Creating a digital-first credit model designed for underbanked micro-businesses with Sean Salas

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

Before launching Camino Financial, I worked in private equity and investment banking. Throughout my early experience in the finance sector, I oversaw four investment companies with combined revenue of over $250 million, invested close to $50 million in direct investments, and structured $1.2 billion in debt financings. I earned a BA in Political Economy of Industrial Societies from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

Founded in 2014, Camino Financial is an AI-powered Community Development Financial Institution (neo-CDFI) offering affordable credit to underbanked Latinx entrepreneurs.

The Company has built a proprietary lending system, Luna.ai, to offer long-term loans to cash-based and thin-file microenterprises with higher approval rates and better financing terms than banks and non-bank lenders. Camino’s mission is to catalyze economic growth by empowering underbanked entrepreneurs to create generational wealth for their families and communities.

What is the origin story?

My twin brother, Kenny, and I were only 12 years old when our mom lost her business. She ran a successful chain of Mexican restaurants for 25 years, opening over 30 stores. At this time, we didn’t understand the struggles our mom had experienced and moved to Mexico unclear of what the future had in store for us. Over the next 20 years, we would grow up in Mexico, graduate from Berkeley, work on Wall Street during the financial crisis, and get our MBAs at Harvard Business School. For our first joint venture, Kenny and I reflected on our journey and started a company on the notion of never leaving a small business owner behind.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

I love working directly with my product and data science teams to build AI capabilities around data aggregation and machine learning models that predict credit performance and business insights on a market that generates $2.6 trillion in GDP. Alongside a team of data-driven professionals, we have implemented Luna.AI, a proprietary AI technology that involves data aggregation and machine learning models to predict credit performance and business insights of the Latinx market. Our philosophy behind utilizing AI is to catalyze exponential growth and conduct rapid experimentation that enables Camino Financial to quickly transfer market insights across the organization.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

Building another data-driven start-up focused on impacting underserved communities. :)

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

Our north star is measuring impact per dollar deployed. Today close to 75 cents on the dollar borrowed delivers a positive impact in the form of savings and incremental revenue generated by all borrowers.

From a tech standpoint, we’re also focused on % of loans being fully automated, our target is to exceed 70%. This is critical as we think about building AI solutions that enable us to make quick, and when possible, instant credit decisions with same-day funding to power the growth of micro-businesses at scale.

And from a financial perspective, we focus on Booked to Look conversion, CLV to CAC, and loan performance measured by Return on Average Assets.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

To date, Camino Financial has deployed over $100M in loans. Camino's digital-first credit model is designed for underbanked micro-businesses with 40% lower monthly debt payments compared to other short-term credit products. We also host the largest bilingual content hub to empower entrepreneurs with over 1,000 unique articles and videos.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

AI and data management technologies are the most relevant to Camino today. We’ve built groundbreaking proprietary tech, called Luna.AI, while leveraging cutting-edge third-party software such as Snowflake, Fivetran, and Segment. These capabilities enable us to offer a lower cost, frictionless product experience across multiple stakeholders: borrowers, institutional investors, and Camino Associates. The first and most intuitive application of AI is offering more predictive models for credit performance. However, we believe AI cuts across all verticals in lending from lower customer acquisition costs to pre-delinquency predictive analytics. The opportunities are endless.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

We are often viewed by journalists as a “mission-driven company” vs a “data-driven company.” It’s like Matthew McConaughey being typecast as the lead character in RomComs, but he’s actually a very talented and versatile actor that has a lot more depth than his earlier career roles suggested. Being featured by Hackernoon - one of the leading tech blogs to learn about coding, blockchain, and startups - highlights our data-driven approach vs the mission-driven approach we are often typecast with. As an AI-powered Fintech startup, we aim to empower the most underrepresented communities and with Hackernoons platform, we can transmit our stories to a relevant audience wanting to hear more about our disruptive lending model.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

Learn from other people’s mistakes by reading more.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

Being an involved parent and running a company is 100% doable and incredibly rewarding. You don’t have to choose. You just need to ensure you're over-communicating to your partners at the (virtual) office and at home.

VOTE FOR CAMNIO FINANCIAL FOR STARTUP OF THE YEAR AT https://startups.hackernoon.com/california/los-angeles