I Built Your Credit Card ft. Vrinda Gupta

the most part. So we wanted to start the year off awesome by having awesome people in the stew And today we have a woman who is amazing who I was introduced to via one of my mentees. Hey, Berna, Bernad's awesome, and berna' said you have to be a woman. Vernda, she's awesome. So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about Verrenda that we're gonna welcome her into the stew and just chat.

I never call it the right name. I'm always like the go get it Chase card, the travel around the card, travel around the world card. So she was the one who helped to launch that, and she received her MBA from Berkeley haz Am I saying that right. Brenda lives in San Francisco, California and is a proud we love this because you know I'm first generation, first generation Indian immigrant. Welcome to the studio, Verrenda.

parents were a little extra too strict. You know, education was most important, and yeah that there was just this expectation of excellence always, you know, and so like, so I love that.

Brown mothers, a very feisty immigrant woman. She is not afraid of anything except for this one realm, which was the financial world. And so ultimately, when they were big financial decisions to be made, my dad would end up making them because my mom didn't feel confident. And I started associating money with power at a very young age, and since then, both my parents really encouraged me to become financial independent and really understand the financial system, because again,

money is power. And so when I graduated, I actually wanted to get into financial services so I could empower myself and empower my mom and the women and just persons around me with this very important knowledge. And my first job out of college was at Visa, and I felt really fortunate to have that position because I was

learning so much. I was a product manager. I was building popular credit cards, including the Chase Sapphire Reserve, which I know we talked about for a bit, and it was so fun, you know, working on this project, having so much ownership and for multiple years working on this huge product launch which was a big success. And I applied for the card that I had spent years building and I got rejected.

feeling as confident. And then I'm sitting there with this rejection screen in front of me and just had this moment of realization that, you know, if I wasn't able to do something about this, then my daughter in the future was going to be sitting in this exact same chair,

having this exact same experience. And it kind of led me on this rabbit hole where I started understanding who the financial system was built for and who it wasn't And I actually learned that women minorities could be rejected from bank accounts, credit cards, business loans up until the

nineteen seventies. And that's not ancient history, right, And even though it's illegal today, we all know that putting you know, laws in place does not solve the problem, and I kind of, you know, came to this realization that women

and minorities have the largest spending power of any demographic. Ever, however, the financial system and the resources and the guidance and the tools themselves are really not designed around women or around minorities, and that's leading to less than optimal outcomes for us. And you know, that's kind of where my fascination with all of this started.

are built. And so after I got rejected, I actually had this renewed excitement and zeal for the payments industry because I felt if I could learn from the smartest people in the industry, I could actually take those learnings and then build something better. So I stuck around Visa for a few years after that, and I actually went

to get my MBA at Berkeley HOSS. And when I was actually in my MBA program, I started surveying my classmates and I was realizing that even MBAs and these very very ambitious professional women were feeling less confident in our finances as compared to the men. And you know, I just realized that this was a huge opportunity to do something about it. So I had an MBA summer internship at one of the best design firms in the

world called Ideo. And when I was there, I was kind of looking around and seeing what was going on in the world, and times up was happening, me too, was happening, and I just felt very strongly that women deserved better financial services that were actually designed around our needs.

just worse and worse. But seventy percent of women were making avoidable mistakes when it came to money, when it came to credit, when it came to wealth, and those mistakes were solvable. It's just because the financial system was not designed with us in mind. We were also not being taught the same way, and the issues start really early where little boys are twice as likely to receive

a lesson on credit and finances. By the time we reached high school, and then banks are spending thirty three times advertising to men they are to women, and thus women aren't having these conversations, and so that does lead to greater you know, not really understanding how some of

these products and services are working. And then on top of that, when you actually look at the products and services themselves, you can see that credit scoring algorithms, for example, are taking into account, okay, the fact that there is a gender age gap, right, there is a pink tax,

and that women's lives are costing more. And so you know, these algorithms are saying, are not actually seeing that, and they're just saying, okay, well, we are going to penalize you with some of those factors that you know, society has put onto us at no fault of our own. And so I started taking all these things, started looking at Okay, of course confidence, a lack of confidence is the result. But also these products were never designed with

us in mind. We were never taught this industry is not designed to center women that look like you and me, So it makes sense that you know, we might not be engaging with them, or we might not feel confident using them.

I'm actually not just going to complain about it. I'm going to do something like where did that energy come from? Is that like your mother's just seeping through? Like, no, the feistiness is still here.

I started seeing so many women start talking about that, which I thought was just so incredible, and women that looked like you and women that looked like me having these conversations and as I mentioned times up was happening, me too was happening, and I just felt like the timing for something like this was right. But the other part that I felt a lot of gratitude for and really understood my privilege in that I understood how to

build financial products. And you know, as I looked around, even when I was working at Visa and especially now as a fintech founder, there wasn't anyone who looked like me. And you know, just having that experience where I was rejected from the product that I helped create, I don't know anyone else who's had that experience still in you know, my many almost a decade in fintech now, I haven't

seen that. And I think with that perspective that made me really empathetic to the women who I'm building for. Where I had these conversations and I can say, okay, I also experience that problem. You're right right. You know, I got rejected because I wasn't building my credit history effectively and that's because I didn't know. No one taught me.

And so as I'm talking to other women and building the products, it's also thinking about how do we not only give you the education that you need and the why behind everything, but also how do we design products and services that you can actually take those learnings and then practice with them and know that these products aren't

going to have a bunch of gotchas around them. So to answer your question to me, I think I just didn't see anyone else with my unique perspective, and I felt this is something that should exist the world because when you give women and minorities more money, that's how the world moves forward. And it became a matter of gender equity and equity for minorities as well, where again,

going back to money is power. Understanding how to leverage money, Understanding money, credit and wealth and actually having the tools to make those work for you is just so powerful. And it felt like probably the most important thing that I could do with my life. And so that's why I decided to take the plunge into entrepreneurship and build what is now Sequin.

it's actually an interesting kind of fun fact. So Sequence or Siica is the Arabic term for a coin, and around the Roman Empire timing there were these Venetian gold currencies as well, called sequence or sica, and as you know, the fall of the Roman Empire, the coins started losing value and so people would wear them as talismans and you know, decor and over time it became this kind of shiny not what we know a sequence, Kay, and I really loved that mix of you know, rooted and

deep currency and gold coins, but also something that represents femininity and something that feels very kind of bright and loud and out there. It just felt like this perfect mix of you know, what we were trying to build and you know, the change that we're trying to make in the world.

Should I have an emergency fund? And actually there is an order that works for most people, and so we say this is the order you can diy. We have a ton of amazing resources around money, credit, and wealth. We have workshops if you need accountability, and we do a lot of community work together as well. And then the best part is you get a Sequin high interest checking account and a Sequin depit card that has your own money mantra on its visa.

in your checking account. So your paycheck goes into sequence, it grows at high interest. The raids subject to change, but right now it's three point five six percent and checking why in checking, which is over fifty times what you're gonna get with ye.

are the product. Yes, And you know that's something that we wanted to kiss goodbye to with Sequin, where when you come in, everything is given to you and we have a monthly or an annual membership and once you're in there's nothing. And at a certain point with you know, if you connect your direct deposit to Sequin, you will likely earn more in interest than the membership fee. So you're learning, right, you're getting accountability. You're getting these novel

banking tools that don't really exist on the market. High interest checking is gate kept, like American Express has it, but you have to have an AMEX card with an annual fee and then you get access to it. This way, there's no gatekeeping. You come in and we also have some other really amazing tools like credit tools where you can build credit, you can pay off debt all within Sequin,

all in one place. So the idea is you can manage your entire financial life within sequin We'll tell you the exact order of things to do, will give you resources to actually practice take action. We'll give you accountability with the community, and we will give you novel banking tools that do not exist anywhere else really on the market and are definitely not all in one place together.

So I love what we're building. And the best part is we want to design a financial system with women and minorities in mind for the first time in history, right if women could be and minorities could be rejected from again bank accounts, business loans, credit cards. Until the seventies, every single bank out there was not designed with our needs in mind, right, And so we always do feedback sessions.

Every single product that we've built, and every single feature is actually built by a request from a member of our community. And so we really do listen. And that's why you know your reaction took me. Of high interest checking, we heard so many women say like, Okay, I do have an investment, but I need money every month, and I have a lot of money in my checking account and that should be growing, and every single dollar of yours should be growing. And so we're like enter high interest checking.

all of the financial guidance that I mentioned. So our money Credit Wealth Program, which includes courses, it includes workshops, and includes DIY resources to help you do things like calculate your emergency fund. It does things like help you figure out the best way to pay off debt, It does things like help you understand the best way to

get started investment. And then you also get access to our financial tools which are high interest checking right so you're able to grow every single dollar at insanely high interest and it's totally liquid to you. You get access to all of our credit tools that help you build credit, payoff debt. You literally just connect your credit cards to Sequen and the tools smart enough to tell you are you in debt payoff mode or credit building mode. And the best part is all of it is in one

place and it's all accessible to you. You're not going to be charged overdraft fees, late fees, penalties. We actually every time you make a transaction, text you and tell you how much you have left in your account, so you are never going to be overdrafting. You're always aware. So those are kind of small features that we just provide for nervous system regulation, but we're constantly building new features and everything is accessible to you as a SEQUENCE member, Like I.

on a joint account. And with Sequin, we really want this to be your bank account, Like this is your banking, and there's not really anyone else like this is you, you know, and you can manage your financial life if you want to connect you know, your partners credit cards into it, or if you want to kind of use it together, you can. But it really is meant to be an account for you to be able to keep organized and on track.

locked away. We just want you to have access to it. But if you do need to separate it out, that's where the buckets come in.

a Sequin member, you have access to everything. We just open the door and you have access to the whole the whole kingdom here.

to miss payments, et cetera. So it's not an official bill pay functionality, but you can definitely connect your bills to sequin.

helping her. My my monthly fee is twenty five dollars and I get nothing for that twenty five dollars nothing now, see, I know, so for thirty dollars to you know, so one, you know, it's significantly less than what probably you're paying quite honestly if you have a checking account. And then on top of that, you're also earning interests where I'm

earning nothing. I mean, this is a big bank. So even in saving it's point like zero zero or one percent, but checking is like gird, you tried it, there's nothing here for you. And so you know if those of you who are hearing the fee that for the most part, you are likely paying a fee anyway, I know. Sometimes you know to your point that bank like if you

have direct deposit that that fee gets waived. So some people take advantage of that, but I love the fact that there's this education component and the community component, which is so right up my alley. So I wanted to shift gears a little bit into because there we have a lot of entrepreneurs here and would let to get a better understanding of like what the business Like, this is me my curiosity. So is this like when I started the budget Nesta that I didn't have any money

and certainly no one was trying to invest. You know, did you raise money to start Sequin? How was that process as a brown woman? If you did? Like what did that?

empowering women financially. And part of that is even if you are an in having the opportunity to have a huge outcome, right, And so when I went to fundraise for the first time. First of all, I had no idea what I was doing. I was like me with a pitch deck. And actually, funny story, I walked into a woman who actually ended up investing later on, and you all know her name. But when I walked in, she said, uh, you know, don't you have friends and family who can invest? And I said, I actually don't.

You know, that's one of the things right where you hear these stories of entrepreneurs and it's you know, I got a small loan of a million dollars.

little bit of money to give to you. But at this point, you know, as as a first generation immigrant. Part of it is you don't have generational wealth, right, that is the thing, and that's the thing that we are all working towards. And so you know, going in, I think taking it as a moment to educate and say, you know this type of thing, right, I do not have extremely wealthy friends and family to be investing, you know,

hundreds of thousands of dollars into this. But the second piece that was really important to me was having women and women of color on my cap table. And it took me longer to fundraise to find those folks and really test the fit both ways. Right, It's not just me saying, oh, I need money to get started on my business, but truly was are you mission driven? Do you understand the huge opportunity that this is to change

the world? Right? It's you know, putting hands and putting money in the hands of women, putting the money in the hands of minorities. This is a revolutionary idea. And are you in it for the long caul and are you in it for those ups and downs? And I'm so glad I made that decision to really be intentional about who is on our cap table, because as we

have progressed year over year and done additional rounds. Almost all of those women have reinvested into the company, and so it made our rounds after that, you know, a lot easier. And we actually went through a startup accelerator called why Combinator, which has launched, yeah, some of the biggest unicorns of the last few years, Stripe, Instacart, door, Dash, et cetera. And it's been such an amazing experience to

have that mentorship. But it is kind of interesting, you know, I am a huge fan of my peers, and they're some of the smartest and kindest people I've ever met. But they don't look like me, right, They look like them and they all kinds of very similar. They look like who the financial world is designed for. And I think I love that, Yeah, for sure. So I think that, you know, is the superpower right of being able to

be empathetic with your community. And even as I do use their interviews almost every single day and do money therapy sessions, I'm crying on these calls with these women, right because I see they tell me the stories about you know, that them watching their moms growing up, and I'm like, that was me too, and you know, them getting rejected from products. I'm like me too, Right, how do we actually take that feeling and then actually solve it with products and services? So anyway, I digress. Yes,

we took the venture back to route. But having mission driven investors is something that is so important and it's a smart business decision as well, because it's a long journey and you know, you're in this relationship with your investors for you know, decades. I hope I got to run this company for the rest of my life and so you know, these people are going to be along with me for the right No.

But yeah, so you know how they say, I'm, you know, looking for a certain amount of investment to own this portion of my company, and I value my company at this amount, and so it's basically what percentage ownership based off the amount that they've invested and at what valuation basically your company is. So basically it's kind of a spreadsheet, a fancy spreadsheet that shows you know the ownership of the company.

to the bank of Budgenista. So when I started my online school, which we peaked at in like eight figures a year, I was like, but I think, like we needed thirty thousand dollars to get them, Like it was. We were paying professors, we were paying you know, for the like, for the content just and it was a lot. But I could have never started with thirty thousand dollars

like ex preschool teacher Tiffany starting the Budgeanista. But you know then because by then the Budgetesta hadn't been in business like six or seven years, so the academy was able to say, hey, Budgenisa, can I borrow money, you know, And so the Budgetista lent it the thirty thousand that it needed. Yeah, and then its first year, I remember we put all that money to work. I remember we made thirty thousand dollars the first thirty minutes that we

opened the doors. I had never made I used to make thirty nine thousand dollars a year as a teacher, and so that was like what you know, So that was kind of like my the funding as how I saw it, you know, because I thought, to your point, I didn't feel confident enough. Plus too, I wouldn't even know what to do. I didn't come from the corporate world. So I'm fascinated to hear like, okay, like how many people did you have to pitch to? Like what was

your like pitch percentage? Like, oh, you know about two percent of people said oh yes, And is that normal? Like what did you find? How was that? Like, yeah, how many people did you pitch to? And you know, like what was your like closing rate? I guess, And it was that normal comparative to your to your peers?

And actually, I think someone told me I had a greater chance of winning the calif Or Neil lottery than I did raising money when you look at the percentages. Yeah, yeah, and I was like, thanks, I tried not got to think about that. Luckily it was you know, after I finished razing and we raised about six million dollars, which is amazing. Yeah, and you know, from awesome investors. But yeah, I know that idea of going out there and pitching really requires you to take a very big bet on yourself.

And you know, you're talking to the best investors right in Silicon Valley in our case, and their job is to tell you everything that can go wrong with your company, and it can really mess with your psychology. And actually, you know, in those moments, I really leaned upon three things. The first was my expertise and being able to say that I built the credit card that's been your wallet.

got grilled. There was actually a woman partner who came up to me after one of my pitches and she says, I have never seen anyone get grilled like that. Good job. And at first I was like, wow, thank you, And then I started thinking about it more and I was like why is that? Though, Like, why as a woman do you need to be ten x better? But leaning into my expertise, I think helped a lot in saying, Okay, I know how to build these products. I've done it before you use a product that I built, I can

do this. I know how to do this, and just getting confident in that in my body is not as an immigrant so much for is like humility, and I realized that wasn't the strategy here because the guys were

not going in humble right. So that leads me to my second point, was just being able to sell a really really big vision that for me again was grounded and talked to thousands of women at that point and being able to say, I understand this population one because I am this woman, but also this woman has an incredible amount of spending power that she's just making avoidable financial mistakes with and if we can solve that, that is just so that unlocks so much opportunity for so

many people. So that was the second piece, and the third piece was, you know, everyone has those days where just like one too many negative, you know, conversations and be like lying on my office floor with the lights off, like so tired that I just like pick up my phone and call my mom. My Mom's just like, women need this, And I feel so much more empowered going through the financial system, after going through Sequin and after being a part of sequin, and this is really really

important and that just always refueled me. So I think going back to a really strong lie is you know, something that was just so helpful, and you know, just I love the people that we're building for because they're my sisters and my mom and my future daughters. Right, that's what's not to love.

like one am I doing fifteen years old? But you know, you get to go to the testimonials channel and women are like, I pay my bill for the first time I was able to save you red Like okay, okay, you know, like this is the why you know, so it doesn't important. I think it's important for women to hear like, no matter what level of success or whatever that you've achieved, you know it's still you know, you

still have days. So thank you for being vulnerable. And I think my last big, huge question for you is like what is a desired outcome? Right, so five years, ten years from now, like, what what's your I call it dreamscaping. We just kind of like let your dreams just run around the landscape of your mind, Like what would you love to see that sequence? Has this many people signed up? It's doing this? Like what does that look like?

et cetera, et cetera. There's so many hidden costs to being a woman every step of the way, and there's so much guidance to be had, and there are better products to be built that are more transparent, like we're already doing with sequin right where we're educating you, were giving you the products. And so I want to be that place where you have a really big life goal, you get your first job, you get married, you have kids, you retire, and I want Sequin to be with you

every step of the way. The place that you can feel is very trustworthy. You feel like there's no gotchas, and you feel like your banking is truly aligned with yours and what you are looking to accomplish, and it's really helping you get there versus you know a cause of stress or that you know your bank is making

money when you make a mistake. I don't want that anymore. Right, access to finance is access to credit, access to wealth is directly equal to access to opportunity, and I just want women with women and minorities to have at least the same but if not opportunities.

I thank you for being open to not just talk about the product itself, but like the business underlying the product. Yeah, you know, so you know that is something that I'm always curious about. I know our listeners are curious about, and I know they're Hopefully you have found this interview so as delightful as I have, because I just learned so much and it's just nice to see. I hope you know that there are people out there who are navigating from a place of good, you know, especially in

this space. Sometimes I'm like, oh, I guess you know, when I'm thinking about the tools or resources that I have to use or recommend, because although the tool might be good, the underlying business doesn't really sit well. So I love, love, love that there are people out there who like me, are like, yes, of course I want to make money, but I want to make good money in a good way. You know. I tell people I want to do good right, I want to help good people, I want to make good money, and I want to

live a good life. And so I just I love that you are right in the line with that, Vernda, and we thank you for so we thank you so much.

when I first started. I said, who are my dream people who I would love to just meet and just love the work that they're doing, And it was Tiffany the budget me start if this feels very like manifesting in the world's you know, coming together. So thank you for everything that you do, and thank you for this platform to share my story and share what we're doing with sequin.

I have to tape something for a brand and I'm coming to Oh, I'm coming to LA. You're in San Francisco. Why don't know?