospective employees, you’re selling to investors, you’re selling to every stranger you meet—you have to convince everyone, including your team, that the product you’re building matters. For us, that vision was that using SNAP benefits should feel like a first-class financial experience.

And we started with a completely different idea two years ago. Initially, we tried embedding access to government benefits in an existing financial services app. That didn’t work. So we pivoted, focused on SNAP directly, and rebuilt the product around the consumer experience.

When you start something new, you’re often wrong in a lot of ways. The key is to learn faster than anyone else and iterate quickly. And I also generally believe that small, passionate teams can do that better than large organizations weighed down by bureaucracy.

So to go back to the question, you have to have conviction in the problem you are solving, even if your initial solution needs to evolve based on user feedback. There’s a chance you’re probably wrong in a lot of ways in your first idea, but you need the confidence that you’re going to get to the truth in a matter of time.

Following on that—how do you decide what goes into the product and what doesn’t?

We learn a lot from our customers. Many of them buy groceries on prepaid cards or debit cards with no rewards, and they have bad transfer experiences. We try to stitch those needs together to offer all those things in one place. For example, our product offers a card optimized for grocery spending, gives deals from brands, and tightens the feedback loop.

Small improvements, like putting rewards directly onto a Visa card instead of making people meet coupon thresholds, are much more helpful. We can’t solve everything, but even $10–$20 back in someone’s pocket each month, or helping save over $100 a year, matters.

Does the administration impact what you’re doing and Benny’s product direction? How do you address or account for its impact?

It definitely impacts it. If regulations change, consumer behavior shifts. Our goal is to ensure they can still maximize their buying power on eligible essentials, regardless of changing rules.

There’s also the question of whether benefits are shrinking or growing over the next five years. But in reality, households mostly buy the groceries they need. Our average household today buys about $300 of groceries out of pocket. If benefits go down, people don’t suddenly buy fewer groceries—they just cover the cost out of pocket. So for food brands targeting this audience, interest in targeting them remains the same.

We also offer a Visa card for all out-of-pocket grocery spending, which helps our customers build credit and earn 1% back. The goal is to help people in tangible ways no matter where their grocery spend is coming from.

What were some unexpected challenges or misconceptions people might have about building tools in this space?

One thing I underestimated was how hard it is to get government agencies to engage with you. It’s difficult to align the agility of a startup with the safeguards of the state: it’s hard enough trying to get a large company to switch to a better solution even if they have a profit incentive to do so. It’s even harder for government agencies, which are risk-averse by nature because they are protecting critical services.

Even though I had experience working at federal agencies, it was extremely difficult to get people to explain the problems in a way we could iterate on solutions. And even if you’re motivated and want to build something helpful, if people won’t even sit with you to explain their problems, you can’t build anything.

Where do you see Benny going next?

Five years from now, if you search EBT on the App Store, we want Benny to be the first thing you see. People will come to us not just to manage their benefits, but to maximize them. The goal is to become a default platform for tracking and optimizing government benefits, both in-store and online.

More broadly, I’m trying to build a more efficient payments network for grocery stores. Grocery is a low-margin business, and credit card fees take a big bite out of their revenue. EBT and SNAP benefits provide an interesting gateway to explore alternative payment systems that lower costs for stores while offering incentives for consumers. Essentially, we want to create a system where using your benefits through Benny is better for both the consumer and the store.

And if we do this right, we could eventually earn the right to issue EBT cards for states and run the government’s benefits platform directly. Historically, big banks and financial institutions like JP Morgan have come and gone in this space because the margins are low and growth is capped. But now, with modern tools, the cost of running a benefits program is fundamentally lower—if you invest in first-class tools—making it possible to deliver a much better experience for consumers while still making the business sustainable. That’s the opportunity we’re chasing.

Where are you seeking support right now?

It’s always very tactical stuff, like how do I sell to CPG brands or how do I build a customer support function. I’m currently building out sales functions in areas I don’t have a lot of experience in—I’ve never worked in CPG—so it’s a whole new world for me. I’m always looking for shortcuts and help related to that.

Thanks for reading! I write this newsletter in my spare time, so your feedback means a lot to me. Feel free to leave a comment or reply directly to this email for a personal response. Until next time!