However, since co-founding his startup, Esusu, with Samir Goel, their two chief products have afforded Abbey with a lifestyle of comfort, constant professional stimulation and endless friendships.
Between Abbey raising $1.6 million in Esusu’s Series A round and being named in Forbes 30 under 30 for social entrepreneurship, I decided to throw an app launch party for the co-founder of one of the hottest FinTech startups of 2019, a friend.
Here’s what I learned. If you’re like me, and new to NYC’s diverse tech scene I think the below can help you too. If it does, please share this article on social media.
1. What is Esusu?
Esusu is a NYC-based FinTech startup whose first product is an app that helps (primarily) immigrant communities and people of color build stronger credit profiles using a common form of community banking regularly used in neighborhoods near Abbey’s childhood home in Lagos, susu, as well as other African Diasporic communities across the globe.
Abbey and Samir’s second product is a rent reporting app that helps tenants include monthly rental payments in their consumer credit reports.
Susu means “to plan” in Twi (Ghanaian) and exemplifies a community financing model designed for the unbanked and sophisticated, alike, which unfortunately, among immigrant communities across the United States is a social necessity.
used to extend loans to any one individual in susu and $1,000 invested in a profitable endeavor returns the initial $1,000 for the next individual (and venture) to use.
Interestingly, Abbey and Samir initially learned to capitalize on these gaping market opportunities during their time in corporate America, after leveraging their respective educational journeys to arrive on Wall Street with style and a hustle that still keeps them up working into wee hours.
Their educational backgrounds include studying and researching at a handful of the finest institutions in the world including New York University’s (NYU) Wagner School of Public Service, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Cambridge.
Abbey, in particular, spent several years gleaning financial acumen at Goldman Sachs, PwC and Accenture after consulting with a range of global political leaders in various programs at the Clinton Global Initiative and the European Commission.
Selfishly, I’m always excited to catch up with Abbey when he returns stateside following trips back home in Nigeria and its surrounding countries, which he’s done for years as a global ambassador through his UN-recognized and award-winning non-profit foundation Clean Water for Everyone (CWFE). Abbey still runs CWFE to this day with a growing team of committed change agents of color.
2. A Journey from Student to Co-Founder
I met Abbey at a summer public policy program at the University of California at Berkeley called Public Policy International Affairs program (PPIA) in 2013, as rising college seniors. I think Abbey had technically graduated and he was impressive even then. All 30 of us fellows learned how to communicate collectively across differences in policy settings, using sophisticated economic and statistical language and professional writing to tell our stories.
Abbey was a standout at PPIA and we somehow ended up as partners in a number of team projects and that’s when we learned our similar interests and practiced our public speaking.
Our friendship began during these seven weeks and grew to a crescendo as we completed our post-graduate studies.
Six years later both Abbey and I found ourselves reconnecting again in New York City alongside three other PPIA alum in our cohort, who had all moved to New York City for graduate studies or employment.
As we reconnected over brunch downtown one Sunday afternoon, Abbey and I reflected on our recent visit to the inauguration ceremony for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C., partly because Abbey and I remain committed to staying true to our communities from whence we came, and also to utilizing our educational privilege for more than just fancy job titles and leisurely weekends.
When Abbey decided to leave corporate America and co-found Esusu with Samir, I knew he would be up against more than just long years of exhausting work and exceptionally stressful 16 hour days. Pressures and daily struggle in any entrepreneur’s journey will take its toll on your body frame eventually, but Abbey makes clear the juice is worth the squeeze.
When Abbey and I were finally able to connect for D-TECH.FUND’s post app launch party follow up call, Abbey had just flown back from San Diego (the prior weekend he was in Cape Town, South Africa), audibly exhausted from zipping across the globe to raise money and negotiate partnerships on behalf of Esusu, to help scale the business for community stakeholders and investors.
