These co-founders quit their corporate jobs, racked up $100,000 in credit card debt, and slept in a Denny’s—now their $1.2 billion company is backed by Serena Williams

(SeaPRwire) –   Many of the world’s most successful companies got their start in highly unglamorous locations. Google and Amazon were both launched from their founders’ garages, while Microsoft was founded in a motel in New Mexico. 

As they built the growing fintech firm Esusu into a billion-dollar success story, its creators even resorted to sleeping at a Denny’s restaurant to turn their dream into reality. 

“326 investors said no to us on the first go-around, myself and Samir [Goel] had $100,000 in credit card debt, we’ve been kicked out of a Denny’s because we couldn’t afford a hotel room,” Wemimo Abbey, cofounder and co-CEO of Esusu, tells . “We’ve been through very rough times on this journey, but it hasn’t stopped us.”

For years, the cofounders balanced mounting credit checks, full-time corporate roles, and the work of scaling Esusu: a fintech company that helps renters build credit by reporting timely rent payments to credit bureaus. Their commitment to a business mission they knew from personal experience kept them resilient through those hard times. 

Abbey grew up in what he calls the “slums” of Lagos, Nigeria, raised by his mother and two sisters. When his family moved to Michigan, they had no credit score, which led to them falling victim to a predatory lending scheme. After immigrating to the U.S. from New Delhi, India, fellow cofounder and co-CEO Samir Goel watched his parents work tirelessly to “pull off miracles” and build a new life in the country with no credit profile or savings account.

“We built Esusu on the belief that no matter where you come from, what you look like, or your financial background, it should never determine where you end up in life,” Goel states. 

Today, Esusu is valued at $1.2 billion and covers roughly 5 million rental units across all 50 U.S. states, serving around 12 million people. The company has raised more than $200 million in venture capital funding, with investments from firms including SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures. 

Eight years into the journey, 32-year-old Goel says Esusu is just getting started on building its all-in-one financial product; the days of crashing on friends’ couches and maxing out credit cards are long behind them. 

Leaving stable corporate jobs and accumulating credit card debt to launch Esusu

The two fintech cofounders first met at the Clinton Global Initiative Conference in 2014. Abbey was leading his global social venture Clean Water for Everyone at the time, while Goel was the cofounder of Transfernation, a nonprofit that distributed leftover food from benefit events to underserved New York City communities for years after its 2016 launch. 

Both had entrepreneurial experience and mission-focused mindsets, so they partnered up to launch Esusu and help others access fair credit building tools. 

“We decided to take a chance, step outside our comfort zone and push forward through risk, because we didn’t want to end up asking ourselves, ‘What if?’” Abbey, now 33, explains. “Looking back at all that has happened, I’m extremely grateful we chose to take that path.”

Esusu was officially launched in 2018, but Abbey and Goel had already put years of work into its development. They both balanced full-time 9-to-5 jobs while getting the business off the ground: Abbey worked at PwC, and Goel held a full-time role at LinkedIn. Abbey says there were many “dark days” during this period; hundreds of investors rejected their pitch, which the cofounders blame on a lack of diverse VC leaders who did not have the lived experience to recognize Esusu’s market potential. 

“We would talk to many VCs, and they would ask us questions like, ‘Who cares about 40 points on a credit score? How many people are actually living paycheck to paycheck in this country?,’” Goel remembers. “They thought this was a small niche of the market, while we were actually building a product for the majority of Americans.” A Bank of America analysis found nearly a quarter of Americans lived paycheck-to-paycheck in 2025, while 67% of U.S. citizens reported being in that financial situation in a PNC report released last year. 

Then came a turning point: Abbey and Goel were in line for promotions at their corporate jobs while Esusu was gaining traction with users, and VC firms wanted confirmation they were fully committed to the business before investing. They left their full-time roles to focus entirely on Esusu; at first, they self-funded every marketing campaign, work trip, and customer meeting. After using up all their personal savings, the entrepreneurs turned to credit cards, running up $100,000 in debt each. They crashed on friends’ couches and cut costs wherever possible, even going so far as to sleep in a chain restaurant when they had no money left. 

Once, while driving to catch a flight to San Francisco to pitch to potential investors, they did not have enough money to pay for a hotel room for the night. They came up with the plan to sleep in a Denny’s while they figured out their next affordable step. The next day, they were within walking distance of homes owned by some of the richest people in the world. 

“We begged the [Denny’s worker] to let us stay long enough to arrange a ride to the airport,” Goel says. “And right after that, we were meeting an investor who lived down the street from Mark Zuckerberg.”

Gaining momentum, raising $200 million in funding, and serving millions of customers

Esusu has since built trust with investors and millions of customers, becoming one of the first Black-owned fintech startups to reach unicorn status. 

Since 2018, it has raised more than $200 million in total funding, with investments from Motley Fool Ventures, Serena Ventures, Acumen Fund, Equity Alliance, and Impact America Fund. Just this past December, Esusu raised an additional $50 million in Series C funding, which valued the company at $1.2 billion.

The co-CEOs say these VCs have a much better understanding of the issue Esusu is working to solve, but their loyal customer base is the core of the company’s success.

“Even before any investors decided to bet on us, we could see from the people we were serving that this product had real value,” Goel explains, emphasizing that user support was critical to Esusu’s success. “It was communities just like the ones we came from that backed us — that is something that can never be replicated.”

The company’s 12 million and growing customers are all working to improve their financial standing; in 2025, Esusu helped 272,361 renters establish credit scores for the first time, a 34% year-over-year increase. Esusu customers also saw their credit scores rise by an average of 53 points last year, which the company says unlocks $77 billion in total economic opportunity. 

Venture capital firms once dismissed Esusu’s service of building credit through on-time rent payments, but now Americans are building stronger financial lives through the platform — including the two founders themselves.