Redefining Access & Breaking Barriers

In this episode…

Nic Cary interviews Samir and they discuss the lessons learned during his career journey including:

• The importance of creating solutions that address real needs and promote financial inclusion for underserved communities.
• The value of resilience and staying true to your mission, especially when facing obstacles in the entrepreneurial journey.
• The power of personal experience in driving meaningful innovation that positively impacts others' lives.

Sponsor for this episode:

This episode is brought to you by Sky’s The Limit, one of the largest nonprofit programs for underrepresented young adult entrepreneurs in the US. Sky’s The Limit is a quick-growing digital platform that connects entrepreneurs with their peers, volunteer business mentors, training resources, and funding.

Our goal is to develop the social capital that founders need to chase their business dreams.

To learn more, please visit www.skysthelimit.org today.

Episode transcript

INTRO (00:04):

Welcome to The First Buck Podcast where we feature stories about entrepreneurs and the people who support them. Now let's get started with the show...

Nic Cary (00:22):

Hello and welcome to The First Buck Podcast, brought to you by skysthelimit.org. We feature stories about entrepreneurs and the people who support them. Today we're joined by Samir Goel, co-founder and co-CEO of Esusu, a company focused on unlocking financial freedom. Samir grew up in an immigrant family from New Delhi, India, and witnessed the financial barriers and struggles his family faced as new residents in America.

These experiences later inspired Samir and his co-founder to start Esusu under the premise that no matter where you come from, the color of your skin, or your financial identity, it should not determine where you end up in life. Esusu’s platform provides renters the ability to build credit by paying rent, property management analytics, and rental assistance to unlock financial stability for renters and property owners.

Prior to Esusu, Samir co-founded Transfernation, a nationally recognized nonprofit that used technology to direct excess food to underserved communities across New York City. Samir also previously worked for LinkedIn, the United Nations, and Venture for America. Samir's work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times, and many other publications.

He's even been named to Forbes 30 Under 30, TIME 100 Next, and awarded the prestigious EY Entrepreneur of the Year. Nationally, in 2022, he was selected by Goldman Sachs as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs. Samir currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Museum of Modern Art PS1 and the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business and SaverLife.

So, wow, we are super excited to have you on here. Thank you so much for joining. We have a little tradition on the podcast—we've got to learn: how did you earn your first buck?

Samir Goel (02:05):
Nic, thanks so much for having me and for that very generous introduction. Excited to be here.

This question brings me down memory lane. You know, my parents, after they emigrated to this country and were met with a rude awakening, eventually became college professors. I share this because when you're a college professor, you get textbooks for free from all the publishing companies, as they want you to use those textbooks for your courses.

My first job, I think at the age of seven, was taking those textbooks and figuring out how to resell them for a profit. I made a deal with my parents that I could keep 10% or something ridiculous like that. I would resell them, and that's how I started making money.

From there, I became a landscaper and became very familiar with things like mulching, planting, and whatnot.

Nic Cary (02:53):

That's one of my other favorite questions—talk to us about a dirty job you had. So, from being early in the book sales game, maybe online, to getting your hands dirty in the garden, it's pretty obvious that entrepreneurship was always in your career path.

Talk to us a little bit about some of the other early business exposure you had. I think you're probably the only person in the world who got free college and university books, by the way! I didn’t know they gave them away to professors for free.

I remember spending a small fortune on those things and always getting used books when I was at university. But tell us a little bit about what happened after that.

Samir Goel (03:31):

Absolutely. And it’s funny—not a lot of people know that! The textbooks even say, “Teacher's Edition - Do Not Resale.” Hopefully that doesn’t get any other college professors in trouble.

Interestingly, you mentioned entrepreneurship seemed to be in my DNA, but I didn’t really think of myself that way. For me, it was more about growing up in a family situation where I was excited and interested in figuring out how to make money and start businesses. My original dream, however, was actually to work in public policy and international relations. In high school, I envisioned studying international relations, then international law, and eventually working at the United Nations as a diplomat or something of that sort.

That’s actually what I pursued right out of college—working at the UN. But once I was there, I quickly realized that I disliked bureaucracy and ran in the opposite direction towards building things. That’s when it really clicked for me: I loved the action of building things, experiencing both successes and failures, and figuring out how to make things work. Around that time, I started my first venture, Transformation, a nonprofit focused on ensuring extra food from corporate events reached shelters, soup kitchens, and other institutions serving people in need. We built a revenue model around helping companies reduce waste costs.

I made every mistake you could possibly make, but through that process, I learned by duct-taping things together, figuring things out, iterating, and adapting. That experience taught me a lot about what to do—and what not to do—when I started my next company.

Nic Cary (05:08):
This is a great story.

A lot of the entrepreneurs that I talk with within the Sky's the Limit community sometimes struggle when they're thinking about what kind of business they might want to create, whether it's a for-profit, a nonprofit, or a charity. Can you talk a little bit about some of the advantages and disadvantages from your personal experience when you think about those things?

Samir Goel (05:30):
Yeah, Nic, you know, I honestly think of nonprofit, for-profit, etc., as sort of just a tax status game. You can do a lot as a for-profit that you could do as a nonprofit and vice versa.

I think what's important to think about first and foremost is what problem in the world you're trying to solve. And what I always encourage entrepreneurs to do is make sure it's something you care about and actually believe in or are passionate about, maybe even something you’ve experienced personally.

I know that sounds a little bit cliché, but the reason it's important is because building anything is hard. Every day something great happens, and every day something terrible happens. You have to roll with the punches, and what helps you do that is actually caring about what it is. So you can't be an entrepreneur just to be an entrepreneur or a business owner just to be a business owner—you actually need to care about the problem or the solution.

Then from there, when you think about for-profit, nonprofit, hybrid, investment holding company, or whatever vehicle you want to use, it’s about finding the most efficient way for you to get capital and scale. If the most efficient way to get capital is to tell someone it's tax-deductible and you can access grants, then go for the 501(c)(3). That doesn’t mean you can't have a revenue model or earned income; it just means that’s where your initial capital might come from. On the other hand, if you're looking for a different capital bucket that's more return-oriented and you want bigger sums of money, maybe you go the for-profit route, raise venture capital, get debt financing, or whatever works best for you.

Nic Cary (06:55):
Yep, that's very wise advice. Okay, so you have a deep passion, obviously, for financial literacy and improving economic mobility. Talk to us about how you go from Transformation to Esusu.

Samir Goel (07:09):
Absolutely. So there are two parts to this story. The first is a professional journey, and the second is a personal journey. On the professional side, after Transformation—which, by the way, still exists; my co-founder at the time still runs it under a new brand—I eventually took a step back and spent some time in the corporate world, working for LinkedIn. LinkedIn was an incredible experience. I met amazing people and learned what it means to scale something, not just duct-tape it together. But at some point, I realized that, while I was learning a lot and making money for the first time, it wasn't feeding my heart and soul in the way building something impactful did.

My co-founder at Esusu felt the same after working at Goldman Sachs and PricewaterhouseCoopers. So, in December 2015, we met up at Max Brenner's in Union Square and had a deep, heart-to-heart conversation about our lack of fulfillment and shared personal financial experiences. We decided we wanted to build something impactful for our communities.

For me, Esusu stems from my family's journey immigrating to this country. Like many immigrant families, we thought coming to America would be life-changing. But my father was mugged on his first day here, and we struggled to find shelter. I grew up watching my parents work miracles with limited financial resources, trying to achieve the American dream. It shouldn't be so hard for people putting their best foot forward to have a fighting chance.

Inspired by that and Mimo's journey from Lagos, Nigeria, we founded Esusu on the core premise that no matter where you come from, the color of your skin, or your financial identity, it should never determine where you end up in life. We initially built a savings product but realized it wasn’t the right fit. Through iterations, we developed our current model—ensuring that when people pay rent, it helps them build and establish credit. Today, over 45 million people in the U.S. are credit invisible, and nearly 100 million live paycheck to paycheck. This market deserves solutions so everyone can participate in our financial economy.

Nic Cary (09:37):
Amazing. Thank you for sharing that story, and I'm sorry to hear about your father's first experience. That sounds extremely difficult. So, talk to us a little bit about the specific intervention that Esusu has developed.

How are you using data to basically improve credit scores for the customers and the community you serve?

Samir Goel (09:56):
Yeah, it's a great question. So the credit bureaus historically have always thought about credit in a very linear model, right? You borrow money, and if you repay it, you have credit.

Right? But I always say that credit treats you like you're guilty until proven innocent. So Nic, if I don't know anything about you, we're just going to assume you're a bad credit risk, and that doesn't really feel fair, right? Because it's not like you did something bad that then makes you deserve bad credit.

And so we thought about it: okay, how do we make credit more accessible to people? And really, what we came up with was alternative data. In the world of alternative data, rental data was really critical because, for most people, it's their largest monthly expense. It's their most predictable expense.

For a lot of lower-income families, it's 30 to 50% of their income. And it's an incredibly powerful predictive indicator. It sounds so obvious, right? But the best predictor of whether or not you pay a mortgage is whether or not you pay your rent. But historically, that's never even been a factor in underwriting a mortgage loan.

And so we saw this opportunity to take this incredible data asset and tie it into the credit system so that we could create a real win-win-win. And when I say that, what I mean is for renters, they now get something for their biggest monthly expense to get access to the financial system and establish that financial identity.

For landlords, it creates an incentive for renters to pay their rent on time. It’s an amenity they can offer that’s differentiated, encourages people to stay in their properties longer, and is great for them. And for the credit bureaus, they actually get to underwrite more people. The funny thing about a broken credit system is it doesn’t work for them either because they want to be able to underwrite everyone since that’s how they make money.

But right now, there’s this huge delta that rental data can solve for. And so we built the infrastructure to connect that to the credit system.

Nic Cary (11:39):
Very cool. Yeah, I think credit is one of those weird dark markets of information that a lot of people are unaware of.

But it's so impactful, especially as you're getting started, or if you're obviously an immigrant to the country, without a history of making payments or having access to these sorts of obtuse financial instruments. So, sounds like Esusu is doing extremely important work. One of the things I wanted to pick your brain on a little bit—you know, you've had to hire a bunch of people to help build your business.

You have a relationship with a co-founder that sounds like it's forged in the crucible of growing together and having a common mission. How do you surround yourself with great people, and what are some of the things early-stage entrepreneurs should consider when they build a team?

Samir Goel (12:23):
Nic, this is probably one of the most important questions for any entrepreneur or founder to think about. As far as the co-founder relationship goes, I feel incredibly fortunate to do this alongside Wimo, who I like to call my work husband. Right. We've been through everything together.

And that bond is what makes the founder journey so much more rewarding. But generally speaking, when you're thinking about team building, I like to think of it as a continuum. When you're early in your journey, you're looking for people who kind of resemble more of a missionary type of individual.

There's someone who just cares deeply about what you're doing, they believe in it, they're willing to hustle, they're willing to figure things out. They don't necessarily need to have as much of a specific subject matter expertise, but you know, they care. And that passion is what's going to add the most value to your business.

Then as you grow, that archetype of the right sort of team member shifts from being a missionary to more something like a mercenary. And I don't mean that as in truly like 100% a mercenary, but basically what you're now looking for is expertise.

And so then you stop looking for people who are just general athletes who just hustle and work really hard and care deeply, and you start looking for people who bring really specific expertise who sort of resemble more of that mercenary archetype. I’m going to pay for excellence. Right.

People who have been there, done that, and can help a company scale. And so that's sort of the continuum I see hiring go on. One thing that I think is really undervalued, though, especially early, is trust. Trust is everything, right? Because building startups, as I alluded to earlier, you go through ups and downs, and what's really important is when you're making a do-or-die decision or there's a lot of pressure, when someone else has an opinion, you trust that they have your best interest at heart, the company's best interest at heart.

And you can have a really deductive and productive conversation. But if that trust isn't there, you end up being your own worst enemy. You end up having internal politics. You don't know where they're coming from, you don't know what their motivations are. That kills companies. In big companies and large Fortune 500 companies, you can get away with bureaucracy and politics because there's so much scale.

But in a startup that's actually deadly. And so you have to be really intentional about the relational aspect of your early hires.

Nic Cary (14:34):
Okay, yep. I’ve seen that in a lot of different teams, and I think finding those people that'll run through walls with you at first is so important, and then later finding that expertise, as you describe it, becomes necessary.

And those are sort of natural things that occur as organizations get more complex and you have to have specialization. One of the things I wanted to ask you about: do you have anyone that you've worked with as a coach for yourself, or mentors and advisors in your career that have been helpful in helping you navigate the entrepreneurial journey, your personal journey, and your relationship with success?

Talk to us a little bit about that because it's different for everybody.

Samir Goel (15:13):
Absolutely, Nic. I'm fortunate to be surrounded by so many people that have invested in us and believed in us along the journey. You know, they always say success takes a village, right?

I think the original quote is "it takes a village to raise a child," but generally, it takes a village. And we wouldn’t be where we are without that village that supports us. Two people I can specifically call out are Jeff Weiner, the former CEO of LinkedIn, and Brian Rumao, his partner at Next Play Ventures.

They were investors in Esusu’s seed extension, and they've invested a lot of time coaching both Womimo and me on leadership, management style, and how to think about the business. They’ve been instrumental in foundational ways, even helping us shape our mission, vision, values, and operating principles, as well as setting a culture, growing a management team, and, sometimes, just providing good old-fashioned founder therapy where we can vent about a frustrating experience. They’ve been there, they’ve scaled businesses, and it’s been invaluable to have an outlet for these conversations.

Most importantly, they’ve also taught us about the importance of taking care of ourselves. Early in Esusu’s journey, we always operated like martyrs, and sometimes we still do, but we’re learning. They helped us see that if we’re not getting adequate sleep, maintaining a good health and fitness regimen, or investing in our relationships, it’s a disservice to the business. If we’re not creating leverage for ourselves, the business will struggle. They put that mirror to us and helped us think critically about our evolution as leaders, guiding us from being scrappy founders who do everything to understanding how to create scalability for ourselves and the organization.

Nic Cary (16:59):
Thanks, Nic. Shout-outs to Jeff and Brian for being mentors, advisors, coaches, and thought partners through those tough times. Founders often feel like they don’t have many places to turn to; it can feel like the world's against you, and the challenges are insurmountable. But, in reality, there are so many people out there who are genuinely excited to see you succeed and want to invest in and support you. So, thank you for sharing that.

I thought we’d wrap up our chat today with a few reflections for budding entrepreneurs. Many lack role models or the know-how, and the step toward entrepreneurship can seem daunting, especially if—due to circumstances—you didn’t even know it was an option.

So, what tips can you offer to help our listeners manage those early stages? What can they focus on to get started?

Samir Goel (17:59):
Nic, you know, I'll be the first to say that there's no right path to being an entrepreneur. And I want to really make this clear because I think there's this narrative in the media where you've got to do the thing where you're in an Ivy League college, and you drop out, and you go and raise a bunch of money in Menlo Park, and it sort of all works out.

And that is 0.0001% of entrepreneurs, right? And for myself and Wemimo, one thing that we did is we actually started building Esusu while still in our corporate jobs. Right? We come from humble beginnings. Every paycheck went to either student debt or building Esusu.

When we then quit our corporate jobs, I couch-surfed for a few months, and then we ended up sort of Airbnb-ing our rental to make income, and I took on $100,000 in credit card debt. Right? And you do all these little things to kind of make the journey work.

And so I say all that to say that there's no conventional path to being an entrepreneur. Everyone has their own journey. And you need to think about what's actually pragmatic for your life, the responsibilities you have, the assets you have, and sort of where that sits. That being said, three very practical things that I can share.

One is just nothing worth doing is worth doing alone. Right? Find that support system. It doesn't have to be a co-founder, but make sure you have those people in your corner because when the journey gets hard, you need that sort of support system to get through it. Number two, just get started.

Like, don't let perfect be the enemy of progress. I think Jensen H. Huang famously now said that if he knew everything that he knew about being an entrepreneur when he started, he wouldn't have actually founded NVIDIA. Right? And the sort of idea there is, one of the beauties is you don't know how hard it's going to be.

Don't make it harder for yourself by thinking about every sort of risk and every sort of pitfall. Just start. Some things you can do: create a website, use WordPress or Squarespace or whatever. Set up your social media account. Text five people who might buy your product.

You know, talk to twenty people about your idea, get feedback, right? Have someone introduce you to someone who's invested in one company just to have them rip your idea to shreds, right? You can do little things just to get started and take it one step at a time. Find those quick wins.

And then finally, you know, the first conference Wemimo and I went to and we met at was the Clinton Global Initiative. And at the time, President Bill Clinton said, you know, "Be caught trying." Right? And that always stuck with me as, you know, you want to leave it all on the court.

So take your shot. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. That's going to be unfortunate. But what you don't want to do is look back and think, "What if? Should I have? Could I have?" And so, you know, once again, nothing worth doing is worth doing alone.

Just get started and be caught trying.

Nic Cary (20:42):
All right. I love it. So from the early days of selling your parents' acquired books to getting your hands dirty, to starting a nonprofit, to dipping your fingers in a tech scaling company, and learning from some of the best and then applying those things yourself to a huge problem, we've learned an awful lot today.

I think some of the things that stuck out to me were really maybe the concluding comments you had around the three things not to forget, which is nothing worth doing is worth doing alone. And I think adding into that is needing to take care of yourself.

A lot of founders, like you said, they push themselves to a brink, but it doesn't matter if you're incapable of pursuing your mission if you're unconscious. So make sure you do fight for the long haul. There are times to sprint and then there are times to walk and there are times to run, and finding that balance can be difficult.

I do think a lot of times you probably sprint a little bit at the beginning and then find the pace that allows you to endure over the duration because it's going to take longer than you think. But I also think you do need to just get started.

Your customers are going to teach you everything you ever wanted to know. They're your best teachers. And then finally, be caught trying, I think is a really thoughtful way of just saying you got one turn around this life, and you can go make something of it.

So thank you so much, Samir, for all that you've shared with us. Your story is really inspirational, and all the accolades you've earned, I think, when we check back in maybe a few years, the list will be quite a bit longer. So thanks for your time today.

Samir Goel (22:13):
Thanks for having me, Nic. Such a pleasure to chat with you.

Nic Cary (22:16):
All right, so at skysthelimit.org, we connect underserved entrepreneurs with volunteer business professionals for free one-on-one mentoring. We also provide business guides for all of our members and monthly funding opportunities, so you can sign up for free.

And if you like what you heard, please subscribe and share this podcast. Cheers.

OUTRO (22:35):

Thanks for listening to The First Buck Podcast. Don't forget to join the community of underrepresented entrepreneurs and their supporters by signing up at skysthelimit.org. Click subscribe and we'll see you next time.