He Did His Own Books, Then Built a Bank Around It | Michel Myara

What we talked about.

In this episode of Sunny Ray's show, host Sunny Ray talks with Michel Myara of Luch, a founder who started by doing the books for his own beverage brands and ended up building a financial operating system for small businesses. Michel explains how co-packed consumer brands often misreport cost of goods sold, why that pushed him toward fixing accounting at the source, and how a chance meeting with technical co-founder Navdeep at a Disney area hotel in Anaheim turned an idea into a product. He describes the Excel chart of accounts with more than 160 categories that became the foundation of the app. The conversation covers why Luch bundles company formation, banking, cards, payments, and accounting, how it serves founders without a Social Security number, and how it earns trust by letting owners keep their existing bank via Plaid. Michel also shares what has and has not worked in marketing, noting that word of mouth beats outbound email. He closes by describing the ideal user: an owner who wants instant access to accurate financial data without waiting on a bookkeeper.

A beverage founder who got tired of messy books built a free super app that forms your company, banks it, and does the accounting.

The questions, and the answers.

What did building consumer brands teach you that most FinTech founders never learned?

Co-packed brands own raw materials, work in progress, and finished goods, and cost of goods sold should rise only as sales happen. Most companies just expense everything when they buy materials, then the CPA fixes it at year end. I know brands doing $15 to $20 million a year this way. Doing it wrong became the default, and we are trying to fix that.

How did you and Navdeep come together, and how do you split the work?

I knew I did not know enough to pull this off without serious technical help. Navdeep and I met on AngelList, then in a Hilton hotel lobby in Anaheim while he was there on a family trip. He had over 20 years of programming experience and was a chief systems architect at a FinTech. He handles the technical side as CTO, and I learned the process as we went.

What were you working on right before Luch?

I was wrapping up my beverage businesses and getting rid of a lot of anxiety-provoking inventory. I was not building anything yet, just assembling the puzzle. I built the Luch chart of accounts in an Excel spreadsheet, over 160 categories, line by line, describing how each should behave. I also worked on wireframes in a Miro board.

Why bundle formation, banking, and accounting when most companies pick one?

I think AI-assisted building will drive consolidation, and a lot of slopware will go away. Users will adopt the super app. You form your LLC in Luch, and minutes after we get your EIN you can have accounts, spend cards, an accounting setup based on your entity type, free instant payments, and card acceptance. Our challenge is convincing people it is real.

Who is Luch's no Social Security number option for, and why does it matter?

It is for foreign founders who may have just moved to the US or still live abroad. We can still form their LLC and get the EIN. They become an unverified business and can receive payments from Luch businesses, then claim them in local currency through a USD or Swift wire or a local bank. US-based founders get the full accounting suite and business accounts.

How do you earn the trust that people usually give big banks?

We do not market Luch as a business neobank, since that needs trust signals that take a long time to build. We position it as a financial operating system. You can keep your current bank, connect it through Plaid, and we charge $10 a month per external account to do your books. Hopefully you build trust and start banking with us.

What marketing have you tried that you would skip next time?

Outbound emails. I do not know that anyone responds to them anymore. We are doubling down on what works, which is highly targeted ad campaigns focused on one aspect of the app, since a super app is hard to advertise. Word of mouth beats everything because it is instant trust.

Who should be downloading Luch today?

Any business owner who wants full control of their finances without putting in the time, especially companies with 10 employees or fewer. It is less about business type and more about personality. The biggest cost of a bookkeeper is waiting for data. In Luch you get real-time profit and loss, balance sheet, runway, and burn rate instantly.