Credit Karma's Nichole Mustard: "Self-driving finance"

The Times Tech Podcast

Will Morley

Business, Unknown, Technology

4.9 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2019

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Nichole Mustard, co-founder of fintech unicorn Credit Karma, to talk about credit scores as a means to an end (2:20), the evolution of the credit score (4:45) how she ended up starting Credit Karma in 2007 (10:40), studying zoology at uni (12:35), buying a one-way ticket to California (13:35), working at Pizza Hut (14:50), leaving pizza for financial planning (16:30), starting Credit Karma on the cusp of the financial crisis (18:20), and the opportunity created by the Great Recession (24:25), building trust but also collecting bounties (26:50), the virtualisation of finance (29:50), how personal finance will become more like self-driving clike (32:50), the road to a stock-market float (37:05), and her worst day of work (41:15),

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Yo, technology.
0:02.9	What is it all about?
0:04.6	When you look at something that is so critical to every American and them having to pay for it, it just felt so wrong.
0:15.3	Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley, your weekly dispatch from behind the scenes and inside the minds of the top
0:21.4	people in tech. Thank you for tuning in. I really do appreciate it. We have got a good one for you this
0:27.5	week. Nicole Mustard is on the program, and I think this is one that you will truly relish. Get it? Mustard.
0:36.9	Relish. I know. Mustard. Relish.
0:38.4	I know.
0:39.1	It's hilarious.
0:40.4	Anyhow.
0:47.2	Mustard is one of the three founders of credit karma, which is one of the most valuable fintech companies in the world.
0:49.8	Last valuation was around $4 billion.
0:54.0	And they got there by giving away a bunch of stuff for free.
0:57.5	The main lure is free credit reports.
1:01.6	So they offer that as a way to kind of lure you in, to suck you in.
1:08.4	And once you've signed up, they give away a bunch of other stuff like tax prep and other kind of advice.
1:13.8	And so once you have opened the kimono to your financial life, they start recommending stuff.
1:14.9	Personal loans, credit cards, what have you.
1:18.3	And whatever you sign up for, they collect a fee.
1:20.9	And this model has proven wildly successful.
1:25.0	So more than 85 million Americans use credit karma today, including half
1:30.3	of all millennials. And as of next month, they'll be attempting to repeat that trick in Britain,
	...

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