INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Household debt in the U.S
continues to rise and as of this year now stands at nearly $14 billion
With the company already profitable and growing revenues 90% each year for the last five, Nazari said that this round is likely to be the
last round the company raises before it goes public.Credit Sesame is not disclosing its valuation, in part because this round is likely to
have some more money added to it
It has now raised $110 million in total.The round is a mixture of equity and debt, and includes both strategic and financial investors
Led by growth-stage investors ATW Partners, it also includes participation from previous investors
Past backers of Credit Sesame include Menlo Ventures, Inventus Capital, Globespan Capital, IA Capital Groups, Symantec, Capital One Ventures
There also will likely be new investors coming to the company when the round does expand.The reason the startup is raising both equity and
business, but not likely acquisitions: there are a lot of companies in the fintech arena that are working on products adjacent to what
Credit Sesame does, but Nazari said that it would likely only start to work on some M-A and consolidation plays after it IPOs, using the
proceeds from that to fuel that.In addition to a number of companies building tools and products to help people manage their money better,
there are direct competitors to Credit Sesame, too, including Credit Karma, NerdWallet, Experian, ClearScore, Equifax and many more
and has built an algorithm it calls RoboCredit, which is based on a basic score provided by TransUnion (one of the big agencies that
calculates scores, alongside Equifax and Experian), but also includes other factors that it calculates to show consumers which actions they
can take to improve their scores
Checking initial scores is free on Credit Sesame, as are evaluating options for how to rebalance loans and other debts to help improve the
Bureau fining both Equifax and TransUnion for misrepresenting what kind of data it was providing to consumers, and for not being transparent
try to prepare as much as possible, but we never know what news of a new breach might come around the corner, or when one fragment of our
disclosed information might be the missing piece to someone using it to steal something from us
On the other hand, the startup is giving more transparency at least to how some of the other aspects of our online financial identity work,
