Nicky Goulimis is an entrepreneur known as the co-founder and COO of Nova Credit, the world’s cross-border consumer reporting agency that gives access to credit reports and consumers from around the world.
Education and career
During her undergraduate years, Nicky studied English Literature at the University of Cambridge. After graduating, she worked as a consultant at Bain & Company and served several European Retail Banks. Later, she then worked in the agricultural development field in East Africa and at the same time, spent time working in an NGO in Uganda. She decided to take up a masters degree at Stanford Graduate School where she was awarded the Miller Social Change Leadership Award.
Nicky and her co-founders all met at Standford. Misha Esipov, also a co-founder of Nova, together they both took up MBAs (Masters of Business Administration). The other co-founder, Loek Janssen, was in the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Engineering doing also his masters degree. For Nicky, starting up Nova was like a project gone wrong.
The struggle in getting an apartment without any US credit report, all the hassle in getting a credit card with only little amounts, paying for it, then asking for a larger credit limit, eventually. All of these are constant problems that Nicky and her co-founders were facing at that time; considering the fact they are non-Americans.
However, delving into this challenge while in Stanford made Nicky and her co-founders realize one important thing. How enormous this problem really is than what they’d expect and understood, along with the amount of data available, that could help them provide the solution to their problem. Realizing this paved the way for Nova Credit to transition from just a “project gone wrong” to a startup business that soon helped thousands of newcomers from across the globe.
Nova Credit: From class project to startup business
According to a recent study, one of the world’s fastest-growing demographics are immigrants. Not only that, they are even foreseen to drive more population growth in developed countries for more than 80 percent. However, when these immigrants arrive in the United States whether for work or as students, they are not being acknowledged in terms of credit. This is when Nova Credit comes in.
Nova Credit, a three-year-old startup company based in San Francisco, is doing its best to address such problem by providing real-time credit reports to global businessmen, lenders, and property managers. This is for them to obtain immigrant consumers internationally.
Nicky Goulimis, co-founder and COO of Nova Credit, together with her other co-founders, helped build a global platform of credit bureau in which it delivers data to various lenders and landlords. This is made in order to acquire and serve immigrant customers. Earlier this year, General Catalyst and Index Ventures joined Nova Credit which led to a total of $16 million financing.
“Right now I’m in a position where I’m pretty dreadful at sales but I’ve got to learn it because someone’s got to do it for the company. So I’m trying to focus on enjoying that learning rather than beating myself up for not being the best yet.” says Nicky.
Nicky oversees the entire operations of the business including Nova’s partnerships with several financial institutions in the world. According to Nicky, Nova Credit has developed as one of the most up-and-coming financial firms from Silicon Valley in the last years and future years to come.