The Daily Feather — Forgetfulness’ Pay Day

It happens all the time -- two freshmen are randomly paired as roommates. Providence can follow in similar tastes in you-name-it, especially music. Soon enough, local jazz shows are being co-enjoyed. Perhaps the thought strikes to ask a band for a download of their live recording. A text message is dispatched requesting an emailed download. How to compensate in real time? Fortune posed this question to randomly assigned University of Pennsylvania freshmen roommates Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail, who dreamed up “Venmo.” As Kortina recalled in a thehustle.co interview: “Lots of people ask about the origin of the name…We were exploring the Latin root vendere ‘sell’ and mo for mobile, but purely as a means to get to a name that (1) was short, 5-6 letters, (2) could be a verb, (3) didn’t have an unintuitive spelling, and (4) was cheap. Venmo was available on GoDaddy and met the important criteria, so we grabbed it.” On a weekend visit to Kortina, Magdon-Ismail left his wallet at home, hatching the idea of Venmo, an app to pay each other back.

Forgetfulness had quite the payday. Venmo eradicated the inconvenience of running low on cash. And like other innovative advances, it’s achieved verb status. For investors, being cash-poor carries a different connotation. The title of Bank of America’s (BofA) February Global Fund Manager Survey (FMS) spoke volumes: “Cash levels at 15-year lows.”