Grove

[What it is]

Everyday spending into reforestation

Grove is a climate fintech app that rounds up everyday card purchases and turns the spare change into planted trees: every $5 in round-ups funds five trees with a verified reforestation partner. It is DreamLabs’ own product. Our founders, Tomás Quiñonez-Riegos and John Krueger, co-founded Grove, and we took it from idea to both app stores in six weeks.

The problem

Grove grew out of a personal practice. Over six years, Tomás planted 10,000 mangrove trees with the coastal reforestation organization SeaTrees, and the 10,000th went in the ground in August 2025. Grove’s mission is to help 10,000 people each plant 10,000 trees.

Giving directly takes effort every time: remember to give, choose a project, send a payment. Grove had to make reforestation automatic. Members set it up once and then plant trees in the background of normal spending, with proof that the trees are real. It also had to handle real money and bank connections without asking members to hand over more data than needed.

[How it works]

A full consumer fintech product

We designed, built and launched Grove for the US on iOS and Android. It’s a full consumer fintech product with card linking, automated payments, a choice of reforestation projects and verified impact tracking, all run by an end-to-end automation backend.

User flows

User type: Member

Sign up with SMS phone verification (Google and Apple sign-in were added in version 1.2.1) and complete a brief profile
Enter a referral or affiliate code at signup, including codes that join a community grove shared with friends, family or a creator
Choose a reforestation project and switch at any time. Project pages introduce the species, the wildlife they shelter and the people doing the planting
Fund trees three ways:
- Round-ups: connect cards through Plaid. Each time round-ups reach $5, Stripe collects that amount by ACH and five trees are planted
- Recurring: a monthly plan that adds 5, 10 or 20 trees a month, paid with Apple Pay or Google Pay
- One-time: a single contribution through Apple Pay or Google Pay
See trees planted and progress toward the next five-tree planting on the home screen
Browse every planting batch in Your Grove by project, partner, location and planting date, as a list or on a map, with totals for carbon sequestered and area reforested
Retry incomplete plantings, manage payment methods and pause round-ups at any time
Share a personal referral code (both people earn bonus trees), track referral activity and download a full impact report

Stack

Grove’s mobile app is a Flutter app on a Firebase backend, and its desktop experience is built in React. Plaid connects members’ cards and supports more than 10,000 US banks and card issuers, Stripe moves round-ups by ACH, and Twilio sends the SMS verification codes. We designed in Figma, planned in Notion and built with Claude Code as part of our AI-accelerated workflow.

The money flow was designed to keep as little data as possible. Grove never touches members’ bank accounts or card numbers. Plaid sends it anonymized, encrypted transaction data, and Stripe transfers each $5 straight from the member’s bank to the chosen reforestation project.

Timeline

Grove took six weeks from idea to both app stores. Version 1.0 went live on the App Store on February 3, 2026, and we kept shipping after launch. By version 1.4.2 on August 13, 2026, the App Store listing showed 12 updates, including:

a full design overhaul (1.1.0)
Google and Apple sign-in (1.2.1)
recurring tree planting (1.3.0)
community groves joined with referral and affiliate codes (1.3.5)
bonus trees for referrals (1.4.0)

Outcome

Grove is live in the US on the App Store and Google Play. As of October 7, 2026, the App Store listing shows a 5.0 rating from 16 ratings. Partners verify each tree over time with geo-spatial imaging, bio-acoustic monitoring and site visits, and members can see that verification in the app.

Because Grove is our own product, we also maintain it. It moves real money through bank linking, ACH transfers and wallet payments, and it has kept getting updates since launch.

[See for yourself]