Just Go Grind #140: David Potter, Co-Founder & CEO of Curu, Bill Gates Scholar, and Techstars Alum, on Building a More Inclusive Credit System, the Value of Startup Accelerators, Raising $3M+ in VC Funding, and Being a POC in the FinTech Industry
David Potter is the co-founder and CEO of Curu. Curu’s mission is to flip the entire credit system upside down and help the people that need credit the most reach their goals. Curu helps lenders expand their total available market, reduce their customer acquisition costs and fund more loans by building their applicant’s eligibility.
David Potter, a Bill Gates Scholar, and Abb Kapoor were randomly assigned freshman year roommates at the University of Maryland. When they applied for off-campus housing their sophomore year, they were rejected from every student apartment complex around the University because they didn't have established credit. This is what started the passion that became Curu’s mission of building a more inclusive credit system and eliminating rejection from credit-based decisions.
Curu enables lenders to approve of more applicants. With its “Approval Dashboard”, lenders can service more of their applicants by helping them become a more qualified account holder. Curu has helped hundreds of applicants get approved for financial products and reach their financial goals. Whether it’s using Curu’s automated system or working directly with one of Curu’s certified credit consultants, the company has been successful in helping underrepresented consumers become more financially free.
Connect with David Potter
Some of the Topics Covered by David Potter in this Episode
- What is Curu
- How and why David and his co-founder Abb Kapoor started Curu
- Automating Curu's services
- Creating an app and the resulting quick growth
- Early customer acquisition
- Being a first-time founder
- David's experience and advice for using accelerators
- Curu's $3M seed round
- Curu's pre-accelerator fundraising
- Building the Curu team and scaling
- How COVID has affected Curu
- The biggest challenges David has faced building and growing Curu
- Being a POC in the FinTech startup world
- Diversity and inclusion in hiring
- The big mission and vision for Curu
- David's book recommendations
- How David recharges away from work
Links from the Episode