Lisa Calhoun
Welcome to the Atlanta Startup Podcast. I am really excited to interview Jeannie Tarkenton, the CEO, and founder at Funding U. Jeannie, thank you so much for joining me in the program.
Jeannie Tarkenton
So glad to be here, Lisa. Thanks for having me.
Lisa Calhoun
Well, I know we’re both eager to jump right in on this recent Supreme Court ruling around affirmative action. What is your take?
Jeannie Tarkenton
Definitely a complicated issue. But in sort of detail, the decision, in its exact focus, really is attentive to about 300 or 400 highly selective universities in the US. So have those schools been anticipating it? So while they did not welcome the news by any means, because they all are committed to having racial diversity in those highly selective universities, they have done some work anticipating this coming. I am not completely despairing that there will be a horrific change or downside in terms of racial diversity at those universities. I am very concerned. I don’t believe it was the right decision. I say that as an individual, we can get to kind of my view on it as CEO in Funding U. But those universities, as a very small subset, or who are actually covered by the ruling, and they do have some tools they will begin to use. The forecast is not entirely great on that because California has had affirmative action struck down about 10 or more years ago, and even some of the workarounds that those schools have attempted, have still not brought racial diversity to the level that those schools want. Having said that, I am more concerned about what is now in addition to those rulings, which is, for instance, the governor of Missouri has said that any race-based financial aid or grant programs will now be under the microscope and that those will be viewed as a workaround. That is a huge domino to fall and that affects not only those 300 or 400 highly selective universities but really begins to affect every university, every student, and every family trying to figure out where they can go and what they can afford. I think it’s very troubling. I think, unfortunately, the other shoe to drop is yet to come. That’s my feeling on that.
Lisa Calhoun
Before we dive into that, I want to make sure that listeners realize that this is where you have built your national business. You know, we met just under a decade ago, and you’re launching Funding U at ATDC at Georgia Tech, and I’ve been so impressed with how you’ve grown the business. I don’t want to steal your thunder though, would you mind explaining in a capsule what Funding U does and the size of the student population you serve today?
Jeannie Tarkenton
The slice that you and I have spoken about and then Funding U has been working on in the five or six years since we founded is for students attempting to complete four-year degrees at not-for-profit colleges in the US. I’m going to the sidebar for a minute and say Funding U as a university, I as a person, and our investors are not only focused on that market. As we might get later into this conversation, there are many ways in which young people and even returning learners can leverage education to have the career path and the earnings they want. But let me come back to where we started. We started in the largest part of the education, finance, and education completion market, which is the four-year college degree. Since 2007, about 30% more of college costs have been pushed down onto families which has to do with the recession of 2007/2008 when state and federal funds were cut. 2007/2008 is really where the market was established, which is this need for funds that are left and for anybody listening who sat around a kitchen table or been part of conversations to try to complete college for themselves or for someone in their family, they’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
Lisa Calhoun
Those students that go to college, the four-year programs, what is the size of this population?
Jeannie Tarkenton
The total size of the population right now in the four-year college is about 12 million students.
Lisa Calhoun
How many of them might qualify for the way you are splitting or segmenting the market which could use some financial support to complete their degree?
Jeannie Tarkenton
Every year there are about 4 or 5 million students who end up in this in this situation and they are by no means all modern, low-income. Since 2007, the need and use for last-gap financing have really touched almost everybody except for the super-wealthy. There are about 3 or 4 million students and families who need this last gap funding typically is about $9 – 10,000. What happens is the bank market has moved into that field and around a third to a quarter of those 4 million students will be able to be served with a bank product, because they have adult cosigners. The other 75% or 3 million students, which totals about $30 billion in lending every year are not addressed by banks.
Lisa Calhoun
Hang on, let me get this straight. There is $30 billion of potential financing that should be extended to students for the last gap financing every year?
Jeannie Tarkenton
30 billion. And as a company, yes, it’s enormous. It is a market that has been wholly untapped. It is like any traditional sort in the FinTech and financial services market, there are massive parts of the population who are not well served by banks, and they are typically ignored.
Lisa Calhoun
How has Funding U addressed that huge opportunity?
Jeannie Tarkenton
From Funding U, that $30 billion, we do an assessment that is non-FICO base. These are young people who are attempting to get a last-gap loan and cannot be well-screened by FICO. A 20 to 25-year-old, who has thin credit, and does not have the advantage or the privilege of an adult cosigner, which is what’s required on the bank side. We do look at credit, but it’s a minimal part of our screen. We instead built an algorithm that we have now proven over five years of lending that underwrites for the predictiveness that a student will achieve their college degree, will then be hired, will be employable, and will have an income that is in direct relation to the debt they take on.
Lisa Calhoun
Excuse me for interrupting. It’s just really exciting stuff. It sounds very much like a prediction score based on multiple factors that have been proven over five years, that sounds like quite a library of data. Is this an artificial intelligence approach?
Jeannie Tarkenton
We are a data analytics company for sure. So yes, it is an artificial intelligence approach. Our data science has been the largest investment in the company forever. I mean, you’ll remember that from when you and I first met. The first team members we had were all data scientists at Georgia Tech, actually. So yes, it is an AI model. Now, depending on who is listening, I want everyone to know, the actual deep work that Funding U and companies that are truly building AI is committed to, it is significant attention to data science and building of data that then can have an AI loop. So to your point, exactly right, the five years of lending, which are difficult for a startup company doing lending wanting to be a data analytics company and have proprietary data, the only way to be truly proprietary and have an incredibly deep moat around the AI we’re building is to actually do the lending ourselves. Rather than hypothetical models or hypothetical scoring, which have had some success in the market, Funding U like other highly successful data analytic and AI companies, has our own multi-year longitudinal data that is absolute data mined for us. We use it to improve on our own product, which we have done in five years since we’ve been lending, and it now is at a place because we have a critical mass. We’ve done about $40 million in loans and we have longevity on our portfolio that now we have a truly legitimate data science model that will now continue to build on itself every day, every loan every month.
Lisa Calhoun
Jeannie, let me track with you. If you’ve done $40 million in loans, it sounds like you probably have many more data points than that from the applications you said yes to, said no to, and worked out. Are we talking about a data lake of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of points of data that you’ve already achieved?
Jeannie Tarkenton
Millions, at the magnitude of millions. What we have with every applicant and declined applicants, we have critical amounts of data primarily entire transcripts, we have the entire academic trajectory and all of the data points that are included on a student’s transcript, as well as their financial aid letters and credit scores, we use these in aggregate. Internally, we use them, to add to your point, to use millions of data points to build on the hypothetical foundation of the first probably 20 data points that we could see from historic performance with federal student loans that we were keying our algorithm off in 2018. We now have an extremely rich data lake to test backtest. We also have done the really hard work of also looking at some of the outcomes of the borrowers who we did not approve loans for.
Lisa Calhoun
Jeannie, this podcast is coming out at a time when a lot of students are preparing for their fall academic year. I can imagine from these numbers, there are about 4 million students out there that could use this product but may not know about it. For those of us who love those students or family members, friends, coaches, and advisors, what does the process look like to apply at Funding U? How long does it take?
Jeannie Tarkenton
We’re highly tech-driven. The time to approve a loan can be as short as 48 hours. Coming to our website, we are mobile optimized. Send anyone to our website, where the pre-qualification application process takes about 30 seconds. And then the full application post-pre-approval can be approved within two days. Primarily, the underwriting screen that we are looking for is students who have achieved high school and college academics at an average to above-average level. Depending on the grade, we’re seeking certain levels of GPA, we do have more availability. Our algorithm does score more for students who are juniors or seniors and an important part of the data input we see is how young people or how students achieve in college-level courses. So the more college-level academic activity we are able to pull from where you are in your college cycle, your transcript, your financial aid, that is more input that helps us as a company. Now, I’m going to speak as a company, derisk the loan, so we are open and available to students in freshman through senior year, any academic major, but the criteria will be to be performing academically, and the more the likelihood of achieving a loan with Funding U is increased as you continue through college.
Lisa Calhoun
I want to ask you, this is going to be quite a direct question. But I think it’s so germane to the direction of the Supreme Court ruling and what you spoke about with the Missouri Governor. The direct question is, although you provide student loans for the last gap based on academics and behavior, does this actually work well for students of color and disadvantaged backgrounds?
Jeannie Tarkenton
That gets into the entire history. The answer is yes. But I will say that is a condition of the United States and our history of segregation, redlining, and reducing the ability primarily for families of color, particularly black families over decades to achieve assets and to have intergenerational wealth. It is not in that there’s more than a need or desire for families who are not white, but the outcome of the United States and the quality of our secondary education. And again, sort of the unfortunate lack of investment in certain areas of education in the United States that primarily affected black Americans. Yes, because we avail a loan that does not require a parent and multi-generation to have positive credit. What we are providing is not only Alaska financial product, we are providing a financial product that overcomes a lot of the problems and systemic bias of the financial system.
Lisa Calhoun
I like the way you said that. You’re like, hey, the cosigner process, five years of generational wealth into our finance process. That is inherently not helping our finance process actually do what it’s meant to do, which is find great borrowers and great lending opportunities. Looking at Funding U’s own experience, what percentage of your population is nonwhite? Does it look like the population in the US? Is it a little skewed? Would you mind sharing any of the data around that you feel comfortable sharing?
Jeannie Tarkenton
Our overall top-line data on that is about 60% of our borrowers are nonwhite and the most prevalent single subset of borrowers is an African American female, actually attending a public university in her state, and I’m adding that extra part. I think there is a bit of noise around who uses college loans and why and the borrowers primarily who we serve our students who are making very good decisions and going to very low, relatively low-cost colleges to get highly useful degrees to benefit themselves to be employable and have stable financial earnings. 60% is nonwhite, which is dramatically different from what the college population looks like, particularly the college-completion population looks like. The population of students who enroll in college fairly well maps with the racial makeup of our country. The college completion, in other words, who comes across the graduation is dramatically different. The delta between white and black, high, middle income, and low income begins to be double and single digits. That is where this last gap funding is what’s so key. You’re pulling out that the profile of our borrower is really the face of not only the failures of historic treatment in our country but also that the financial institutions are ill-equipped to provide anything that’s not FICO and co-signed base. So yes, you’re exactly right, we are providing a product that very importantly, and again, back to the affirmative action conversation, can be a lever for achieving what I think we as all humans want, all parents, all races want, you know, our students to graduate from college, get the education that is appropriate for their career goals, interact with a diverse number of people along the way, and really achieve what this country is capable of.
Lisa Calhoun
What do you think will happen in the new climate around affirmative action? How will this impact the growth journey of the millions of dollars of student loans you’re making every quarter?
Jeannie Tarkenton
If last year there were 4 million, which equates to $40 billion in loans that were sought but declined by banks because of lack of a cosigner, I’m sure primarily those students who were declined are going to not be white, because generally, banks have an easier time with a FICO cosigner who tends to be whiter and wealthier. The population of borrowers who are trying to get a loan and are rejected by a bank will increase, I don’t know by how much, I hope it’s not double, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were. I’ll explain why, the reason for that, has to do with universities now being in a bit of a gray area for what will be considered legal or illegal or soon to be illegal when it comes to the way they mete out financial aid. So the restrictions around looking at someone’s race in an application process were what was clearly delineated by the courts, but the schools are now going to be understandably reluctant and worried about also having explicit grants and financial aid that are aimed at people of color. I anticipate and you can already see this, I’m not the only one, that the financial aid packages offered to black and brown students in particular will be reduced, which is therefore going to make the gap larger. I think Funding U is positioned to probably have double the market need. We are well poised and well positioned, and again, I think it’s very advantageous that this is now four years or five years into our cycle, because of the point you made earlier about the depth of our data lake.
Lisa Calhoun
Back to something you said that really was crushing to hear but I want to make sure I understood correctly, did you just estimate, you know, as a leader who is seeing millions of opportunities in student lending, that because of this affirmative action direction, you believe that half of the students are going to be able to achieve college, as did last year without this ruling?
Jeannie Tarkenton
Yes. When you talk about a borrower who in previous years was able to complete college because of financial aid packages, yes, absolutely. I think that’s exactly right. We’re going to be looking at a magnitude of what last year might have been 3 or 4 million students struggling and be at high risk of dropping out being more like 6-8 million, so it’s not good.
Lisa Calhoun
We cannot let that much talent slip through the gaps. How are you scaling up to address this need?
Jeannie Tarkenton
Advantageously, in the last year or two, we had invested in scaling our platform and our technology. We are ready in terms of our tech and we have our data science foundation in place. So for us, it’s now a matter of increasing our capital markets and financial relationships and tapping into Increasing things like our funding relationship with Goldman Sachs, Community Reinvestment Act Division. The Funding U business model has always relied on our capital markets providers, I guess sidebar, Funding U borrows money at the lowest rates possible in order to then lend money, both to have a responsible price to our borrowers, but also to have our own unit economics, right? This is a business. With partners like Goldman Sachs, who are aware of this need are opening up and increasing the availability of capital. Also, Funding U strategically decided more than a year ago to apply to become a community development financing institution, and that continues to be an important strategy for us. That designation continues to allow us to expand the relationships we have with banks that need to have a certain amount of their capital each year be used through organizations like CDFIs. I’ll tell you about an early conversation we’re already having with one of our partners, in addition to Goldman Sachs, and we’ve primarily worked with community banks. Community bankers are humans who see this happening at their own table and they understand it’s happening to the clients who are coming through their doors. What I mean is they understand there is this need for additional financing to complete college. It is at a very human level, but also an incredibly important business decision that bankers are making and needs companies like Funding U to meet their requirements to their customers and as their Community Reinvestment Act. So Funding U having had a business philosophy and a capital market strategy, to have our investing partners be part of Community Reinvestment Act funds, again, makes us perfectly poised for this as compared to other FinTechs, who have relied more on their financing partnerships with more traditional markets, lenders, who particularly in this macro situations, any kind of macro gyrations, the availability of capital goes down and the cost of capital goes up. Whereas our lenders want to increase the availability of capital to us and are not looking to raise rates. So in retrospect, our decision to create a capital financing strategy, that is fine-tuned and focused on a particular kind of partner also places us in the ideal situation to get more capital, to make more loans, at a rate that brings huge revenue to the company. We forecast doubling and tripling revenue in the next year and that doesn’t even include some of the tailwinds that you and I are talking about.
Lisa Calhoun
Jeannie, to be really clear about it, because of your passion for this space, your passion for the student, and your passion for affirmative action, like mine, I think that comes through. But this is not philanthropy, I mean, Funding U was a venture-backed startup and has partners like Goldman Sachs. Are you able to make money investing in non-FICO borrowers?
Jeannie Tarkenton
It’s a really good question. And absolutely, yes. The fundamentals of this company and business are similar to all business fundamentals. Can you make enough money? Can you scale? Do you have unit economics that works? That has been what we have been laser-focused on from the beginning. And yes, I do care. I get up every morning because I’m doing greater good for humanity but I spent decades in nonprofits and I absolutely understand the difference between scale and profit and risk. Funding U is laser-focused on the unit economics that we achieve and the answer absolutely is yes. The key to the formula is what I was just tracing about our early and very dedicated decision as a business to focus on our capital markets strategy, being with a particular kind of lender that has driven our ability to invest in our data analytics, which has established what is really the core IP for this company, which is what is the loss rate of a non-cosign, young borrower who will graduate from school? The fact is, that is a complete blind spot for lenders, capital markets, securities, and the entire market. There’s a sort of truism among financial markets, which is it’s not risk that people are worried about. It’s the unknown, right? It’s the unknown. It’s the uncertainty there. There are market buyers who want the risk. Many of us are averse to risk, you want to have a low-interest rate mortgage because you are a good credit risk, etc. But in the actual capital markets world, some risk brings yield. People don’t make money on all AAA mortgages, people don’t make money on all cosign loans. Introducing and pricing the average risk of a borrower is what the core value is of what we’re doing because then there will always be capital market providers who want to play in that. They just need to know, this is what it is. So that is where ultimately Funding U’s assets and our data analytics will completely stand on their own. We will be able to buy and sell our assets, with funding partners, with capital market strategy partners, that don’t have a Community Reinvestment Act mandate. If we choose, I mean, depending on the unit economics, we may never go there. But that is what we’re really building, we’re building a data and analytics machine that is pricing the likely risk of a first-time credit user to whom the market is blind. And by the way, once they use that first product becoming highly valuable credit users going forward so they’re sort of good borrowers.
Lisa Calhoun
I have always admired your vision for this business since its very early days and its first few loans. And for full disclosure, I mean, it’s a great honor to be one of your early investors and I want our listeners to realize I’m not just a champion, I’m skin in the game. Valor loves backing visionaries like you Jeannie, but it’s very few that are able to tackle an industry of this size and scale with such execution on your vision year after year. It’s truly amazing. I’d love to switch gears for a moment and talk about the universities that are being impacted by this decision. And as you mentioned, they heard a little bit of rattling, but I think there were a lot of surprises. The Supreme Court came down on the side that they did. For those university leaders that are trying to reset their sails this summer, in this volatile environment, what advice would you give them?
Jeannie Tarkenton
Oh, that’s a tough one. And again, I do think that university leaders have had pressure and now have more. I would add to the advice to continue to articulate and focus well on their value, right? So in other words, in a world where this is going to become difficult for more to achieve, and there will need to be more creativity and more options to help people come to college and complete college, the university’s best role is to continue to articulate why it’s a value because there’s a lot of conversation. I think a lot of work that the university presidents are doing in terms of, I don’t want to call it PR, but that’s what it is. Continue to focus on articulating why it is valuable to get a post-secondary education, particularly why it is valuable for students to come from low-income and particularly African American and Hispanic families. And then I also would encourage them and this is a little more of a nudge to be less to reduce some of the hubris and to engage with people like Funding U and others who are really providing good options to get to the finish line.
Lisa Calhoun
I have to jump in on that. People don’t use the word hubris unless there’s really something going on. I want to unpack that word hubris. Is there a stigma with providing non-FICO lending to some universities? What’s going on there?
Jeannie Tarkenton
Universities, particularly the most competitive, want to feel that they are not adding to the debt that students take on to complete college because they are under pressure to articulate why a college degree is still valuable. I think the confidence in the value of a college degree has gone down dramatically in the time that I’ve been at Funding U. That has not been really factually based in terms of the outcomes, but it has to do with how much college costs. Universities tend to not want to talk about the fact that to afford their university, there may be a need to take on debt. And so in not talking about it, particularly low-income, and particularly black and brown students are left using credit cards, not eating because they have to buy their books, because when they go to the financial aid office, the sort of message at the university is, we don’t want to offer other alternative financings, because it makes us look bad. I think universities need to get comfortable with that.
Lisa Calhoun
What I’m hearing you saying is that in this market, research reveals, that there’s been a lack of confidence over the last eight years about 30% in the value of a college degree. And we all know, research as well, that college degrees cost a little bit more. And so into that gap, universities are not understanding that they need to be proactive about helping underwrite the cost of the entire program.
Jeannie Tarkenton
Yes, and willing to make more information available to their students, particularly their low-income students about opportunities and ways in which that student can stay in school. I think that’s where the investment needs to be. And yes, you look like you’re about to ask me something else.
Lisa Calhoun
Are there any universities you could call out that are doing a better job of having this conversation with their students?
Jeannie Tarkenton
Well, I’d say from the beginning of my time at Funding U, schools like Georgia State have understood, in my early conversations as I started Funding U, I went to colleges all over the country, but particularly in Atlanta, and there was a very significant divide. Colleges that were not considered highly selective were very much more aware that this is the kind of borrower profile, they had very much more welcoming to care about what we do and very much less allergic to the idea that someone might need a loan because they understood it. They were absolutely committed to whatever. In an imperfect world where they didn’t have unending financial aid, they knew sometimes debt would happen, and they’d rather be it a Funding U loan, which is a responsible product than a credit card. I will definitely bifurcate that, from what I’ll call more elite universities that were not receptive and who did not want to engage. I haven’t really circled back so I don’t want to pull people under the bus at this stage, but my guess is the universities that were most affected by the affirmative action decision are the ones who struggle a little bit to be kind of more transparent about the condition that their borrowers are in. I’m not going to name names. But I’ll say, Georgia State is here in town and really, all public universities in the state of Georgia, particularly, Pennsylvania has very low per-student funding. The Pennsylvania universities, the Cooney and SUNY universities in New York are fabulously well aware of this, the California system universities. It primarily could if you’re looking for schools that are going to be more sensitive to this, starting at the Financial Aid Office, and the breadth and depth of information that’s available, there is probably going to be the best key for a consumer.
Lisa Calhoun
I’m sure that your products, like a lot of lending products, vary a bit in terms of rates. But I’d love for you to give us an example of the rate differential between credit cards for students. As I recall, from my student days, my credit cards were in the 20% range because I didn’t have any credit history at that time, and what a Funding U loan looks like just on average.
Jeannie Tarkenton
Credit cards still are about the same which is in their low 20s but actually rising I’m sure probably back to the mid-20s where we where we are now and also the the credit limit is is capped. But I will tell you, there’s sort of a road I think, on average college students will use about $3,000 on a high-interest rate credit card to pay for school supplies, unless they know about a Funding U loan and in fact, African American students are at the very high end of that in about $4,500 on an APR of 24.99. So a Funding U loan, our rates range from 7.99 to 12.99. And to put sort of another veil on it, the cosigned loans in the market range from about probably 5.99 to 13.99. So again, with our underwriting algorithms, we’re very confident that we are getting information from a borrower that can stand in for the cosigner.
Lisa Calhoun
I don’t mind admitting that when I went to school at UTSA, I did finance myself with credit cards. One of the things about it is that the very next month, it’s due. What is the payback schedule on a Funding U loan for a student today?
Jeannie Tarkenton
We have two options in school, a student can pay $20 per month, which is the minimum monthly payment, or anytime pay more but in terms of the products we offer, out of the gate is an in-school minimum monthly payment of $20 or an in-school interest-only payment. We do a lot of financial education at that moment with a borrower about what it means in terms of if you can pay the full interest that is what you will eventually pay less on your loan and concepts of interest, accrual, etc. That’s called the deferral period. And then six months after graduation, the full principal and interest payments are due the full tenor of the loan, and the life of the loan is 10 years, although I’ll tell you Funding U borrowers typically would have paid off their loans within five years. The typical post-grad monthly payment is in the sort $100 – 101 range. So in terms of the cost to complete a college degree based on comparison with the outcome of the increase in income and employability, it is much better than what you would be paying with a credit card, for sure. And so yes, it’s an investment at a rate that is market to your point, it’s not a nonprofit, it is a risk-based price, but is a price that’s much better than the risk assigned with a credit card.
Lisa Calhoun
This is really timely to have this conversation. And I know scaling up to triple, if not quadruple revenue in the coming cycle is taking a lot of your time. Is there anything you would like to talk about before I let you get back to your busy day building this incredible company?
Jeannie Tarkenton
You’re so nice. Yes, I really want to brag on or be excited with you and listeners about another market piece that we sort of made a market for that I think is going to explode, which is our platform as a service. Funding U as we’ve talked a lot about, has built a product, built a platform, has built a data and analytics feed that is enormously important. We have a product that we put out in the market that we believe in that we can scale into this 40 billion opportunity. Absolutely exciting and important and we will continue to do. What has happened as we have done that, though, both on our own purposeful strategy, but also because of where the world has gone, we have now found value in being a platform as a service for other people who have an interest. This is workforce development funds. These are corporations and this is an enormous sort of philanthropic or academic-based organization, which I believe will increase by threefold fourfold, or tenfold post affirmative action, who have certain funds that they want to use to effect certain education improvements for certain populations for certain reasons. I’ll give you an example. In New Jersey, there is a $12 million Workforce Development Fund that is co-hosted by New Jersey workforce funds and New Jersey corporations. The New Jersey corporations recognize that New Jersey is lacking certain numbers of employees in cyber tech and healthcare. They have money and they would like to see more New Jerseyans get credentialed in those areas so that they can have a workforce pipeline. So Funding U is a solution that that entire program needs to do all of what I call the boring but important in between which is handling the money, making the loans, and doing the data analytics on what the losses and returns will be. And these New Jersey loans are 0% APR loans. And so that world and that impetus and that kind of need and market, I am so excited about for us. It’s a revenue diversifier and it’s alone we’re making off risk, but it still feeds our data analytics and I really think that’s what a lot is going to happen with people who now are funding potentially financial aid or grant programs at universities, they are going to need other ways to get that money into the same hands, but they will not be able to go through the university. I’m just thrilled and excited. That’s an opportunity that I don’t think anybody else is doing it besides us. So very excited about that
Lisa Calhoun
Every workforce development, equal opportunity organization, or public education organization needs to really check out your back-end funding as a service. If they have capital, you can help them put it to work effectively. And also, the return of capital was the right interest, if that’s their desire.
Jeannie Tarkenton
And, or for some, if they want to lever it differently to be highly beneficial in a post-affirmative action decision, we can model it that way. One of our partners, we do another product for dreamers, for DACA students getting graduate degrees, and the return on that is pegged to be like 90 cents on the dollar. That’s what is desired. It’s a win-win. We are providing analytics to help people model what they want to do. It’s the perfect position to be in for a company like ours, it’s much more sort of SaaS-type work and huge use of our data and analytics. I’m very excited about it.
Lisa Calhoun
Jeannie, it is very exciting. Thank you so much for building a future that’s more accessible and affordable for all of us. This has truly changed the world stuff. It means the world to me that you allowed Valor to be on your cap table in the early days and I can’t wait to see where you go from here.
Jeannie Tarkenton
Well, thank you so much. Your early support was enormous and with your continued help and resources at the Valor network, we’re lucky. I’m glad on both sides.
Lisa Calhoun
If someone wants to reach out to you or your company, it might be different by different categories, but I do think you’re going to get some people listening to this program that is like I have to get engaged and I don’t just want to go to the website, are there team members I should reach out to, how do I get on the radar with Jeannie if I want to put a billion dollars to work?
Jeannie Tarkenton
Thank you. Come to me Jeanne, jeannie@funding-u.com. And then also another very key individual, our Head Of Business Development And Capital Markets who is rob.nadler@funding-u.com. But absolutely, please, we want partners who are aligned with us, so please reach out.
Lisa Calhoun
Thank you so much, Jeannie. It’s been wonderful having you.
Jeannie Tarkenton
Thanks so much, Lisa. Have a good day.
Lisa Calhoun
We’re thrilled to have you as an Atlanta Startup Podcast listener to help you get the most out of the experience. Let me invite you to three insider opportunities from our host Valor Ventures. First, want to be a guest on this amazing show. Reach out to our booking team at atlantastartuppodcast.com. Click on booking, It’s a no-brainer from there. Are you raising a seed round? Valor definitely wants to hear from you. Share your startup story at valor.vc/pitch. Are you a woman or minority-led startup valor sister program? The Startup Runway Foundation gives away grants to promising startups led by underrepresented founders. The mission of the Startup Runway Foundation is connecting underrepresented founders to their first investors. Startup runway finalists have raised over $40 million. See if you qualify for one of these amazing grants at startuprunway.org. You can also sign up for our next showcase for free there. Let me let you go today with a shout-out to Startup Runway presenting sponsor Cox Enterprises and to our founding partners, American Family Institute, Truist, Georgia Power, Avanta Ventures, and Innovators Legal. These great organizations make Startup Runway possible. Thanks for listening today and see you back next week.
