MGMT Boston - W10, Q2 24 - Lendbuzz // Sara de Zárraga, RapidSOS
Lendbuzz // Sara de Zárraga, RapidSOS
Welcome to MGMT Boston where we try to help 915+ of you manage your awareness of top Boston startups and local up & coming operators putting in the work. Glad to have you here!
TLDR:
Lendbuzz - an AI-powered auto finance platform using technology to broaden access to credit
Thanks to the Internet for making me aware of Lendbuzz
Sara de Zárraga, VP of Growth @ RapidSOS - a founder, operator, and financier who has traveled the world and uncovered the inner machinations of global economies & technologies to bring us a better future
Thanks to Daria M. for the intro to Sara
🔥 Upcoming Q2 Event: MGMT Boston Sports, Gaming & Wellness Breakfast - 5/30 @ 9am, co-hosted by Fidelity for Startups 🔥
Inviting Boston-area venture backed operating leaders, founders & investors to join for a Sports, Gaming & Wellness breakfast on Thurs, 5/30 to engage with the MGMT Boston Operators Club & Drive by DraftKings, co-hosted by Kristen Craft @ Fidelity for Startups
Other Resources:
MGMT Boston Operators Club - helping 50+ Boston based up & coming operators grow beyond their day to day
Dana Wensberg, Senior Engineer @ Paperless Parts - 4 Pieces of Advice for the next Manufacturing SaaS Startup (check out Dana’s Medium blog here)
Sean Smith, VP Product @ Denim - lessons from a product guy who spent time moonlighting in revenue
Dillon McDermott, Head of Sales @ Zowie - this one’s for the job hunters out there. A report from the front
2024 Boston Tech Big Board - 2024 Companies to Watch
The Endeca Effect: Overview / Markets / People / Products / Conclusion / Bonus - Steve Papa Alumni Learnings
Q2 Startups Highlighted: Starburst, Neurable, Software Defined Automation, airSlate, Ayble Health, Occupier, Blink, Arcee
Q2 Operators Highlighted: Adam Fisk / Tech Superpowers, Bryan Dsouza / Aptiv, Noah Massucci / Robin, Erica Kangas / Scroobious, Brian Moseley / Semrush
Would you like to sponsor MGMT Boston in Q2? Reach out by replying to this e-mail!
Lendbuzz
Founders: Amitay Kalmar & Dan Raviv
Founding: 2015
Mission: Financial opportunity should be more personalized and fair
Employees: 270 & 34% Local
Workplace: Hybrid
Stage & Capital Raised: Series D & $200M raised
Investors: Goldman Sachs, Wellington Management, Group 1001, 83North, O.G. Venture Partners, Highsage Ventures and MUFG Innovation Partners
Key Customers: Ford, Nissan, Chevrolet & Toyota dealerships
Glassdoor Rating: 4.1
Valuation (estimated): $1.1B (reported in their Q2 ‘24 $45M Series D fundraise)
^ this is a useless number from MGMT Boston. There is no tangible valuation until the business is sold or goes public. Don’t forget it!
Lendbuzz is an AI-powered auto finance platform using technology to broaden access to credit. Their team helps “thin file” customers get fast, fair auto financing when they’re buying a vehicle to fill a gap in our financial system and allow car dealerships to close more business.
This late stage fintech startup was founded in 2015 by Amitay Kalmar & Dan Raviv. They were analyzing Lending Club loans and uncovered better ways to audit the creditworthiness of borrowers with incremental data & machine learning models. State of the art neural network algorithms allowed them to consider and understand consumers better as they collected more signals. Increases in computing power were opening up new possibilities.
For immigrants, young adults (including college grads), and some other members of our society, access to credit is a “chicken and egg” problem. A lack of credit history can prevent access to products and services to build a better life. Amitay & Dan encountered this very problem when they immigrated to the U.S.
I remember my brother proudly moving to NYC after college to start his first job as an aspiring investment banker. Except there was one little problem. He had no credit history to go to restaurants, watering holes, or even Broadway. He had to sign up for a “secured credit card”, putting $49 down with a $200 limit to build his credit over that first year.
If he were living basically anywhere else and had to buy a car to drive to his job, what were his options? A lack of credit history can be a major problem!
According to Experian, 60M+ Americans have thin credit files (src). That means they have fewer than 5 accounts on a credit report with the major credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax & TransUnion). Credit bureaus have been around since the 1800s. Equifax was founded in 1899, Transunion in 1968, and Experian in 1996. Technology has come a long way and so should the tools & criteria we use to evaluate borrower risk.
Amitay & Dan’s goal was simple: use technology to better assess risk and help more people become car owners. Lendbuzz is using the power of data science and AI to redefine lending, beginning with auto financing. Better yet, they’ve partnered with car dealerships to create more sales opportunities and grow their bottom lines. That’s a win-win.
Today Lendbuzz provides auto loans to deserving borrowers, including those without a social security number, no credit history or thin credit. They offer fair rates and a chance to build your credit score with a loan that can be approved within 2 business days when purchasing a vehicle, working closely with dealerships to finalize the process.
Lendbuzz’s secret sauce is pulling in thousands of data points from various sources like bank records, education, employment, and spending patterns to evaluate an applicant's creditworthiness with a proprietary risk score (src).
Their technology first approach, focus on underserved markets, partnerships with auto dealerships, and balance sheet helps underscore their credibility and stability. Lendbuzz has begun to securitize their loan portfolio, completing a recent $219M AAA rated securitization, up from an A- rating in their first securitization three years ago. They have completed over $1.2B of asset backed securitizations and have still delivered growth in a challenging consumer credit cycle over the past 24 months (src).
In October 2023 Lendbuzz announced a $45M Series D financing with an additional $300M in a forward flow debt facility led by Group 1001 with participation from existing investors including, 83North, O.G. Venture Partners, and MUFG Innovation Partners.
Lendbuzz’s business continues to grow - registering ten consecutive profitable quarters (as of Q4 ‘23), 135% revenue growth in 2022, 80%+ growth in 1H 2023, and the team has exceeded a $200M annual revenue run-rate (src). They are actively hiring across functions in 2024 in Boston, Tel Aviv & throughout the U.S.
Operators to Know:
Niveditha Bharadwaj, QA Engineering Manager
Sammi Cheung, HR Manager
Timothy Corcoran, Senior Credit Officer and Product Expert
Gaurang Davda, Machine Learning Engineering Manager
Mariana Gattis, Director of Underwriting
Roy Heh, Director of Engineering Operations
Ita Montalvão, Regional Sales Director
Abhinay Parvathaneni, Director of Engineering
Bhavesh Poddar, Backend Team Lead
Priyanka Prabhu, IT Team Lead
Shir Sadan, VP of Operations
Pranjal Singi, Director of Engineering
Alex Wagenheim, Director, Corporate Strategy
My investigative powers continue to need work so apologies to the Lendbuzz team I know I missed many up & coming operators internally
Key Roles To Be Hired (Locally):
If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:
What are the key growth initiatives for 2H 2024?
What are the biggest challenges as you scale the team to 300 employees?
What is the long term vision for the company? Which loan products will be rolled out next?
What are the most important datasets that contribute to proper loan portfolio forecasting?
We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about Lendbuzz you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bring credit worthiness into the AI age. All borrowers applaud your efforts. See you around the winding Boston roads!
Sara de Zárraga, VP of Growth @ RapidSOS
Sara de Zarraga is a founder, operator, and financier who has traveled the world and uncovered the inner machinations of global economies & technologies to bring us a better future. Today she serves as the VP of Growth at RapidSOS, an intelligent safety platform transforming public safety.
Sara grew up on the Jersey shore with two younger sisters. Her mom was a teacher and her dad was a hardware engineer. She now knows that her mom staying home to raise three young girls was one of the greatest gifts anyone has ever given her! Her dad worked as a power plant engineer, turning gears and solving problems. Later in his career he was the one who was called in to triage specialized situations.
Basketball was a huge part of Sara’s childhood, an early lesson in leadership and team development. She went off to Wellesley College to play power forward. At first Sara was reluctant to attend an all women’s college but Wellesley helped cultivate a female empowered environment alongside incredibly smart, thoughtful women who challenged each other and became lifelong friends and champions.
As a Political Science major she interviewed with Wellesley alum Haidee Lee, an investment banking executive, who helped her land a role at UBS. Haidee bet on Sara because she had a hunch Sara was someone who could grow quickly and figure things out, despite not having a traditional background for investment banking.
She moved to New York right after the financial crisis to start her banking career in the city that never sleeps in a role with…not that much sleep. She learned how to navigate the challenging environment and intense, male dominated culture. Sara was competitive from her days on the court so she still wanted to figure out a way to win.
But after a few years, like many early career bankers, she began looking for a role outside the industry. Through another Wellesley alum Faheen Allibhoy, she found the International Finance Corporation (IFC) at the World Bank. The IFC is the largest global development institution focused exclusively on investing in the private sector in developing countries to help alleviate poverty.
Sara was part of a group that helped source, due diligence, and finance large infrastructure projects within the mining sector far flung places like Sierra Leone and Guyana to help build developing economies. The team’s goal was to make foundational investments in discovering and extracting natural resources while adhering to international environmental protections and supporting the local economy by creating local jobs, buying local goods and services, and paying taxes to support the national welfare…while also making a strong financial return for the IFC and attracting other foreign investors to these otherwise risky projects.. If you had to build a new mine in Africa, what are the economics like?
For an adventurous 20 something, it was an amazing opportunity and lifestyle. Sara traveled the world on a diplomatic passport meeting with international leadership teams as one of the faces of a large, well known organization. She felt the weight of that responsibility.
Many senior members of the organization had gone to business school so Sara thought she should research that path too to progress her career. Her husband, an aerospace engineer, could continue his career in D.C. or Cambridge so she applied to HBS with the help of her friend and colleague Lia Lazar (who had made the transition from IFC to HBS). Knowing how much value she had gotten from Wellesley’s network, she thought Harvard could be another place to help her chase meaningful problems in the world through business.
During business school she witnessed the #MeToo movement which was at it’s peak and it had a profound impact on her. Having powerful conversations with friends, women in her life, and classmates on campus she felt compelled to find ways to help address some of these systemic problems for women’s safety.
Sara began researching technology that could help solve female harassment & assault in daily life beyond using antiquated products like pepper spray, whistles, or alarms. Alongside her business school co-founder Quinn Fitzgerald, they began embracing this huge problem to turn a movement into a real world product that would help women live safer lives, and therefore ultimately grow and thrive on their own terms: the ultimate freedom.
As first time founders, they didn’t bring past product expertise to the table. But they were experts in the problem, dedicated to understanding it with a passion. Sara would go to the Artisan’s Asylum in Somerville after class at HBS to learn some basics of electrical and mechanical engineering and build some basic circuit boards.
Over a few years of doing customer research, validating the problem, honing the value prop, designing the product, and navigating supply chain and manufacturing they debuted a wearable jewelry device that could call for help in an unsafe situation paired to smart phones through their mobile app.
Running pilots in universities across Massachusetts, they raised $3M in Seed funding from investors like Lerrer Hippeau, Ludlow Ventures, Able Ventures, Graduate Syndicate (by Flybridge), Reign Ventures, and Underscore. Bruce Stangle from Analysis Group was their first angel investor and Kate McAndrew from Bolt (now Baukunst) was their first institutional investor, as well as Michael Skok from Underscore who saw the opportunity and worked closely with the Flare team.
Then the pandemic hit.
Investors were concerned and then some. Flare needed to conserve cash and shift their initial GTM strategy (that was focused on building a brand with college students and campus activations) entirely to direct to consumer as the world was moving inside and online. Luckily, their product resonated with women who had experienced assault in their lives and wanted to keep other women safe in their community, often gifting it to friends and family members. During COVID people were scared when they were alone for health & safety reasons. The startup grew rapidly.
Flare grew to $3M in revenue with 30,000 customers, selling out of inventory multiple times during a very challenging time in the world to create physical products. They received 60M views on Instagram & TikTok and raised $5M during the life of the company. Flare was the recipient of multiple prestigious awards like TIME Magazine’s 100 Best Inventions of 2020, Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2021, InStyle Magazine’s 50 Badass Women of 2021, and Business Insider’s Fastest Growing DTC Brand in Americas in Q2 2021. Natalie Portman was an investor! And a strong believer in the product too.
As the pandemic neared its end, the market continued to prove challenging. With online acquisition costs high and choppy fundraising markets, an acquisition felt like the next logical step. The Flare founders had an opportunity to sell to one of their closest competitors who could put both businesses together and reach greater heights.
As the acquisition closed, Sara transitioned the technology, product, and know-how to the new owners knowing that the team built something that lives and grows beyond them. The Flare experience was an incredible education in turning a dream into a concrete product that could be held in their hands and they could see the impact of it in peoples' everyday lives.
Sara learned so much about operating a company, evaluating and making product decisions, growing revenue, and figuring out the all important equation “what valuable thing can you make that someone will pay for?”
As a co-founder, she has operated across the entire business setting clear goals in Finance, Marketing, Operations, Strategy, and beyond. The parts of her job that were the most meaningful were the ability to be strategic & executional simultaneously.
What does it take to sell millions of dollars of a new technology during a global pandemic through rapid experimentation? I have no idea, but if you’re wondering you should ask Sara. She’s done that. Multiple times over.
Sara is joining RapidSOS in a newly created role of VP Growth, building a small team to identify and execute on growth opportunities via new partnerships, new markets, and product innovation. It’s a great role for a former founder and executive leader experienced in creating big commercial opportunities in a greenfield.
Connecting to the team via the HBS network, she has been so impressed with what they’ve built and the impact they’ve made in the industry. They were a team of people she wanted to work alongside to continue pursuing her passion of making the world a safer place for individuals and communities.
Shorthand Design for Better Goal Setting
From investment banking to international finance to startup founder, Sara has had to learn to adapt quickly. Over countless examples, she has taken ideas and “made them into things” quickly.
One of the frameworks that has helped her move fast, but also keep perspective, is shorthand goal setting. The analogy Sara likes to use is “when you’re going up the mountain, you’re marching forward toward a vision but you also need to bring things with you - the team, operations, resources, etc. - in order to get there. You’re grabbing hands and pulling people up”.
In order to do this you need to keep a bigger picture in mind of where you’re going but you also need to keep a checklist of the smaller goals that will help you keep track of everything you need to get there.
Designing short term goals properly is an important skill to move fast and keep the compass pointed north.Product development and fundraising taught her the importance of focusing on “needle movers” that drive measurable outcomes to prove the team is making tangible progress toward the bigger vision.
For example, when they needed to reposition their entire GTM strategy around COVID, they challenged themselves to “go try and sell 1,000 units in 3 months”. That exercise helped them reposition the business effectively, learn about a new customer cohort, and pare down secondary initiatives that didn’t align with the all important “right now”.
Paring back to what’s essential keeps a small, scrappy & effective team moving forward!
3 Career Insights / Learnings
Building a Portfolio of Skills - “No one takes a linear path. I’ve changed my mental framework to say I’m building this portfolio of skills that are all helping me work toward the bigger goal of what I want to know and who I want to be as a person. Thinking of my career that way has helped me a lot”
Time is the Biggest Resource - “Time is the ultimate currency and spending it effectively in your life and career is crucial. No amount of money can buy it back. It’s ok to spend that currency early in your career in return for learning, but as you move through your life continue to ask yourself how best to spend it”
Find Connection - “Finding a way to connect to what you’re passionate about and what’s meaningful is not ‘one size fits all’. You can get creative and find joy in many different ways. Go out and find it to enjoy the ride. People and culture ultimately matter most at the end of the day”
Sara is looking forward to joining RapidSOS with a product & mission she’s excited about. Most importantly, she’s optimizing around what brings her joy at the intersection of high stakes strategy, execution, and working alongside amazing people. Supporting female founders is really important to her too.
If you want to learn more about Sara you can find her advising startups, raising her young family, or on LinkedIn. Thanks for sharing. We look forward to seeing all the teams, industries & global trends you impact in the coming years!
Any feedback for me? One thing you liked? One thing you didn’t? Local startups or operators to highlight? Just reply to this e-mail!
See you next week!
-Matt