Credijusto’s co-founders wanted to avoid building a lender from scratch — their investors thought they were ‘mad’
In the six years since launching Credijusto, David Poritz and Allan Apoj delivered more than 250 per cent annual revenue growth and managed to turn Covid-19 into an opportunity. But when the co-chief executives decided to go mainstream by buying a bank, even one of their biggest backers baulked. Hernán Kazah, co-founder of Latin America’s biggest venture capital firm, Kaszek, feared the purchase of Banco Finterra could cause the duo to lose focus. Or as he puts it: “When David and Allan said they were buying a bank, I thought they were mad.” Poritz, a 32-year-old US anthropologist-turned-entrepreneur with a masters in public policy from the University of Oxford, smiles at the irony: “Fintechs were created to disrupt the banking sector,” he says. And yet, in June, Credijusto spent an undisclosed sum under $50m to become a bank itself.
https://www.ft.com/content/79fab227-630a-43a4-8d27-235bac8fc3e1