Transcription:
00;00;03;15 – 00;00;33;16
Penny Crosman
Welcome to the American Banker podcast, I’m Penny Crosman. Silicon Valley’s bro culture has been well-documented. Emily Chang’s book Brotopia, described how difficult it is to be a woman working in that world. Is it the same for women in fintech? Our guest today is Kristy Kim, co-founder and CEO of TomoCredit, a fintech that provides credit to people such as recent immigrants who have good jobs but who don’t have thick files with U.S. credit bureaus simply because they haven’t been in the country that long.
00;00;33;22 – 00;00;34;17
Penny Crosman
Welcome, Kristy.
00;00;35;11 – 00;00;38;01
Kristy Kim
Hi, Penny. Thank you so much for having me.
00;00;38;09 – 00;00;45;05
Penny Crosman
Thanks for coming So to start us off, can you tell us about when you first came to the U.S. and you tried to buy a car?
00;00;46;04 – 00;01;15;22
Kristy Kim
Yeah. So I am originally from Seoul, South Korea. Both my mom and dad are entrepreneurs, so they own their small businesses in South Korea. So when I first came here, I came here basically by myself when I was 11. Initially, I came here to just spend one summer here and study English And I fell in love with pizza.
00;01;16;06 – 00;01;41;02
Kristy Kim
So I wanted to stay longer. I wanted to go to school here. So that’s where my American dream started, I think, at a young age. And I just love that things are different here. So I studied at UC Berkeley, and at that time I was a debt free international student I didn’t have a student loan. I didn’t have any loans.
00;01;41;13 – 00;02;11;00
Kristy Kim
All I had was two checking accounts and one checking account was connected to my my parents, a Citibank account. So Citibank at that time was the only major U.S. bank that has a big presence in Asia, including South Korea. So my dad would put money in the Citibank account so I could withdraw his money in here in the U.S. whenever I needed to pay my tuition or had to buy stuff.
00;02;11;14 – 00;02;44;21
Kristy Kim
So I thought that I would be considered as a good person or a good borrower in the U.S. because I always had cash that I could use. But I realized that I was wrong when I was trying to buy my first car. Right after college, I got rejected over and over again. And I realized that I was not qualified for on auto loan simply because I didn’t have a credit profile in the U.S..
00;02;46;14 – 00;03;16;12
Penny Crosman
So that led you to your fintech idea. And you guys have been running TomoCredit for several years now. You and I met at the Barclays Rise Accelerator, and you’ve actually taken the company quite far since then. What do you think? Is fintech culture similar to Silicon Valley bro culture? Is it better? Is it worse?
00;03;17;09 – 00;03;48;09
Kristy Kim
I love that question. And so before getting into tech, I was in finance so my very first job was in investment banking. I was a junior analyst at M&A firms and I really liked it. I basically mimicked what my male colleagues were doing, and I have all this knowledge and I have thick skin.
00;03;48;10 – 00;04;14;25
Kristy Kim
So for me, it was not that difficult to mimic what they were doing. If they were going out drinking, I would just do it with them and I have no problem doing it. And I was having fun, I think. But there were certain moments when I would feel like, oh, why is it this way? If someone doesn’t like this way of doing things they might not enjoy working in finance.
00;04;14;25 – 00;04;44;11
Kristy Kim
That’s the thought that I had because for me, my perspective was unique because I’m an immigrant and my dad runs a business. And he his job is very sales driven. So growing up, I saw my dad coming home like 1 a.m. to a family in South Korea because he was out hosting his clients and drinking.
00;04;44;19 – 00;05;20;24
Kristy Kim
So for me, because I have seen my dad doing it and my dad told me that you should know how to drink, how to play golf… I’m his son in a way. So I think because that prepped me really well to do just fine in finance, I had no problem getting along. But it was interesting after I left finance to do my own startup, my mentality was the same where I’m just like any other male founders, I’m the same.
00;05;20;24 – 00;05;49;01
Kristy Kim
You know, I have a cool idea. I have a cool team. I’m executing. And then I realized that investors might not have the same perspective or same view. Maybe they’re discounting me. The reason why I had that doubt is the number one comment I got during my fundraising process, with my my very first seed round, was, “Kristy, that’s an amazing, idea. That makes total sense. I relate to it. How come no one has done this before?” So instead of saying, “You are visionary, I want to invest,” it was, “How come no one has done this before?” That kind of threw me off a little bit.
00;06;13;05 – 00;06;43;15
Penny Crosman
Well, first of all, I love that the life skills your father taught you were drinking and playing golf. And then I think it’s interesting that you went from one male-dominated industry, the finance industry, to another male-dominated industry, the software industry, and you kind of felt comfortable in both. But it sounds like it was when you went to try to raise money that bro culture became a problem for you. Is that right?
00;06;44;25 – 00;07;34;14
Kristy Kim
Yeah. So looking back, I had no problem fitting in and being a part of it. But when I was in a position as a founder and CEO and trying to build a company, I think that’s a different context. And that’s like the the first time that I felt like, oh, wait, are people discounting me? It’s all very subtle and hard to pinpoint, but I think that also makes sense in a way that when you are working at a company, as long as you perform well, people like you.
00;07;35;15 – 00;07;58;21
Kristy Kim
But if you’re trying to do something crazy and there’s a high risk, investors might lose money. So for them, they really, really want to back the right way. And that kind of puts them in a different mindset. I think if I asked them to hire me, maybe they would hire me, no problem. But I was going to them with the idea that, why don’t you invest in this?
00;07;58;21 – 00;08;02;16
Kristy Kim
I’m going to make it work, and then I can really, really make it work.
00;08;05;05 – 00;08;26;25
Penny Crosman
So you were going to VCs and they were giving you a lot of kind of pushback on your idea. Do you think some of that pushback was just because you’re a woman and they didn’t see that many women pitching to them? Do you think that’s part of the the obstacle?
00;08;27;19 – 00;09;00;25
Kristy Kim
I had that thought. Well, I will never be able to prove it. But the overall thought that I had was definitely I felt like I had a higher bar to clear. And I know this because in the seed round, all the seed companies don’t have much metrics to show, no users, no cards in the market or transaction volume.
00;09;00;26 – 00;09;03;01
Kristy Kim
It’s all about the same, close to zero.
00;09;07;19 – 00;09;31;21
Kristy Kim
You probably have five people, eight people, ten people at maximum. And you probably have a tiny bit of money and maybe you are in that incubator accelerator. And I met two or three other companies and founders. They’re my friends. We compared numbers, and the companies all had the exact same number of users.
00;09;32;02 – 00;09;48;07
Kristy Kim
They got money six months before me, always. I told them that something is wrong here. Somehow you always get so much money faster than me.
00;09;48;28 – 00;09;54;04
Penny Crosman
So there’s a six-month gender funding gap.
00;09;54;26 – 00;10;15;13
Kristy Kim
That is kind of kind of true. That’s how I felt. But I think that motivates me to work harder in a way that I can change the reality. The only thing I can do is just take it as an extra motivation and prove them wrong at the end.
00;10;16;05 – 00;10;26;13
Penny Crosman
Good for you. And what kind of did it? I mean, how could you prove that your idea would work if you didn’t have the money to actually execute it yet?
00;10;27;17 – 00;11;18;16
Kristy Kim
So that’s, I think, where the whole gender funding gap or Silicon Valley bro culture begins, because for female founders or female C-level executives to have an amazing exit IPO and make a lot of money and have the reputation, they need to start somewhere. I think probably female founders start at the same starting point with other companies with all male teams, they all start the same, probably they all go into the well-known incubator accelerator, but that first check is really hard because at the time, you basically have nothing you really have to convince people to trust in you, trust in your idea. And after a series A, I think it becomes more of a level playing field in a way that now we have numbers to show. So people cannot discount me anymore because now I have numbers. I’m so glad that the company and my team and we survived and now our numbers look amazing. We grew 1000% last year.
00;11;51;06 – 00;12;15;18
Penny Crosman
Wow. That’s the way to do it. Well, what do you think it would take to bring about a change in some of this? I know the venture capital investors themselves are predominantly male. Do you think we would have to see more female VCs in order to start to see a change in what the kind of thing you experienced?
00;12;16;22 – 00;13;20;14
Kristy Kim
I think that is a very difficult question to answer, because I do not believe that having more female investors is a solution for more women to get funding. I think the reason is because I think it has deeper problems or root cause. I think it’s more of an overall like perception in a way that how do we change our narratives and perception when we see founders, and it’s difficult because the reason why investors want to invest in certain type of founders is because they have seen Elon Musk, they have seen Mark Zuckerberg, and they do they have their own pattern recognition.
00;13;20;24 – 00;14;07;13
Kristy Kim
And when we think about the females in fintech, I cannot name any female CEOs at the biggest growing fintech companies like Apple Stripe, Venmo, Robinhood. I don’t know any female C-suite people in those companies. So for me, I think that’s where the problem is. If we see more female executives or female founders at those companies, then investors may change their method.
00;14;07;25 – 00;14;31;16
Kristy Kim
Well, now we don’t have that and if you’re asking me like what we should do, I do not know. All I can do at this point is just be the best version of a CEO I can be, the best company builder I can be, and hopefully, TomoCredit will be the company that people recognize as a company that has an immigrant female CEO, and that company is about to go IPO. And then I hope that really helps the next generation of founders to take advantage of that recognition.
00;14;48;20 – 00;15;13;20
Penny Crosman
Well, good for you. I think you are setting a great example and are a good role model for for women coming after. So I think we will close on that note. Well, Kristy Kim, thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you all for listening to the American Banker podcast. I produced this episode with audio production by Kellie Malone. Special thanks this week to Kristy Kim at TomoCredit. Rate us, review us and subscribe to our content at www.AmericanBanker.com/subscribe. For American Banker, I’m Penny Crosman and thanks for listening.
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