Phoenix startup aims to boost consumer credit scores | Community
Credit scores can be difficult to understand even for the most sophisticated consumer, but not for an algorithm. With Dovly, a Phoenix-based tech startup designed to automatically help customers boost their credit scores, co-founder and CEO Nirit Rubenstein set out to make credit accessible to the average consumer and help those hardest hit by a punitive system.
Now, after raising $ 2 million in seed funding this month, the Phoenix-based startup will be in a position to do just that.
When Rubenstein founded Dovly in 2018, she was already well acquainted with the problem of bad credit. As CEO of Credfly, a credit repair company in Los Angeles, she saw how difficult it is for consumers to navigate the credit system and how much a better solution was needed.
“I just felt like there had to be a better way to solve this massive problem affecting 70% of the American population in a way that cared for the consumer,” Rubenstein said.
After his stint at Credfly, Rubenstein moved to the Phoenix area to work as COO at Nextiva, a Scottsdale-based corporate communications company. But a year after starting her new job, she found that the credit problem was still gripping her.
“The problem with credit is that it’s everywhere. I saw in my everyday life that I had the solution and I knew how to fix this problem that people were struggling with, ”said Rubenstein. “If I stand in line at Target and the cashier asks the guy in front of me if he wants a red card and he says ‘No I can’t, my credit sucks’, or if I take a Uber and the driver tell me about what I’ve done in the past and then start telling me how horrible their credit is because x, y, and z – it was all over the place. It kind of followed me, and I felt like I knew how to fix the problem, and I was responsible for doing it.
Rubenstein’s solution was Dovly, an algorithm-based service that helps subscribers increase their credit score by assessing their credit report and submitting automatic monthly disputes to the three credit bureaus.
When developing the algorithm, which determines exactly which of the 32 parameters of each line of credit to dispute for a client, co-founder Tedis Baboumian’s knowledge of the credit industry has been invaluable, she said. The pair met while Rubenstein was leading Credfly.
“I realized how brilliant he was, and I realized how nuanced consumer credit is and that I would need someone with their expertise in this matter to help me,” said she declared. “It’s an algorithm where we really just took Tedis’ brain and produced it. It sounds robotic, but we’ve written a lot of rules and tweaked and tweaked, and we keep tweaking on a regular basis.
Rubenstein could see the need for a product like Dovly. She could also see how anti-consumer the credit industry was, “which goes against my whole philosophy,” she said.
Part of his dedication to being useful to consumers comes from his years of working at SalesForce. As one of the company’s first 200 employees, she had the opportunity to observe CEO Marc Benioff in action.
“His whole attitude was that you take care of your employees first and foremost, because they are the ones who take care of your customers. And if you care about your customers, then your business will be viable and thrive, ”said Rubenstein. “I would say out of all the people I’ve worked for, he’s probably the only one I’ve learned what to do with; everyone was learning more about what not to do.
But being pro-consumer is also more than just a principle of leadership for Rubenstein: it is also fundamental for her philosophy as an Israeli.
“Part of it comes from being a human being,” Rubenstein said. “I am first and foremost a human being and this comes from my Jewish heritage. “
Born and raised in Israel, Rubenstein served in the Israel Defense Forces before entering the tech industry. Growing up, she learned the value of coming together to help each other.
“My favorite analogy with Israel is that when you’re in Israel and you have a flat tire, hundreds of people stop and help you. But when you try to get back into the traffic, no one will let you in, ”Rubenstein said. “The analogy is that coming together in times of need and helping people is really a fundamental part of being a Jew and being an Israeli. And I think for me that has a lot to do with why I left Nextiva, which was a great job, great paid, great culture, to then start this, which is really a lot more to help the population that is underserved and gets an unfair blow to their lives.
For Rubenstein, Phoenix came as a surprise, both in terms of how his family fell in love with it and how the business community compares to more traditional tech scenes like San Francisco and Los Angeles.
“It’s a small business community, but it’s very, very, very tight-knit,” Rubenstein said. “The people are really helpful. They really want to be a community and help you thrive and be successful, so that was a lot different. “
And while Arizona strives to market itself as a hub for entrepreneurs, startups, and tech giants, there is still room for growth.
“The tech scene is growing. I started my career in San Francisco and then in LA, so compared to those geographies it’s still a long way off, ”said Rubenstein. “I think the tech scene is probably what Austin was like maybe 10 years ago. We’re getting there, but I think we still have a ways to go.
As for his own business, Rubenstein sees only more growth from here.
“Dovly is going to change how credit works in the future – it will be a billion dollar business, there’s no question,” she said. “Our goal is really to make finance accessible to the masses, because right now if you don’t have good credit you don’t have access to finance, and that is negatively impacting your life in many ways. . So our goal is to really change the industry, to change the way things are done, to be a consumer advocate and to make things fairer. Jn