A Q&A with Lina, Co-Founder of Shufl
Behind every great product is usually someone asking the practical questions that keep the whole thing grounded. At Shufl, that person is Lina Lieu — co-founder. Professionally, she's a vice president at a Los Angeles-based financial services firm. Outside of work, she’s a proud Latina, Southern California native, mother of two girls, and Pasadena resident helping build Shufl alongside her husband.
She’s also active in the local community, having served as Financial Reviewer for her local School PTA, where she helps oversee and review the organization’s financial operations.
What started as a household system for organizing credit card strategy eventually became the foundation for the app itself.
Q: How did the idea for Shufl first come about?
I originally built these spreadsheets to keep track of our credit cards, annual fees, signup bonuses, and all the random rules that come with this hobby.
Over time the spreadsheets kind of took on a life of their own. Friends would ask us questions, and somehow I always had the answer buried somewhere in a tab.
At one point my husband looked at everything and basically said, “You know this could probably be an actual app, right?”
That was really the start of it. We figured there were probably a lot of other people trying to keep track of the same stuff manually — bonus deadlines, 5/24, which card to use where — without having a clean way to organize it all.
Q: What makes Shufl different from other credit card apps or content platforms?
I think a lot of apps in this space can feel really loud or overly complicated.
With Shufl, we wanted something that felt cleaner and easier to actually use day to day. The goal was never to push people into opening more and more cards. Honestly, sometimes the best move is not applying for another card.
A lot of platforms are designed to constantly drive you toward new offers. We wanted Shufl to feel more balanced and practical — helping people stay organized, understand what they already have, and make smarter decisions over time.
Q: What has it been like building Shufl while raising two kids and working full time?
Busy! A lot of Shufl was built after the kids went to sleep, on weekends, or squeezed into random free moments during the day.
But honestly, being parents also shaped how we thought about the app. Once you have kids and careers and a million things going on, you really value tools that save time and reduce mental clutter.
I think that’s part of why we kept coming back to simplicity. Nobody wants another app that feels like work.
Q: What’s one thing people misunderstand about credit card optimization?
You really don’t need twenty cards or spreadsheets with fifty tabs to get value out of this stuff.
For most people, just staying organized, understanding annual fees, tracking deadlines, and using the right card for everyday spending already puts them ahead of where they were before.
That’s really the mindset behind Shufl.
