Listen to the most recent installment of Smart People Should Build Things: The Venture for America Podcast, a play.it original in collaboration with CBS!
In the latest episode, Jeremy Shinewald interviews Charlie Kroll, Co-Founder and President of Ellevate Financial and Founder and CEO of Andera, a venture-backed provider of customer acquisition solutions for the financial services industry. Charlie begins his story as a naive 22-year-old running a web development company from his Brown University dorm room, before pivoting to create Andera, a software product highly valued by the banking industry. It wasn’t all smooth sailing—during one particularly tough payroll crunch, Charlie convinced a girlfriend to invest money she had earmarked for a new BMW so that he could make payroll for his seven employees—but Andera succeeded, and was acquired in 2014 by Bottomline Technologies, with more than 500 bank and credit union customers at the time of acquisition.
Download the latest episode to hear Charlie talk more about the brutal early days, the difficult process of learning to question his “unreasonable amount of faith” in other people, and taking a much needed break from startup life on a trip to Indonesia.
About our host:
Host Jeremy Shinewald is the founder of a portfolio of companies dedicated to supporting the unique aspirations of students and professionals. Jeremy’s firms include mbaMission and jdMission (admissions advisory services for prospective MBAs and lawyers), MBA Career Coaches (career coaching for MBA students and post-MBA professionals) and M7 Financial (accessing graduate student loans). Jeremy was also a founding Venture for America Board Member and is currently the Chair of VFA’s Entrepreneur Board.