Joining us in The Deep End is Ansel Parikh. Ansel is the co-founder of Finch, an API for Employment Systems that democratizes access to the infrastructure that underpins the employment sector. Finch recently raised a $40M Series B.

Finch was born out of failure and uncertainty. Ansel Parikh and Jeremy Zhang, the co-founders, first met during On Deck's second cohort. Both were passionate about solving the plumbing behind big problems and gravitated towards challenging infrastructure issues.

Initially, they attempted to launch an embedded lending platform, but the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted their plans. Banks and customers began rejecting them as the future of lending became uncertain. Who was going to give a loan in such an uncertain environment?

It wasn't until a small business lender they were potentially going to work with approached them with a request to help access employment data for the Payment Protection Program (PPP) that they discovered the opportunity that would eventually become Finch.

--------

Listen to the episode on your favorite podcast player.

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4TWOlf8...
• Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0...