Closing One Chapter And Starting Anew

August 2021

It looks like Friday the 13th may actually be the luckiest day of the year?After an amazing journey over the past four years, today I’m saying farewell to Chime. It’s hard to believe that it was only a couple of years ago that Matthew Newcomb offered me the chance to start the finance team at Chime, just after their Series B, when the company still had less than forty employees. Over the next few years, we built out the Strategic Finance, Accounting and FP&A functions and redefined how we launch product initiatives and justify business impact. We worked to empower Chime to change the way our members think about banking and to strive to give everyone financial peace of mind. None of that would have been possible were it not for the phenomenal team who joined our squad along the way, and it’s been an honor and a privilege to work closely with them through the years.It’s been an unforgettable journey, and I think there’s no better way to close out this chapter than to proudly announce that we’ve raised $750M at a $25B valuation in our Series G funding round led by Sequoia Capital to continue to launch new member first financial products. Chime is also adding three new board members including Cynt Marshall, CEO of the Dallas Mavericks. I was first introduced to Cynt after we signed our Mavericks jersey partnership, a strategic partnership that I was lucky enough to be a part of driving forward, and I’m thrilled that she’s joining the board.As for me, I’m taking the next few months to get some headspace and to be intentional about what comes next. As Aman Dhesi has written in his recent post, I’ve also recognized “the degree to which my self-worth as a human was tied to my work.” I’m grateful for the opportunity for personal development and growth before focusing on the next big thing. I’m looking forward to this next chapter and excited for what I’ll learn along the way.

May 2022

When I left Chime, I had convinced myself that after nearly a decade of building Finance teams at growth-stage startups, it was time to try something new. Chime is an incredibly tough act to follow, so I wanted to be intentional about what came next.

I started by sharing my fintech perspectives in overengineered Twitter threads and engaging directly with operators in the industry. What I was surprised to see was that operators from all industries were excited about fintech. They were eager to use a new wave of financial infrastructure platforms to accelerate the time it took to build financial services, so they could spend more time building unique experiences for their audiences.

Meanwhile, I was learning more about what I wanted to do next. Having spent time exploring careers in advising and investing as ways to try something new, I found it difficult to stay on the sidelines; I kept wanting to jump in to build alongside operators. But after attempting early stage operating, I also found that I’m actually at my best when I’m working at growth-stage startups that have achieved initial scale and complexity, and are now figuring out how to optimize.

Finally, all of the pieces started to come together. I’d explored the opportunity set and come full circle, and now I knew for sure that being a growth-stage operator was exactly where I could make precise and outsized impact. But, rather than trying to pick the next Chime directly and repeat my past experience, I could try something new by focusing on the platforms that enable companies to offer better banking experiences like Chime.

That’s why I’m so excited to join the team at Unit which is building the full-service platform to enable companies to embed financial products into their offerings. Itai Damti and Doron Somech as well as the entire Unit team are building in public with next-level product velocity that has already won over fast-growing startups and well-known existing players in the space. They’ve done all of this in record time with intentionality and culture focus that really resonates with me and reminds me of the early days of Chime.

I’ll be joining Matthew Sullivan’s team as his first Finance hire later in May to help build the Finance and Strategic Finance functions, and I’ll be moving to New York later this year. I’ve realized now that it’s going to be impossible to repeat the once in a lifetime experience that was my time at Chime, but I can’t think of a better way to leverage my skillset while trying something new than with the team at Unit.

Let’s go make a dent in the universe.