fintech

Akshay Krishnaiah, Founder/CEO Line

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Akshay Krishnaiah Founder & CEO of fast growing subscription-based Cash Now Pay Later startup Line (useline.com) Akshay is a millennial, immigrant, uber driver (36,000 miles SF Bay Area) turned Techstars fintech startup founder & CEO at Line (useline.com) that came out of stealth this July and has taken the world by storm by delivering over $500,000 in Lines at $30 a line in just the last 90 days, to people who earn as low as $600 a month helping them make ends meet while proving to the world that you can do social good and run a profitable business by posting an impressive 11X  jump in monthly recurring revenue. He was previously Global Product Head at PayPal’s research labs where he earned over 75 patent publications covering hardware, payments, embedded fintech and consumer fintech and prior to that he headed the highly coveted PayPal-eBay Retail Labs where he and his team invented Wallet Tokenization the foundational technology behind most of PayPal and Venmo’s recent breakthroughs along with Handsfree shopping using bluetooth a predecessor to the computer vision based Amazon Go. His tour of academic duties include Stanford, MIT and University of Texas and was also once offered Adjunct Professor role at Cornell which he had to decline to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams. But, he is most proud of his role as a dad, husband, brother and son of parents who came from extreme poverty, worked hard to give great education, tolerant values and culture.

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Nadim Homsany, CoFounder/CEO EarnUp

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Nadim is the son of immigrants who arrived in the U.S. with virtually nothing. The passion to help people build financial resilience and independence was instilled in him through his upbringing. This, and the values learned from his family, led Nadim—along with his co-founder Matthew Cooper—to start EarnUp Inc. in 2013 with a goal of helping the over 200 million Americans in debt get out of it faster. Now EarnUp has grown into a company that brings lenders, financial institutions, nonprofits, and consumers together to identify core issues and to create solutions that work. Prior to EarnUp, he worked at Serent Capital, a $600M private equity firm, focused on tech-enabled services; led investments with NCB Capital, a $12B asset manager; and worked at McKinsey & Company consulting large banks. He also practiced IP and technology law at Kirkland & Ellis. Nadim holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and graduated with highest honors from Rutgers University.

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Chris Hsu, CEO/CoFounder Azibo Inc

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Chris Hsu is the CEO & Co-Founder of Azibo, a VC-backed real estate fintech startup focused on simplifying the rental property experience. Prior to Azibo, Chris served as an Advisory Partner at a16z and previously was CEO of Micro Focus, a $4B enterprise software company. He also was COO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, where he successfully led the largest corporate separation in history. Chris spent the earlier part of his career in leadership roles at top consulting firms, including KKR and McKinsey. A military veteran, Chris graduated as a Distinguished Cadet from the United States Military Academy at West Point and completed his U.S. Army tenure as a Captain. He also has an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

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Lauren Kolodny, Founding Partner Acrew Capital

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Lauren is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Acrew Capital where she invests in fintech. Among her investments, Lauren led the 2016 Series A round in Chime. Other investments include Divvy, Finix, Gusto, Kettle, La Haus, Papaya Payments, and Pie Insurance. Previously, Lauren worked in product marketing at Google leading a number of launches for GSuite, including Google Drive. Lauren began her career building tech partnerships for the Clinton Foundation in India. Lauren is a Trustee Emerita at Brown University where she served as the university’s youngest board member. Lauren was featured on the 2021 Forbes Midas Brink List.

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