Greenlight Financial Technology Inc. won the unicorn category of Atlanta Inno's Fire Awards.
This fintech startup produces a debit card for children and a family-oriented money management platform so parents can help their kids become financially literate. It raised $260 million in May 2021, tripled its year-over-year revenue in 2020 and plans to hire 300 employees in the next two years.
Here's a Q&A with CEO Timothy Sheehan.
Q: How are your company’s innovations changing your industry’s landscape?
A: Family finance is a new and rapidly emerging category. It’s exciting to see the growth of the market and attention on fintech for the next generation.
At Greenlight, we’re focused on serving the entire family, both parents and kids alike. We’ve built a money app for families that teaches kids and teens healthy financial habits across earning, spending, saving, giving, and investing.
What sets us apart is our approach to financial education. We designed Greenlight so that kids and teens can learn by doing — from tracking completed chores and earning allowance to setting a savings goal to researching stocks and making real investments with parent approval. We’ve also built easy-to-understand educational content directly into Greenlight’s app, making the world of money and investing accessible to all families. Today, Greenlight serves more than 4 million parents and kids, who have collectively saved more than $150 million. We hope to create a world where every child grows up to be financially healthy and happy.
Q: What’s your advice to future and current entrepreneurs?
A: For future entrepreneurs: ask yourself, “what’s a problem I’m passionate about solving?”
My co-founder Johnson Cook and I asked ourselves this question before starting Greenlight. We knew there was a market for better financial tools for families and a dire need to make financial education more accessible. Many parents feel it’s important that their kids grow up with good financial habits, but most don’t know where to start. As fathers ourselves, we had also experienced these challenges firsthand. We founded Greenlight to solve this problem and help parents around the world raise financially smart kids.
For current entrepreneurs, my advice is to always put the customer first in every decision you make. When you’re starting a business, you get pulled in many different directions, but ultimately you won’t be successful unless you keep the customer at the center of everything you do. First, make sure your product is solving a real problem and delivering that solution in a way that is easy to use and convenient for people. Then, constantly iterate and improve your product so you can continue to bring even more value to your customers over time.
Q: What’s been the biggest roadblock in your growth and how did you overcome it?
A: Earlier in my career, I went to work for a big company that I wasn’t passionate about and spent the majority of my days unhappy. Eventually, I decided to take a different job where I cared more about the work and saw my quality of life drastically improve. That was a good learning experience. Most people spend at least a third of their lives working, so it’s important to invest your time into building something that’s meaningful to you. At Greenlight, our mission is to shine a light on the world of money for families and empower parents to raise financially smart kids. As a father of four, this is something I care deeply about and I’m personally very motivated to help improve the financial lives of many more families.
Atlanta Inno's Fire Awards 2021
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