When we think about how we could have an impact in this world, we find ourselves coming back to the everyday challenges a majority of people face: paying their bills and keeping their families fed.
The first time I understood this was at 7 years old when I visited Bangladesh. My grandmother’s house employed a young boy only a few years older than me. At the end of each day, he would wrap up his uneaten meal and walk 3 miles back home to share it with his mother. That was probably the first time I understood the lengths people will go to when they are poor.
Bangladesh, 1992
Fast forward to today in our own country, people are trapped in the cycle of survival. That became a lot more visible with the Coronavirus pandemic, exposing how many individuals and businesses are living paycheck to paycheck. Just like that boy in Bangladesh, people everywhere go to tremendous lengths just to survive. What if all of that energy could be channeled into anything other than survival?
The difference between surviving and growing for many people is access to equitable financial services. But in order to make equitable financial services available to underserved populations, a new system of credit needs to be built from the ground up.
At our last company we had a first-hand view of how a new set of people with no financial history or bank account could suddenly access financial services through their phones. We saw how a family’s life could shift from pulling kids out of school the moment they can’t pay the fees, to accessing a small loan that allowed them to keep kids in school despite short term financial challenges.
<aside> 💡 Building the underpinnings of a financial system that can serve whole new populations that were either left out or underserved is a massive opportunity.
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There are thousands of (if not more) communities in the U.S. that are underserved with unique financial needs requiring corresponding financial services. These are both consumers and SMBs. Each of these financial services needs to quickly and efficiently assess data of an individual’s or business's financial health in order to extend a loan, insurance policy, and so forth. Most of this data is generated digitally, but there is little infrastructure that extracts indicators that shed light into financial health. They could be paying their bills and generating income, but none of that matters if that data isn’t included in the traditional credit system.
<aside> 💡 If the data isn’t used, then people don’t get access to credit.
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Our ability to make the maximum impact on millions of people is by building a service that removes the friction for any company to offer more customers with financial services by considering more data.
Our entire careers have been focused on building b2b data solutions, and proving out how leveraging data in the right way can generate outsized returns.
We first found this to be true at our first company, GraphScience, where we built one of the first ad optimization platforms on Facebook and generated $5 in revenue for every $1 in ad spend for our brick and mortar customers. This was in 2010 when most thought of Facebook as a way to build brand awareness rather than revenue. But once Facebook's unique dataset was understood, the ad dollars went from drips to a firehose overnight.
More often than not, people don’t really understand how data can be used to create more value. But once it is discovered and made accessible, like in the case of facebook ads, or in our case today with financial services, it creates a whole new ballgame.
<aside> 💡 Our mission is to create a future where every person in the world has access to equitable financial services.
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We feel uniquely qualified to build this company for many years to come. Our experiences personally and professionally have allowed us to understand each side of this problem; the individual in need of financial services, the data that reveals financial health, and the fintechs looking to capture this value.
We have a unique opportunity to connect the growing amount of data revealing the financial health of billions with service providers deciding who can access a financial service and who does not.