By James Garvey, CEO of Self Financial
For the last 2 years, I've written a weekly newsletter that I share with our employees and shareholders at self. I also include a photo, an exceptional individual achievement, or just something funny. I got into this habit at Techstars, and have kept at it.
2017 was a crazy year for self:
Here's what what happened:
We started 2017 strong. One of my highlights for the year was attending the Fintech Ideas Festival.
It took just six months for us to grow from 1,000 to 10,000 credit builder accounts.
We refreshed our logo!
Kelvin Pho joined as our VP engineering and Brian Vitone joined as our VP operations. Kelvin and Brian are two of the most amazing and influential people @ self.
We reached 18,000 members in May.
Karthic (center of bottom-right photo), one of our A+ engineers, dominated our 2017 codebase. Also, thanks to Nerdwallet for the sweet poster.
We raised $5mm series A financing from Silverton Partners, Deepspace Ventures, Accion Venture Lab and a handful of amazing angel investors.
Every startup needs a wall with a giant logo.
True story: building credit is finally easy with self. See details here.
As you can see, we've used with new financing to recruit some amazing people.
We launched in all 50 states. We added a second bank partner, City National Bank of New Jersey. We also launched a $25/month credit builder account. Details here.
Now 65,000 people have used self to build credit and save money. To our members — thank you for amazing year and we are rooting for you!
We're so lucky to have the support from our members, our shareholders and our rockstar team.
If you’re interested in helping people build credit and save money, then work with us! Visit our self careers or email us @ careers at self.inc.
James Garvey is the CEO and co-founder of Self Financial, a venture-backed startup that helps people build credit and save money.