Announcing Kikoff’s $42.5m financing rounds
When I graduated college, it took me over two years to get a credit card. Without a credit score, the gates of the financial system were locked to me. I could get a secured card from one of the top banks, but I’d have to put a sizable amount of cash down and would be subject to other fees and interest. There was no tutorial or guide to help me understand how to avoid common pitfalls, or how to set myself up for a solid financial footing.
This is the reality for tens of millions of Americans who either don’t have a credit score or are “thin file” (the industry term for limited credit history). Research shows that the early challenges of getting access to credit can result in a downstream compounding impact of several thousands of dollars over the course of an individual’s life, in addition to the stigma and emotional stress associated with being unable to access credit and unlock other parts of the financial system (e.g., auto loan, mortgage, etc.). These trends also disproportionately affect those who are younger, lower income, minorities, and immigrants/first-generation Americans.
Fast forward several years to the fall of 2019. I had the pleasure of meeting two amazing entrepreneurs: Cynthia Chen and Christophe Chong. Over a cup of coffee, they described to me their vision for Kikoff and their plan to build an ecosystem of financial products focused on Gen Z and Millennials starting with the foundational building block of a financial journey: establishing credit. As immigrants and first-generation Americans, the three of us all had difficulty with our first foray into credit and inherently knew that the market for solving this opportunity is huge. The team believed that if Kikoff could earn the trust of its customers by helping them create and build credit at the start of their financial journey, the company would earn the right to be a trusted guide for the rest of their financial life as their needs expand.
Today, we’re excited for the team to formally announce its $42.5m fundraise. We had the pleasure of leading the Seed and Series A rounds and are joined by Protage, Core Innovation, GGV, Coatue, and others in this latest round of financing. Other key stakeholders from the ecosystem have also invested along the company including NBA star Stephen Curry, Equifax Board Member and CEO of Wex, Melissa Smith, and former CFO of the US Department of Treasury, Teresa Ressel.
Kikoff’s inaugural product, the Kikoff Credit Account, allows users to easily build credit without the worry of putting cash down with zero fees and interest, setting them apart from all others in the credit building space. Through the Credit Account, users can make purchases on the Kikoff store (e.g., online courses and e-books on financial literacy) and begin to establish and build credit. The company has seen tremendous organic growth since launch across hundreds of thousands of users and, in the coming months, will be expanding its presence in the consumer finance market by launching new additional products to deepen the banking and credit relationship with its customers as they continue on their financial journey.
When big markets meet the right entrepreneurs, magic happens. In Kikoff’s case, they’ve got a deep bench of experts. Cynthia and Christophe bring their personal experience and passion but also a deep set of fintech and consumer expertise to this large problem set. Cynthia Chen, CEO, has been a part of the founding or executive team journey at Figure, LendingHome, and OnDeck — all billion dollar fintech companies. Her co-founder, Christophe, perfectly compliments Cynthia’s fintech background with a strong technical and consumer lens as the former Head of Growth at Lime and lead engineer at Square and Facebook. And since starting the company, the team has brought on an amazing group of co-creators including Andrew Brix, the first product leader at CreditKarma, who helped build it from inception to 80 million members, Patrick Glover, former marketing lead at Plaid and Square, Vinni Bala, former chief credit officer at Deserve, and many other consumer and fintech leaders.
We at Lightspeed couldn’t be more proud to be working with this team of mission driven founders tackling one of the most important problems in financial services. And they’re just getting started!
– Ansaf Kareem
