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Will Kim

Cofounder at Karat Financial

Will Kim, Co-Founder & Co-CEO at Karat Financial

Will Kim is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Karat Financial, a fintech startup that provides banking services to digital creators and influencers. He co-founded the company in 2019 with Eric Wei, and they have an equal partnership with shared equity and decision-making power.12

Early Career

  • Worked as a Summer Analyst at Goldman Sachs in 20142
  • Joined Palantir Technologies as Echo in 20162
  • Became an Investor at Lucky Capital in 2016, raising a $5 million seed fund2

Education

  • Bachelor of Science in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University2
  • Master of Science in Computer Science at Stanford University (on leave)2

Karat Financial

  • Co-founded Karat Financial in 2019 with Eric Wei to build better financial products for digital creators and influencers12
  • Karat has raised over $100 million from top investors like SignalFire, USV, and GGV3
  • Kim and Wei have an equal co-CEO relationship and prioritize their partnership through regular "co-founder therapy" sessions16

Will Kim and Eric Wei are building Karat to serve the growing creator economy, as they believe all businesses will need to become creators in the future.5 Kim's LinkedIn username is wdkim.4

Highlights

Jul 19 · linkedin

Eric Wei and I just raised $70M for Karat Financial to help creators with their finances. We're introducing a new business credit card that also builds personal credit & launching our tax service out of beta. Visa is partnering with us.

Three takeaways:

  1. We took a bet early. 💵 The best decision Eric Wei and I took was choosing to start a venture backed fintech creator company over 4 years ago.

At that time, the creator world was still a niche developing into an industry. Now it's an industry developing into an economy - and every new growing business economy needs access to credit & other financial tools.

But over 4 years ago, that wasn't clear - a really smart investor even told us to just shut Karat down and try something else - begged us not to waste time on something so niche.

I still don't know if Karat Financial is going to work - but I know at least that being early matters and being early means a lot of people think you're dumb.

  1. The biggest opportunity is when you join two new worlds. 🌎 We spend half our time chatting with YouTubers - and the other half with Visa, lawyers, and banks.

It's a weird combination - to try and explain to creators how FICO works - and then to explain to bankers what a "1/10 video" means.

It's also a direct reflection of our backgrounds - I come from finance at Goldman, Kiva, my own microfinance nonprofit & my own venture fund - and Eric Wei comes from working with creators at Instagram.

And it works. Sometimes solving problems requires willingness to serve as translator between two different worlds running into each other for the first time.

  1. Building a new risk model is hard - but worth it. 📈

Everyone asks us - how do you know if a creator is creditworthy when traditional banks have passed them over?

It's hard. We look hard at financial & social data that most institutions neglect to instead focus on FICO - but we still take meaningful risk.

But building a risk model isn't about avoiding risk - it's about managing it and learning from it. And now - we may be the best in the world at understanding creator credit risk - and that's now a defensible moat & advantage we have over others. h/t to Abhi Pabba, Chris Xu, and Rithika Neti

$70M is a lot of money. But it's not our money - it's money entrusted to us by investors to try and make this work, to build a better financial future for creators. Eric Wei and I know that the chances we fail are uncomfortably high - but we care enough to try and give this a shot.

If you want to support us, follow us at @trykarat on Instagram! If you're a creator, DM us there with questions - or sign up for a Karat card at https://lnkd.in/ggjpNRWC 😎

Related Questions

What inspired Will Kim to co-found Karat Financial?
How did Will Kim's background at Goldman Sachs influence his career path?
What are some challenges Will Kim has faced as a co-CEO at Karat Financial?
How does Will Kim balance his work and personal life?
What are Will Kim's future plans for Karat Financial?
Will Kim
Will Kim, photo 1
Will Kim, photo 2
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Experience

Cofounder & Co-CEO at Karat Financial
Investor at Lucky Capital, Echo at Palantir Technologies, Summer Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Education

MS Computer Science (on leave), BS Symbolic Systems from Stanford University

Location

San Francisco Bay Area