About Secure the Bag

I'm Mike May. I've been in tech for over 25 years—started as a software engineer, spent the last 23 in Hollywood in VFX—and I've been terrible with money for even longer.

It started at Carl's Jr. when I was 12. My first paycheck was $33.35—and I felt like a god. My friends and I would buy sodas and donuts just to give them away at school. No one taught me what to do with money except spend it.

That pattern followed me through the dot-com boom (stock options handed out like candy, parking lots full of exotic cars) and the bust that came after. Through freelance years where I had a day job AND side gigs just to make ends meet. Through building a career in visual effects, working with Marvel and Sony and Paramount.

Today I'm a VFX producer. I make good money. But I also have an S Corp, a W2 I pay myself, four bank accounts for different purposes, and a family who sometimes uses the wrong card. The money is there—it's just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I can't tell you how many times I've missed a 2pm transfer deadline because I was in meetings all day. Or woken up to an overdraft because my wife used the groceries card for something else and forgot to tell me. It's not that we're broke. It's that life gets in the way of keeping track.

I tried calendar reminders. I tried checking obsessively. I tried just keeping more money in each account. Nothing stuck.

So I built Secure the Bag. One text, at the time I choose, with my balance. That's it. Now I get a text at 1pm every day. I glance at it, decide if I need to move money, and get on with my life.

It's not complicated. It's not revolutionary. It just works.

I built this for myself. But I realized I'm not the only one who needs it.

Maybe you're a gig worker watching every dollar, dreading the overdraft that turns a $4 coffee into a $39 mistake. Maybe you're a freelancer whose income arrives whenever it feels like it. Maybe you're like me—doing fine financially, but juggling too many accounts to keep track of.

Whatever your situation, the problem is the same: you need to know your number at the right time. Not when your bank decides to tell you. Not when you remember to check. At the exact moment when you can still do something about it.

That's what Secure the Bag does. Nothing more, nothing less.

Secure the Bag is built by MayMatrix Corp., my Los Angeles-based software company. I've spent 25+ years building tools and workflows for visual effects studios—Marvel, Sony Pictures, Paramount+, and others. I know how to build software that's reliable, secure, and actually gets used.

The app uses Plaid for bank connections (the same technology behind Venmo and Coinbase), Stripe for payments, and runs on AWS infrastructure. Your bank credentials never touch my servers. I take security seriously because I use this thing myself—my own money is on the line.

If something breaks, you can email me directly at support@securethebag.ai. I read every message.