Meet Kristin Slink, co-founder & Chief Product Officer of LoanHero which was just acquired by LendingPoint. In this episode we get to go into the trenches with an operator on the consumer finance tech industry and also learn how Kristin initially came to San Diego on accident.
Kristin came to San Diego on accident. She thought she was visiting San Francisco and ended up touring San Diego and fell in love while going to school on the East Coast. Immediately after college she moved straight to San Diego with no job but landed one very quickly after.
In San Diego, she met her future co-founder Derek Barclay when they tried working with a multilevel marketing company but immediately fell in love with the entrepreneurial path. Six years ago she made the leap of starting her first company with Derek called FirstLookApproval. “Turning browsers into buyers!”
Along the way of learning the fintech space, she and Derek created LoanHero to empower merchants to bring personal financing to the point of sale. While this was Kristin’s first software business, she quickly became the product and operations owner and at one point LoanHero was doing $8M/mo in loans.
LoanHero made the strategic decision to grow their product quickly by partnering with Tijuana-based Sonata Services to help beef up the software development team. They also were luckily enough to get into EvoNexus to give them a foundation while growing their first software company and meet other founders simultaneously.
After a few years, the company got to the size where it was time to either raise a new round of funding or join forces to grow even faster and in early 2018, LoanHero was acquired by LendingPoint. While sadly this means Kristin is moving to Atlanta to help with the transition, we know she will be back, because San Diego.
Kristin’s favorites in San Diego:
Tacos: The Taco Stand
Beer: Love sours including Fall Brewing Jazz Hands (walking distance from her home in North Park)
Coffee: BetterBuzz
Follow her on Instagram @KristinSlink
Thanks for joining us Kristin and wishing you all the best in Atlanta! Come back soon!
Thanks also to our sponsor Cox Business for their support of the San Diego tech community. Come join them on May 30th at the TechArt Night of Applied Blockchain for technical enthusiasts and leaders.
