Spotlights
Meet Misha Esipov — a social entrepreneur, working towards building bridges for immigrants coming to the USA.
When immigrants move to the United States and apply for a credit card, apartment lease or student loan, they do not have any identity and they get rejected because there is not information about them available. What can they do?
Before Nova Credit existed, there were limited solutions to their problem. Nova is a cross border consumer reporting agency that enables people’s financial identity to move around the world. Since its launch, the company has built partnerships with global consumer credit databases and they’ve built the technology to be able to instantly and securely bring this information to the US!
“Financial access is a human right.” says Misha during our interview. “It is ridiculous that it is almost 2018 and this problem is yet to be solved.” The goal of Nova Credit is to make this problem go away by stitching the world’s credit data infrastructure into our whole network, so that financial identity becomes truly global and immigrants can be treated equally and fairly when they move around the world.
Starting with an idea (and a team of 3 people) when they participated in Cardinal Ventures on Winter 2015, today the Nova Credit team consists of nearly 20 people. The company has grown a lot, and is well positioned to grow more. Amongst their many plans, some include:
- Adding more countries to the platform (today they have a dozen, including India, Mexico, Canada, UK, Australia) to further grow their supply base.
- Put the consumer in the “driver seat” and let them have control over the destiny of their own information.
What the team has and what they are looking for:
“I have…” job opportunities! “We are growing like crazy,” says Misha. Therefore, they are looking to bring exceptional people to their team, including engineers, business roles, etc. If interested on this opportunity, email Misha (misha@neednova.com). Don’t forget to tell them that you are with Cardinal Ventures!
“I need…” Nova Credit is looking for new customers and other people that they can help with their business! If you know about anyone who might be interested in their work, please share this along.
Fun fact!
“I can do a backflip!” As a Russian immigrant, Misha was forced to learn all the Russian stereotypical things like gymnastics, ballroom dance, wrestling, chess, etc.
Misha also gives us his perspective on starting a business — “never lose sight of the problem that you are solving — it is your north star” he says. According to Misha, there is nothing more fulfilling than working on a project that has a social cause.
