Today I’m thrilled to announce that Charlie Kroll has joined as our Chief Revenue Officer to help us build our card issuing business.

Charlie is a fintech veteran in the truest sense. He’s founded two successful companies and brings years of operating experience and a roll-up-your-sleeves mentality that is consistent with our core values of ownership.

David and I first met Charlie nearly ten years ago. He was scaling Andera, one of the pioneers in bank infrastructure software, and we were just getting started in the world of fintech. He was a mentor to us, and hiring him back then would have been unimaginable, but we admired his grit and determination and kept in touch over the years.

After shepherding Andera through growth and eventual exit, Charlie went on to co-found Ellevest, a leading consumer fintech company focused on closing the gender wealth gap. During his nearly six years as President & COO, Ellevest was named one of CNBC's Top 50 "Disrupters," one of LinkedIn's "Most Sought After Startups," one of Interbrand’s “Brands to Watch,” and one of Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 100 Brilliant Ideas." Most recently, Charlie led the launch of Ellevest’s consumer debit card, experiencing firsthand the painful process of issuing a card product.

When Charlie stepped away from Ellevest last summer, this was top of mind when we reconnected. We discussed the state of card issuing today and found that we were thinking about solving problems in the same way. His perspective informed by two decades of experience, and ours informed by the troubles we went through to build and scale our own card issuer processor.

We are at a pivotal point in our journey as a company.  We started our journey as a direct-to-consumer card with the mission of making money safer and easier for everyone. But over time, we’ve realized that the card issuing and money-movement technology we built for ourselves is something the broader world and developer community also needs. We can further our mission by enabling others to issue cards quickly via our new B2B API. In less than a year, this new line of business is experiencing record demand from both developers and larger companies eager for a breath of fresh air in this space traditionally dominated by slow moving incumbents.

As we tackle this next phase of growth, I’m thrilled to welcome a seasoned leader with experience in growing and scaling world-class products.

Great teams are self perpetuating - amazingly talented people want to work with one another. As CRO, Charlie will help us build an incredible team and bring our vision of a modern, developer-focused card issuing company to reality.

Welcome, Charlie!

P.S. If you’d like to help us make this dream a reality, we’re hiring!