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

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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Transcript

0:05  
All right. Hello, hello, you're listening to paradigm shift, a podcast about people building the future, and pivotal moments in their journey. I'm Ashish. And I'm joined by my co host, Zane. And today we're thrilled to speak with Brenda Gupta, who's the CEO of sequin, Verna, thanks so much for being here today.

0:23  
Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

0:26  
So Zane and I have been interviewing a bunch of founders in FinTech. And a theme that keeps recurring is the verticalization of finance. And the gist of it is that 10 years ago, it was really expensive and arduous to start a FinTech company, to get a bank license. And to get a product in consumers hands you needed like $10 million, and years of engineering and regulatory work. Nowadays, a lot of these services are exposed through API's, liquid, lithic, and Stripe and so on. And so it's much easier to get to market. And then on the consumer side, the expectations have changed. And consumers are now expecting tools that are not one size fits all, but rather things that solve their precise problems. And we're really excited to have you on because the company you run matches this theme perfectly. And so maybe before we get started, and we'd love to get into your background, it'd be great if you can just give a quick summary of sequence the problem, you're trying to solve some context around the stage of the business, and what got you excited about it?

1:30  
Yeah, for sure. Well, maybe it helps to start with a bit of background. So I started off my career working at visa, and I was there for almost six years, I was working on the US consumer products team. And we managed all of the US VISA credit card platforms. So essentially, what we did was manage the visa traditional Visa Signature and visa infinite platforms. And you know, it was my first job out of college, I was working on this team and have this really exciting opportunity to be the PM, working on new consumer credit products, especially ones for kind of affluent millennials. And you know that Amex platinum and had a lot of success. And so from the visa standpoint, there's a lot of interested, you know, how do we actually create a premium product but really geared towards this kind of new segment of affluent millennial really urban millennial that you know, might not yet qualify for want to pay for your, you know, ultra premium Centurion type of card, but still kind of give that same exclusivity benefits, etc. And so we're working on the Chase Sapphire reserve, I can give a bit more no background, and that later is a fun project. And I applied for the card when I was at work, and I got rejected. And you know, it was this moment where Funny enough, it was the first time I thought about credit. And I just didn't realize that I had been putting all this all of my spend on debit, I had been using my dad's credit card as an authorized user. But that wasn't building my credit history. And so when I went to apply for this card, even though I had a high income, and I've been responsible, that isn't really taken into account in credit scoring, and so I got rejected almost too late, right, the challenge of credit is that you need credit to get credit. And then when you go to seek it, if you don't have it, it's too late. And so after I got rejected, I looked at visa data, and I saw that 70% of women spend was like mine, and we were using debit, we're using credit cards and other people's names, and that wasn't building our credit. And so when we went to actually apply for credit products, we're getting rejected more often, we're getting lower credit lines, we're getting higher interest rates. And the products themselves too, were really created for this prototypical male traveler, which is why you have so many kind of travel benefits on these products. But as I looked at the way that I personally was spending, it was pretty fundamentally different. And I was looking around at my friends and I'm saying, you know, we're spending a lot on retail, a lot on charity, a lot of these kind of up and coming DTC brands and I didn't feel like those rewards were really reflected on credit products. And then finally, I learned that women could be rejected from a credit card without a male cosigner until 1974, which is really not that long ago. And so this is truly a system and an industry that was built to center men. And you know, the downstream impacts of that today are that women are being left out of the system or not really being served by the system. And I felt like there was a huge opportunity to do something that was meaningful, which is get women the credit that we deserve, and you know, launch our first product. So that's kind of the introduction of the story. and happy to go more into you know, the product and etc, that's needed. Yeah,

5:04  
I think that's amazing. I'm really excited about what you're doing because a lot of the FinTech success stories I've observed have served sort of like an under served or an unmet need. So I think Brexit is an example where startups are sort of, like ignored by, like big FinTech players for a long time. Lytec is another one with their card issuing. And I think you kind of fit that same profile where you're solving problems for like women, which is like 50% of the budget, and somehow has been underserved for decades. So I think that's really cool. So one question about that, we'd love to get a little bit of insight on how underwriting works. Like, what are banks looking at when they underwrite because presumably, you would have qualified for certain credit card products, but you didn't for this, like premium product? So So what's going on there? And like, why is it that how does this bias sort of show up and be underwriting?

5:55  
Yeah, absolutely. So you know, one of the key factors that goes into FICO scoring is credit utilization, right, that's about 30 35% of your credit score. And essentially, what we see happening with women is, because we're getting lower credit lines, and that's due to, you know, gender wage gap is due the fact that we are building credit as effectively, we get these lower credit lines, and then we are either spending the same or more. And that means that our credit utilization is higher, and it makes our risk profile look worse than it actually is. And so essentially, you know, when we look at the different factors, yes, repayment history, but also credit utilization is something that is disproportionately biasing against women. And so in our product, we actually don't report credit utilization, because for women, it actually hurts more than it helps. But you know, additionally, having credit in your own name, right, having length of credit is a factor that goes in. So if you are an authorized user that does show up, but repayment history is the kind of biggest factor and you want to be able to show that you not as a secondary or authorized user, but as a primary user are actually you know, paying back and being shown in the eyes of the system. And so what we're seeing with women also is that we're more likely to be authorized users on a parent or partners card. And so you might be credit visible, but you're really not showing the two biggest factors which are repayment, and the credit utilization piece. And so, you know, with us and our products, it's really important to have a card product in your own name, building your credit the entire time, and, you know, not even recording credit utilization again,

7:39  
that's yeah, that makes sense. So one of the challenges with Fintech is it's kind of like hard to reach customers the right moment, right? Because people are not thinking about their credit. And you know, you might sort of like you know, get denied on a card, or it's sometimes it's usually too late. By the time you figure it out, you have a problem? How have you thought about your your go to market and you're building awareness and building interest? What are some challenges you've had to sort of like solve along the way?

8:02  
Yeah, I mean, evangelizing the problem is probably the most important piece of this, right. Some of the downstream impacts of a system that is really not designed to send her women is that there are these societal issues around educating women around finances. And so some of the stats that I saw as I was doing research was young women, little girls are less likely to have a lesson on credit, as compared to little boys, by the time they graduate, high school, women are talking about finances less to one another, you know, parents are talking to their sons differently. And they're talking to their daughters differently about credit. And so to your point, when it comes time to actually see credit, it's usually too late. And so where we're looking to start is with young professional women who are about to come into financial freedom, right? And how do you actually make credit, top of mind, let's say you're getting your first paycheck, or you're about to graduate? You've just started a job, how do you actually make credit a part of that, and one of the big kind of initiatives that we have with our initial population is thinking about finances and credit as self care, right. And, you know, the women's conversation, the Women's Health conversation has evolved over time from physical health to now know mental health, emotional health and finances are so center and you know, feeling healthy and feeling confident and empowered. And so, you know, partnering with companies that are the more traditional versions of self care and making sure that credit is a part of that conversation is something that's really important.

9:35  
You mentioned you started your career at VSA. I'd love to hear more about that. Because you're able to get the insider's perspective. In particular, what goes into launching a card. I know you worked on Chase Sapphire, would you mind walking us through? Like how does that happen? Like how do you go from conceptualization to research to design to actually getting it in the hands of consumers and then scaling it up?

9:59  
And it'd be great to also hear any thoughts on how banks think about customer segments, right?

10:03  
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's very interesting going back to the verticalization, finances conversation, right? Because launching FinTech products, as a startup is very different from launching, you know, credit cards or other card products when you're inside an established system. So for example, you know, I was working visa where the card network and visa have these partnerships with issuing banks, who have the entire system kind of stitched together, right, so Chase has the infrastructure to launch multiple credit products pretty quickly, I put that in quotes, because, you know, quickly at a big bank is, you know, a bit different timeline wise, you know, I'd say that the cycles are anywhere from two to six years. And so in terms of the actual challenge of it, the challenges and actually, okay, let's get this infrastructure stood up, it's finding a large enough market and making sure that your product is differentiated to actually cater to that market. So in the case of the chase, Sapphire reserve, understanding the segment was really important, right? It's this young professional millennial who is kind of new to the on demand economy, right, like Uber, etc, was really coming up at that time. And so thinking about what exactly does the segment value, and something that was really interesting, as my team and I were launching products on visa infinite, which is the more premium tier was thinking through, you know, what are rewards and what is interesting. And so if you actually look at lower tier products, you'll get traditional products, Visa Signature products, the pure cashback rewards requirement is higher than it is for the most premium product. But for the most premium products, you actually have rules around experiential benefits, and you need to offer certain types of experiential benefits. So for the most premium products, Chase, Sapphire reserve, for example, there's airline lounge access on that, right, because that is something that's going to elevate your experience. And the actual value that you get out of that product comes mostly from the experiences and not necessarily the pure cashback that you're getting, and doing research, what are those benefits, how's it going to appeal, but also being really thoughtful about the status symbol pieces of it, right, this heavy metal card, in the visa rules, it's written in how heavy it needs to be at least this way, you know, thinking through the colors of it thinking through, you know, it's a travel card, right. So even though it's metal, you don't want it to go off in the metal detector, as you're traveling right there. All of those details, coupled with you know, I think a piece that Chase did a really good job on in the marketing was kind of hyping it up leading up to it right and leaking it to the point sky. And, you know, it was kind of the first time where there's a credit card product that was truly kind of an unboxing, like viral experience, right? People are like, on YouTube and showing their card, etc. So I think there was just so many elements of that I think the timing was really right. But really capturing this aspirational feel for this market, you know, is really what hit the nail on the head with that product. And was really inspirational for me as I started thinking about building out sequin as truly a consumer product, right? Because traditionally, where big banks are innovating to answer your questions and is, is really kind of broad based products, right? You want to be able to appeal to a lot of people. And ideally, that segment is one that is going to be spending a lot of the cards because they're going to make your your sharing interchange there. But making sure that you're actually able to differentiate beyond just rewards, right? So beyond just cashback that's becoming table stakes, but what can you do and experiences? How do you make this more personalized the card look, tone and feel, you know, for us with sequin education and community is a really big differentiator. And it's something that we see that women are lacking today and are really looking for so we view our carts responsibility is not just this credit builder that does it for you, but actually teaches you how does the system work? What you need to know to set yourself up for success? And how do you turn this game from a single player game to a multiplayer game? Yeah,

14:10  
I think that's an interesting point. That makes me wonder like, what are some of the advantages a startup has right over an incumbent and going after, like a Focus segment. So you mentioned community, like how do you think about building that? And what are some other advantages like that something someone like you has over like some of these more horizontal products?

14:28  
Yeah. I mean, gosh, where do you start, right? That's the fun piece about being in a fintech. I think, you know, for me, coming from the product side, something that's really interesting is being able to reimagine the way that traditional products work. So our sequined card is a debit card that builds credit. And traditionally, the way that these products are viewed are they're very much in boxes, right? It's like you have a debit card, you have a credit card, there's a secured card, but you can't really innovate across those lines for multiple reasons. Those are technological limits. regulatory limitations, you know, just the way things have been done limitations, right. And so truly being able to reimagine fundamentally, how these products work is something that you know, a FinTech has an advantage of because you're building that from the ground up. So that's one piece that, to me as a product person is very exciting. But I think just from a very, you know, human perspective and understanding the needs of these populations, the way that traditionally card products are built is very kind of traditional research methodologies, right? You do a nationwide survey and maybe fly a few places, talk to a few people. But as a startup, and especially one that's focused on a specific market, you can get really deep with your customers, right? And understand, okay, how is the existing system not serving you, coupled with? How would you love to act? Who do you want to be? How does a product like this help you level up your life? And what does that mean to you, especially in kind of a time where the definition of what it means to be aspirational, is changing a little bit. And so you can get really deep with your card holders, I think, when I was at VSA, maybe I spoke with a handful and now we see our customers, you know, multiple times a day, and can really understand what is moving the needle for them. So I would say, you know, those are two of the most interesting pieces. The third that is also fun as kind of as a startup is, when you think about benefits that you can add on to your card, at kind of a visa type of scale, or at you know, large issuing bank scale, you are really going to be taking a risk with smaller players and up and coming players, right, because they need to be able to off the bat service multiple millions of card holders, and you don't know if that player is going to be around in two or three years. And so it kind of limits the types of players that you can be partnering with. And that's why you see some of these more legacy players on your card, your traditional card products, but as a FinTech, you can take those risks. Right now, one of the pieces that is super exciting about our product is that we're partnering with early stage DTC, women founded companies and being able to offer benefits with them and experiences with the founders because that's something that we can do, right, where as nimble as they are. And so we're able to, you know, have much more interesting and more frequently changing benefits, as opposed to these kind of long contracts that you're forced to sign when you're, again, needing to service people at scale immediately,

17:30  
what are some surprising things you've heard from your users that you would not have sort of expected I mean,

17:36  
so you know, the first piece that I heard that I thought was so fascinating was the appetite for knowledge to understand how these products work, I think I have this hypothesis that, okay, we're going to build you a great product, it's going to build your credit, effectively, you're going to have much more personalized, more interesting rewards. And that was just going to be enough. But the appetite for education and understanding the why behind things was something that was very interesting, especially talking to women, because this is a new type of product. And because traditionally, you know, we're not really engaging with financial products as closely, there's this huge appetite for knowledge. And that's something that was pleasantly very surprising. On the other side, that's kind of a funny anecdote, I would hear so many women just say, my credit cards are ugly, all the black and blue cards, right, they all look the same. And so if you think about, again, a credit card as a consumer product, you want it to be aligned with you. And so, you know, we did a lot of co creation, we do that, you know, all the time on our product. And one of the pieces that came out was finding a card color, right? What color shark card be? And no, we didn't want to necessarily do it as pink. But what we came together with as a group was coral, because that was a color that looked good on all skin tones, and was very different from kind of like the black and blue cards. So that's kind of you know, on both extremes, ton of appetite for knowledge, and that you know, everything from the look tone and feel of the card as well.

19:13  
Yeah, that's awesome. I love how your card looks on the website. Definitely recommend folks to check it out. It sounds like education and community are huge things that come up for you. How do you think about building those as a startup? It's kind of a hard thing to do. Right?

19:24  
Yeah, it's it is the most challenging piece but the most exciting piece right? But those things usually go hand in hand. You know, when I think about community around financial products, especially card products, as I mentioned, traditionally they're solo gates, right? You don't really know sometimes people don't even know their own credit limits let alone you know, their partner their friends credit limits and so you know, creating a really safe space to not only educate but be able to talk openly as well as something that the women in secret and have loved. And so we do different types of events. We do sequin credit power hours, which is Basically, you know, expert created knowledge that we put together around a variety of topics. Some of them are pretty technical, right? How exactly does a credit card work? What is interchange? How does that affect businesses? How are rewards funded? That's kind of one side of things, too. You know, how do you manage credit? When you're in a couple to how do you think about credit? Beyond cards? How do you set yourself up for success? So we'll do these events, and women will come together and then kind of talk about it after and breakout rooms, etc. It's all you know, virtual right now, but we hope to do them in person, we have a very active Slack community, where women will, you know, talk about the fact that they're about to call their bank and ask for credit line increase, wish me luck, and everyone's kind of sending shamrocks, right. And so, as we're at this early stage, it's been fun to see those pieces come out that women want to be talking about credit, want to be talking about finances supporting each other, and then being able to productize some of those pieces and put that into our actual solution, right. So you can imagine, you know, a woman shopping somewhere and saying, hey, I want to support this business, I just want to let you all know, this is where I shopped, right. And that's a really cool way to bring awareness to, you know, values and mission driven businesses as well, which is, you know, something we're building out in the future. So that's kind of on the education and community piece. But also, you know, thinking about finances being very closely aligned with values, right, every dollar that you spend says more about, you know, your values, and anything you might might say, and so being able to connect around that as well, whether it's the benefits that we offer on our card, to actually letting women you know, say we would love to see the benefit on our product, and really have it feel community created and community owned is something that is very exciting. And is something that is fundamentally different from anything, you know, I could have done when I was building in a more kind of traditional infrastructure,

21:54  
it's really rare that a product can really capture that much excitement amongst users. And it's most impressive when it happens for businesses that aren't inherently viral, right? Like when you see WhatsApp, or Instagram or Facebook go viral, like got it, that makes sense, you kind of need it, it's a part of the workflow. But when you see I work at DuckDuckGo, and word of mouth is a big driver for us, or with sequin or other products that you don't actually it doesn't have an inherent viral loop built in, I think that's really impressive. It's also really advantageous for the business because that compounds over time, and decreases your your cost to acquire customers. And it builds this insane, amazing moat for the business. So one that's really impressive, and makes sense that you would lean into that, you mentioned kind of using that as a feedback loop to develop to decide what goes into the product. What's the product vision? What's the end state of this product? After you've been operating for many years, and you have 1000 employees? Like, is it a bundle? Is it is it leaning into rewards? We'll love to hear what that looks like.

22:57  
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm, I'm so excited for that state, the place that sequence started was actually to build a chase sapphire reserve for women. And the key insight truly was, you know, rewards are not really serving where women are spending, and fundamentally, that's shifting, and we're controlling, you know, estimated to control 75% of discretionary spend, you know, in the next few years. And so, you know, I was gonna start there, we started building out the product, and then the pandemic hit. And you know, what I started to hear from our users was, hey, I don't think I actually understand how credits working. And one of the things that we were seeing was women being disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, primarily because of the credit issues, you know, being small business owners not getting equal access to PPP loans, all it just came down to credit building. And so that's where we wanted to start ultimately was, okay, let's get her started on the right foot, let's get her building credit. Let's do it in a way that feels comfortable, right? We're seeing these women preferring debit, because they're just fewer gotchas. And so let's start there, figure out a way to make that build credit. And then once we have them actually in a place where you know, they're comfortable with credit, they felt built up their credit score, we're able to see their repayment behavior, then we can actually offer them you know, full suite of credit products and you know, ultimately be able to get them towards that Chase Sapphire reserve for women very premium experience, right. But what's happening today, especially with women disproportionately is, first of all, we're not getting into the system at equal rates and that we're, you know, less likely to be pre approved for offers. They get onto credit, higher interest rates, lower limits, worse experience, but even the graduation between debit to credit or from kind of lower tier credit products to higher tier credit products. There's a lot of churn and a lot of drop off. Women kind of get lost In that or then become authorized users, which again, is that credit building problem. And so really being able to create a suite that seamlessly graduates you from this introductory product onto more and more premium tiers of credit products is something that I believe everyone deserves fight, there's so much value in those coupled with, you know, you're evolving as a person how you're spending, your product should evolve with you. Beyond credit products or beyond kind of card products, there's so many inequities that we see in the way that women are interacting with finances. And so even beyond those thinking through mortgages, right, women are paying higher interest rates on mortgages, even though we're shown to be better, to give mortgages to be paid back more often, even, you know, maternity leave, there's not really many maternity loans on the market. 529 plans for your kids and women are outliving our husbands. And so what happens after that, right, so the full idea is to be just a new type of bank and a new type of financial services for women that really centers around education, community rewards that are much more aligned with our life. And our unique evolving life stages, which are very different from you know, traditionally has been in the system and finding sequence to be that safe space and a safe community to go through kind of life lift is the big vision and the idea, I just

26:24  
want to double click on something you said I think you said that visa data shows 70% of women spend is on non credit building products like debit and cards and other people's names, I find that really surprising. How does that compare with the overall sort of split between debit versus credit, in the visa payment network or even for Chase, I'm trying to get a sense of how important these credit products to these bigger players versus the debit products. And I suspect they're very important. And that sort of like data point of 70% women spend being non credit. And I think that makes that even more alarming. So kind of curious to hear how the banks think about it, and how you think about some of that, that gap there?

27:06  
Yeah, I mean, that stat is twice that of men. So you see, you know, the 35% for men on non credit building and the 70% for women, you know, in terms of banks, business models, I mean, they have multiple different products, right debit, the primary driver is not going to be interchange, because they're all Durban regulated credit products really are the big kahuna of, of what you're making money on, right? And if you think about, you know, interchange, you think about interest, annual cetera.

27:38  
So credit is where the margins are higher, that's where the leverage is higher. So why did you go with a debit product? Was there a way to do like a charge card, like a credit building charge card? What's going on under the covers, like, you know, like, how did you navigate that debit versus credit? And I know, there's like, you know, a spectrum of options. But what was that process? Like? And I think it's clear what your vision is. But that starting point is really interesting, I think,

28:01  
yeah, for sure. I mean, we started off with a problem, right? You know, I didn't just say one day, oh, it'd be really cool to something right, it was, I saw this clear gap in the market between men and women in matters of credit. And I did some deep research on it, right, we were in kind of research phase for about a year, it lasted longer, because I wanted to understand what the pandemic was going to mean for these women and where we needed to start. And I think pre pandemic, it might have made a bit more sense to go straight to a rewards card, and you don't have that be that Chase Sapphire reserve for women. I know, there's a lot of flurry around rewards products pre pandemic, but afterwards, I think people are really feeling the impacts of not having equal access to credit. And so I think it's also a sign of the times of where do you want to start. And for me, the whole mission of this company is to get women credit. And so starting off with a product that feels safe and secure, builds their credit, and then nurtures them through the system is, is just smart business as well, you're earning and gaining their trust, getting these women into the funnel, and then being able to say, hey, we build your credit, stick with us. And we see generally banking trends, people are very loyal to their banks, and especially their first cards or first credit cards they keep like for their whole lives. And we see women's loyalty to be even greater than that. So the idea is, let's start at the very beginning, give them a great experience, build their credit, nurture them, and then be able to be that that you know, card product bank of twice as time goes on.

29:38  
And once you decided on that direction, how did you go from idea to prototype, right? If you were building a software company, it probably be more straightforward photo sharing app, but you're building something in a regulated space. How did you go from idea to you know, functioning prototype?

29:53  
Yeah. So when I started the company, I was a solo non technical founder and So, you know, I looked a lot, I looked for a really long time for the right technical co founder, but I didn't want to compromise on that person. And in the meantime, I also didn't want to compromise on moving forward in the product. And so I actually did a manual hacky MVP, which was basically me getting a cohort of around 100 women, and looking through their bank statements, their credit card statements, and I was giving them personalized recommendations, each one, I would text them and tell them, Hey, do this, do this, do this, let's see what happens to your credit score. And what I ended up seeing was this credit utilization insight, that was their credit utilization is too high, it needs to be ideally around five to 8%. Always, not just once a month, right? Because you don't know when your bank is going to be reporting to the credit bureau. And what I saw was their credit scores went up 30 points in a week, on average, with this literally, and you can imagine, I mean, it's like me with papers everywhere, highlighting being like your utilization is too high. And so I ended up know, just having that insight that credit utilization is a really important and biasing factor, kind of created this very hacky page where you can calculate what your credit utilization is, and then actually asked a friend to help me build in kind of a calculator that would text them and link to plod to automatically tell them what their credit utilization was at all times, and help them pay it off if they wanted to. Just a very, like generous friend who, you know, was in it for the mission. And I also said, you know, can you help me interview technical co founders because I'm non technical, and I want to find the right person. And so you know, we had a lot of success with that credit utilization product. And then when I finally met my co founder, Mark, he'd spent a decade at PayPal and Engineering Leadership, which like, was awesome. And so he and I came together. And we said, women are preferring debit, credit utilization is a problem, let's start there. It was also something that we understood how to build because he had his background in ACH products, obviously, I understood credit, it's easier to stand up a debit product turns out, but that's not necessarily why we did it. And then really, the innovation is actually having to step it card builds credit, you know, which were able to work out together during the course of Y Combinator.

32:29  
I love the hustle and grit. Many people in that position would a compromise on finding a great co founder and technical founder and be not make progress because they felt like they couldn't do anything. I'd love to hear about the challenges like you, you have this product in market now. What are the challenges of running a financial services product? And how do you balance like scrappy experiments and testing and development with you know, operating a product that manages people's money?

32:59  
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's the biggest challenge of starting a FinTech, right is, if you are let's take your photo sharing app example. If you are starting that you can throw together hockey MVP, no one's gonna get hurt, right? If it breaks, but the piece with financial services is this is people's money, it's their livelihood, their security is on their line, their identity, their socials, all of those things, you know, you have to collect and keep safe. And you know, it's something that Mark and I don't take lightly. And so, of course, no, you are balancing speed and wanting to be able to learn as well. And so currently, we have a beta test, essentially, we have a few 100 Women who are on our product, we're making sure everything's everything works, and of course, baseline security, etc. We weren't going to launch it without that. But now, you know, we're just working through what exactly the customer experience should be, while still making sure you know, the table stakes pieces are all there. So you want to move fast, but you can't really break anything. And so I think that is a fine balance. And it comes down to your philosophy. I think personally, for me, the piece that I don't compromise on is user security. And you know, their experience with the product is, you know, I never want there to be anything that's going to negatively impact them. And if that is the case, then we go slow to build that properly. I think, to your question about the biggest challenge, because our product doesn't fit neatly into any of the boxes, right? It's not just a debit card. It's not a credit card. It's not just a line of credit, right? It's multiple products that are kind of fused into one which is what is the beauty of our product. Products like this are very new to the market and we're one of the first and so being able to navigate. What does that mean from a regulatory standpoint, credit bureaus are still thinking about you know, they have debit written into their their kind of allowable areas, but they're trying to figure out you know, what's the impact of Reporting debit products, etc. You know, now card networks are thinking about, you know, what is what does this mean for interchange, etc. So there's a lot of pieces to navigate that are very technically challenging. And there's so many players involved in making this work. So making sure that every single player finds this kosher and understands what's going on, I wrote the Visa card issuing standards. And I remember that being a very cumbersome project when I was at visa. But now I'm so grateful, because as I'm reading through 100 pages of regulations are making sure that our product is legal, I'm really grateful that I understand where the lines aren't, where the gray areas are, I think if someone were totally new to this, it would be very, very challenging. And, you know, we find it as an exciting challenge every day. But I think that's probably the hardest part is aligning all the partners around the innovation,

35:49  
you mentioned that you're planning to launch a refreshed and revamped version of the product. And I was wondering if you wouldn't mind expanding upon what that's gonna include?

35:58  
Yeah, absolutely. So as I mentioned, we launched a few months ago, you know, beta test with a few 100 women with a long waitlist behind it. And so since then, we've been listening to our users what they wanted. And so we early next year are going to be relaunching a version of our debit card that builds credit. And we're going to be launching a few rewards as well, with this idea that, you know, we can pay back some of the pink tax, get some cash back on pink tax categories, and also have some really neat partnerships with up and coming venture backed women founded brands that are really innovating in the space as well. So we're very excited about kind of an early next year launch.

36:41  
You know, as you look ahead to the next three 510 years, what's really exciting,

36:44  
yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things I'm most excited about his innovation within FinTech, especially within credit, that is outside of just rewards, I think there is this wave of FinTech, especially with the verticalization of you know, some of these products that there were these know, very focused products for this demographic, and for that demographic, and that really centered around rewards. And I think what's going to be happening next in this phase of notice new wave of credit is this idea that you can create hyper personalized experiences that are actually growing with your consumer throughout their lifetime, you say, you know, data using technology, and also thinking through, you know, being a lot more connected as well around these products. So I'm excited to see a new wave of products that are actually understanding the consumer proactively versus kind of this reactively that we've been building. And I'm really excited for, you know, women to finally get the credit that we deserve. So on a personal note, that's what's very exciting for me, too.

37:49  
So switching gears a little bit, we wanted to make sure to talk a little bit about your experience in business school working with Steve Blank, I believe. So tell us a little bit about that. He's obviously written a lot about entrepreneurship and is a huge proponent of talking to users and starting with the problem. And a lot of that comes through in the way you've built your product and company. So we'd love to hear a little bit about your experience working with him over some things you learn to observe that have stuck with you.

38:14  
Yeah, yeah. So I did. I took Steve Blanks Lean LaunchPad course, in business school, it's taught at Stanford and at Berkeley, I was at Berkeley, he developed the curriculum, but he taught just one of our classes, I believe, and came in. But yeah, I mean, to your point, I think the most important piece is putting the customer first beyond anything else. And no, it seems obvious. And you know, that was kind of more of an incubator, and a little bit more in theory. And so, you know, it's logical to put your customer in the center. But as you start building, other things start to come up, and it's sometimes easy to lose sight. And so I think, one of the best parts about going through Lean LaunchPad was just being insanely customer obsessed, and understanding what is the problem. And then once you have a problem, you can come up with many different types of solutions, right? You know, you heard, even through this journey, starting off with, Okay, we're gonna do a credit card with rewards for women, okay, we're doing an app that's helping build your credit. Now we're actually doing a card product, it's kind of a hybrid of all of it. It's all in the service of the same problem that women are not feeling comfortable and confident and excited about their credit products. So it's something that you know, I've taken with me is just making sure we're always talking to our users. And that's basically what we spend most of our time doing. But I'm really glad I had that experience. Because, you know, they were the other piece that the class really encouraged was not being afraid to pivot. You know, week after week. Obviously, it's very early stage kernels of ideas, but what did you hear from your customers this week? And what did it lead you to do? And you know, its principles by you know, how we're building our company today.

39:56  
That's great advice. So we have three questions that we Ask every guest. The first is around superpowers. Everyone has a certain set of skills that feels like play to them. But it's like work for others. It's something they enjoy doing that you're really good at. And we found that founders often, over time recognize what their superpowers are, and lean into them. So we'd love to hear from you. What are some superpowers? Have you discovered about yourself that you'd like to lean on day to day?

40:25  
Yeah, I think my main superpower is my capacity for empathy. You know, I'm a first generation immigrant to the US. And you know, navigating a new culture is something that involves a lot of empathy. Even, you know, throughout my work experience, working in a male dominated field, you know, being able to be collaborative in that environment involves a lot of empathy. You know, now that I'm a founder, I'm still in the minority, right. And that involves a lot of empathy. And so I think, just being able to empathize with users, as I'm building my product, has been something that's been incredibly helpful. I've always loved to hear, you know, people's stories and where they came from. And, you know, I've cried with my users on the phone, because it's the things that they tell me, I feel. And so I think that's something that makes me a better leader, it makes me a better founder, I'm going to something that, you know, I think, is overall pretty good. So I think that's one, I think the second piece that I'm really grateful for is my ability to pattern match, I'm pretty good at taking seemingly different concepts, and then putting them together. And so especially as it relates to the product that we're building, right, it's, it really is a consumer D to see woman's product, but financial services. And so being able to draw from the best of both, and putting those together has been really helpful, and I think has made our product, you know, really fun and different from other ones that that are in the market because of that.

41:56  
The second question is, are there people over the course of your career that have given you a break that you're particularly grateful for?

42:03  
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think starting off with my mentors, when I was at visa, you know, my team was heavily male dominated. And I really feel I learned from the best. My managers took me under their wing. And we're probably the biggest supporters of sequin, they're the first ones I told were my old bosses at visa who are, you know, the head of credit and the head of credit strategy, and they were really helpful. And still to this day, or, you know, people I tap on all the time. The second one was actually, when I was working at IDEO, during my MBA summer internship, I had been thinking a lot of now what is sequin, and around that time time's up was happening. Me too, was happening. And I just couldn't stop thinking about the fact that women needed better financial services that were more aligned towards our values and felt really inclusive. And I sent all of this to a woman in a restroom as we're washing hands in IDEO. And she said, You know, I'm a part of the investment committee here. Do you want to pitch your idea to the Investment Committee? Do you want a bit of seed capital. And you know, at that point, I taken Lean LaunchPad, I was kind of open to the idea of entrepreneurship, but it wasn't something that I was actively kind of going for. And frankly, it didn't really understand how to take the leap from idea to actually, you know, jumping in headfirst to being an entrepreneur. And so, you know, she really took a bet on me and I pitched you know, what is now sequence, I don't know if it even had a name at that point. But I pitched it to the Investment Committee, they said, you know, we love it, here's a little bit of seed capital, go raise, you know, a pre seed round of funding, however much you need. Berkeley was really helpful in just getting some connections, I was connected to the Schwab family, who are some of our earliest angel investors, which is incredible. So now just having someone believe in me, I remember her sitting me down and saying, you're an entrepreneur now. And I said, All right, I guess I am. So you know, that belief, I think, has been something that's been unwavering since. And then I think, third, it's just been, you know, the support of my network and my family, and just, you know, saying, We really believe in this, this is really important. My mom is, you know, ultimately my inspiration around this where she's been really afraid of the financial system. And I just wanted to open that up for other women like her. So I think that's who, who I think every day along with, like, just a really strong ecosystem.

44:25  
That's fantastic. Thank you. And the last questions around books, are there any books that you have found to have outsized impact on the way you think about your career or your life?

44:36  
Yeah, I think, um, to come to mind, I recently just read Grit by Angela Duckworth. I'm sure that's one that comes up frequently, but I think, you know, ultimately, you just got to grind it out and just keep working hard. And I think her her thesis, you know, out working and just being resilient and persistent is something that I've always lived my life by. And so it's great to see that codified I think That's one. The second piece was actually invisible women. It's an incredible book that just talks about how most of our systems in this world have been designed to send her men and what that means for women. And so I think as we build a product centered around women what does that actually mean? What are the impacts? How is that showing up and other you know, industries and and you know, how do we make sure that finances is one that we're able to break out up? So that's another one that I rely pretty heavily on as I think about, you know, just designing for women and you know, centering around women.

45:33  
Well, thank you so much for being on the show. And Brenda, we really enjoyed the conversation and it was great to hear about the sequence story so far and the vision and can't wait to see where it goes.

45:43  
Thanks so much for having me it had such a good time.