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Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #8

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111–120 of 163 posts

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #8

#111

Hi HN! We are a rather unusual team of six founders (Pei, Amit, Sunil, Jack, Bo, and Kartik) spread across India and China, building Karbon Cards ( https://www.karboncard.com/ ). We help companies in India get instant access to a corporate card. We came across this problem separately while Amit was doing VC and Sunil was running his own fintech. We saw that a startup with $1M in the bank was facing mind-numbing issue…

Based on a quick glance at the name, I guessed your company sold some kind of carbon offset credits.

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #8

#112

Hi, I'm Vrinda Gupta. I worked at Visa Inc. for years, launching popular credit cards. But when I applied for the Chase Sapphire Reserve (the credit card I helped develop), I was rejected! I'm now the CEO and Co-Founder of Sequin, a debit card that builds credit for women risk-free with no credit history required. My co-founder, Mark Thomas, spent over a decade at PayPal leading ACH products in various EM roles. I wa…

Love the mission! It's also such a glaring light on how broken and stupid the credit system is.

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #8

#113

Hi, we’re Rob, April and Ivan, cofounders of DigiBuild ( https://digibuild.com/ ). We build construction software powered by blockchain. Our tools help large companies, like VCC Construction, improve the schedule and budget on projects and save over a million dollars annually. I grew up in construction with my dad and saw first hand the issues companies face everyday. The building process involves 50-100 stakeholders…

Congrats on the launch! The idea is very attractive. Btw how do you solve the confidentiality problem where you have to put private data into public blockchain?

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #8

#114

Hi, I'm Vrinda Gupta. I worked at Visa Inc. for years, launching popular credit cards. But when I applied for the Chase Sapphire Reserve (the credit card I helped develop), I was rejected! I'm now the CEO and Co-Founder of Sequin, a debit card that builds credit for women risk-free with no credit history required. My co-founder, Mark Thomas, spent over a decade at PayPal leading ACH products in various EM roles. I wa…

Would you please contextualize your product against Apple Card Family?

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #8

#115

Hi, we’re Rob, April and Ivan, cofounders of DigiBuild ( https://digibuild.com/ ). We build construction software powered by blockchain. Our tools help large companies, like VCC Construction, improve the schedule and budget on projects and save over a million dollars annually. I grew up in construction with my dad and saw first hand the issues companies face everyday. The building process involves 50-100 stakeholders…

Congrats on the launch! The idea is very attractive. Btw how do you solve the confidentiality problem where you have to put private data into public blockchain?

Thanks! And great question.... So we're currently built on Hyperledger Fabric which allows us to insert permissions to the data. So certain parties can't see the private data of others on a construction project that they shouldn't. When needed, we can guarantee the accuracy of data without exposing a customers. This means you know the data comes straight from the source and isn't tampered with but not the identity of the user.

In the future, if/when me migrate to a public chain, that functionality will be there as well with implementations like ZK Snarks and other zero knowledge proof solutions.

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #8

#116

Hi, I'm Vrinda Gupta. I worked at Visa Inc. for years, launching popular credit cards. But when I applied for the Chase Sapphire Reserve (the credit card I helped develop), I was rejected! I'm now the CEO and Co-Founder of Sequin, a debit card that builds credit for women risk-free with no credit history required. My co-founder, Mark Thomas, spent over a decade at PayPal leading ACH products in various EM roles. I wa…

Congrats on launching. I appreciate the mission you're on and bonus points for keeping it open to everyone!

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #8

#117
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secured cards have high deposits ($200+) and can still get you into debt if you don't pay back / pay min / pay late - affects women more than men.

> can still get you into debt if you don't pay back / pay min / pay late How exactly is your card different? Is there no obligation to make payments? If so, how many cards can I open?

From my reading, you're spending your own money, but to the credit tracking side, it looks like you're spending on credit and paying it back without incurring a fee. Clever idea, as long as the credit system continues to work like this.

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #8

#118
post #86

Hi HN! We are a rather unusual team of six founders (Pei, Amit, Sunil, Jack, Bo, and Kartik) spread across India and China, building Karbon Cards ( https://www.karboncard.com/ ). We help companies in India get instant access to a corporate card. We came across this problem separately while Amit was doing VC and Sunil was running his own fintech. We saw that a startup with $1M in the bank was facing mind-numbing issue…

How’re you handling the MasterCard suspension? Are you able to onboard new accounts now?

Hello Sudhir. We recently switched to VISA, and we are giving VISA cards to our new customers. Life is good !

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #8

#119

Hi HN! We are a rather unusual team of six founders (Pei, Amit, Sunil, Jack, Bo, and Kartik) spread across India and China, building Karbon Cards ( https://www.karboncard.com/ ). We help companies in India get instant access to a corporate card. We came across this problem separately while Amit was doing VC and Sunil was running his own fintech. We saw that a startup with $1M in the bank was facing mind-numbing issue…

One of things I noticed that you guys have 6 founders. Could you elaborate a bit on that, how do you manage the role, segregate responsibilities and manage conflicts if any. I am asking just out of curiosity. I have noticed that in Indian start up you generally find alot of founder for eg. Housing.com

Assigning Roles is not so hard, as there are so many hats to wear when you are a founder - Operations, Sales, Account Management, Product, Lead Generation, Tech, and Investor relations.

Since we are six guys, we bring multiple ideas on the table, and sometimes it is hard to choose the right one for the company. Like every company, we manage conflicts.

I think we would see more than two cofounders in Indian companies, as companies mature. Deepinder from Zomato promoted multiple folks as cofounders at the later stage of the company. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/startups/zomato-ap...

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #8

#120

Hi HN! We are a rather unusual team of six founders (Pei, Amit, Sunil, Jack, Bo, and Kartik) spread across India and China, building Karbon Cards ( https://www.karboncard.com/ ). We help companies in India get instant access to a corporate card. We came across this problem separately while Amit was doing VC and Sunil was running his own fintech. We saw that a startup with $1M in the bank was facing mind-numbing issue…

Based on a quick glance at the name, I guessed your company sold some kind of carbon offset credits.

My cofounder, Amit, came up with the name Karbon (Carbon)- the basic element of organic matter or life.

We give minimum of 0.5% cashback of prepaid cards, and one of our customers suggested us to donate that cashback to charities. I liked your idea of carbon offset credits. It is something we could consider doing in later stages of our company.

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