Founder Chats is brought to you by Baremetrics: zero-setup subscription analytics & insights for Stripe, Recurly, Braintree and any other subscription company!
Like this episode? A rating and a review on iTunes would go a long way!
Table of Contents
In this week’s episode of Founder Chats, we talk to Will Peng from Northstar about his journey from the VC world to founding a startup, finding the right career direction through intuition and self-driven learning, combating the culture of shame around personal finance and more!
About Will Peng:
Will Peng is the CEO and Co-Founder of Northstar, a financial wellness and benefits platform. Prior to founding Northstar, Will worked in Venture Capital and his firm was an early investor in Coinbase, Guideline, Even, and Oscar. Inspired by the positive change fintech can have on people’s lives, Will set out to solve the inequality of financial guidance.
About Northstar:
Northstar’s financial wellness program helps employees make the most of their total compensation, and helps companies support their teams at scale through onboarding, open enrollment, equity events, and more.
Northstar has raised more than $10M from investors including M13, Foundation Capital, Workday Ventures, and Parade Ventures. Our employer customers include Zoom, Snap, NerdWallet, Superhuman, Virgin Orbit, and more.
Show Notes:
1:30 Will Peng’s entrepreneurial journey
9:00 starting a career as a VC analyst
14:30 demonstrating proactivity when looking to switch careers
26:00 finding the right career direction through intuition and self-driven learning
30:00 most financial advice online is too broad to be effective – personal financial advice should begin with thinking through an individual problem as a case by case
34:00 the importance of having difficult conversations
44:00 developing an interest in FinTech infrastructure as an Asian-American immigrant
45:00 combating the culture of shame around personal finances
49:00 understanding how to handle stock options and making other large financial decisions
