Paradigm Shift

EP9: Vrinda Gupta, founder/CEO of Sequin, on why she started a company to help women build credit, approach to building a new financial services product, and opportunities for more personalization

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Summary

In this conversation with Vrinda we cover a wide range of topics including how the current credit system works, why women are more likely to have negative credit experiences, and how Sequin solves that inequity gap with a new debit card for women that helps build credit. We also talk about the process of launching a new card based product at a bank vs. a startup, and both opportunities and challenges to innovate in the space.

Episode Highlights

  1. Working on Chase Sapphire card at Visa and getting rejected for it
  2. Challenge of credit: needing credit to get credit
  3. How credit score gets calculated and factors contributing to bias
  4. Why women get rejected for a credit card more often than men
  5. Speed of launching a card at a bank vs. as a startup
  6. Considerations in designing a new card
  7. Building Sequin as a debit card that builds credit
  8. How to think about benefits as a fintech startup vs at scale
  9. Surprising insights: huge appetite for knowledge, community and card design
  10. Approach to education and community building as a fintech
  11. Vision for Sequin: full suite of credit products for women across every life stage
  12. Going from fintech idea to prototype/MVP as a non-technical founder
  13. Insight: importance of credit utilization to build credit
  14. Moving fast without breaking anything as a fintech
  15. Early next year: re-launching the debit card that builds launch with rewards partners
  16. Opportunity to create hyper personalized products that grow with customers
  17. Superpowers: capacity for empathy and how she's built it, and ability to pattern match
  18. People who gave Vrinda a break, and book recommendations


Links

  • Read more about Sequin ($5.7m Seed) and get the card: https://www.sequincard.com/
  • Follow Vrinda @vrinda_tweet


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Paradigm ShiftBy Ashish Kundra and Zane Salim
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