Hello World — from me, and from Financial Fortress
Puneet Jindal · June 14, 2026
I'm Puneet — a product and technology leader with two decades of experience across engineering, operations, and cloud technology. I've built SaaS products used by millions, managed pricing strategy for cloud products at scale, launched AI features, and worked across industries where scale, precision, and customer experience all matter.
I've had ideas for years. MJ Labs is me finally taking the plunge — building focused software shaped by real experiences, with one belief at the center: great software should delight the person using it, not just the business buying it. AI has genuinely changed what a solo builder can ship, and that made the moment feel right to stop waiting and start building.
Every product here started with a gap I experienced firsthand.
Where It Started, and What I'm Announcing Today
The first gap I went after is in hospitality. If you've stayed at a luxury resort and tried to get a buggy, request room supplies, or order food — you know the experience is often less seamless than everything else about the property. Guests wait. Staff coordinate over radios and phones. Simple requests get lost.
Butler is a digital guest service platform built to fix that. Guests scan a QR code and submit requests in seconds — no app download, no phone calls. Staff get a prioritized task list with auto-assignment. Managers get real-time visibility into operations. It's a B2B product, live today. If you manage a luxury property and want to bring this to your guests: mj-labs.dev/products/butler
Today, I am announcing the initial release of Financial Fortress. Financial Fortress is built for the self-directed investor. The person who manages their own money, takes responsibility for their own decisions, and would rather understand their portfolio than pay someone 1% a year to manage it for them.
I know this person well, because I am this person.
Behind Financial Fortress
Investing seriously while holding a full-time job is harder than it looks — and for a few years, I took the shortcut. I used a managed account — Personal Capital, now rebranded as Empower. There was something appealing about it at first. Someone else handled the trades. The portfolio was well-balanced. I didn't have to think about it.
But I also didn't recognize most of what I owned. I was holding positions that represented less than half a percent of my portfolio — stocks I hadn't chosen, couldn't explain, and didn't care about. The diversification was so aggressive it limited any real upside. I was paying a fee with no commitment on returns. And then I was down almost 25%. The account recovered — but sitting there watching someone else lose your money, with no say in it, didn't sit right.
So I switched. Went fully self-directed. But doing it yourself has its own friction. Not conceptually — "buy low, sell high, don't pay unnecessary taxes" is straightforward. The execution is what gets messy. You hit moments where you need a specific answer, a specific calculation, a specific tool — and it either doesn't exist, or it's locked behind the same advisor relationship you just walked away from.
Financial Fortress is me building those tools — for everyone who finds themselves in that same position.
The goal: decisions that used to require an advisor, a Bloomberg terminal, or a finance degree should be accessible to anyone managing their own money. Not dumbed down — sharp. Specific. Built around the actual decision you're trying to make.
Some tools will be completely free. Some may eventually require a login for personalization or data continuity. What they'll all have in common: no fluff, no upsell to a managed product, no agenda except helping you make better decisions with your own money.
Stock Lens is the first.
The Problem Stock Lens Solves
The tool came from a specific moment.
I wanted to buy Samsung stock — not a Samsung ETF, Samsung directly. I searched. I found something called SSNLF on the OTC markets. The price looked wrong. The volume was thin. It looked like the kind of thing you'd see in The Wolf of Wall Street. I didn't buy it, and I moved on.
What I didn't know then: Samsung has no US-listed ADR. Never has. Your options are a Korea-focused ETF bundled with dozens of companies you didn't ask for, or buying the shares directly on the Korea Exchange in Korean Won. That's it.
I eventually figured this out, opened an Interactive Brokers account, and bought Samsung directly. The process was simpler than I expected. And the price — after converting currency and factoring in commissions — was cheaper than the US-listed alternative would have been. That surprised me. It sent me down a research rabbit hole, into a spreadsheet, and eventually into building a tool that does the calculation instantly.
What Stock Lens Does
Stock Lens answers one question: should you buy a foreign company through a US-listed ADR, or buy the primary listing directly on its home exchange?
- Pulls live prices for both the ADR and the primary listing
- Converts to a common currency and factors in your actual commission structure and ADR custody fees
- Calculates the all-in cost of each option, side by side
- Shows the break-even FX rate — the exchange rate at which both options cost exactly the same — alongside a 6-month currency trend
No login. No data stored. Enter two tickers and your trade details — it does the rest.
Want to understand the full landscape — how ADRs work, why they sometimes trade at a premium, how FX affects your returns even when buying in USD, and how to read every number Stock Lens produces? The deep dive is here: Stock Lens: ADR vs Primary Listing for the Global Investor
More tools are on the way — tax-loss harvesting, lot-based sell decisions, tax exposure tracking. The decisions that get complicated when you have a real portfolio and no advisor on retainer.
If this was useful,· Questions: hello@mj-labs.devPuneet Jindal is the founder of MJ Labs, based in Seattle. Financial Fortress is MJ Labs' personal finance product — sharp tools for the self-directed investor.
This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.