Eric Blue sold all the possessions he had, including literally the coat off his back, to start up Nevly.
He had been through worse before. Throughout Blue's high school years, he and his mother were evicted 26 times. He had no home when he took his SATs and ACTs, but he did well nonetheless — enough to earn him entry into Louisiana's Xavier University to attain a mathematics degree and, after that, the University of Texas-Austin for a law degree and, eventually, a career as a lawyer and investment banker.
But he never forgot his road to that point. And he understood all too well how destructive poor financial health could be, not unlike a debilitating disease. So, when Blue founded Nevly in 2021, he was willing to forgo some of his own financial stability if it meant helping provide it for others, particularly underserved communities — “brick by brick, building the foundation of consumer financial health,” he said.
“I know this customer and I know their pride,” he said. “I know how hard they work. I know how passionate they are, and how much they care about their tomorrow, just like everybody else.”
That's translated to Nevly Money, the company's flagship product and a web app and subscription service that aim to help users boost their credit score by up to 105 points in three to four months. It does so through a combination of tools that help either build credit or avoid diminishing it, including checking and savings accounts with no overdraft or account fees; a debit card that doesn’t report credit utilization or carry fees, interest or credit checks; a tool that spots errors on credit reports; and a system that helps track and detail rent payments and due dates.
To launch that app, the startup has raised a $1.25 million pre-seed round, funded by Palo Alto, California-based venture firm Tenacity Venture Capital.
Nevly Money may be launching first, but it's actually the company's second product. Blue's original idea for the startup was a mobile app that uses artificial intelligence to comprehensively monitor and improve a user's financial health. But he's now positioning Nevly Money as a way to help fund the company as it continues to build out the original app's features, hone its AI technology and seek out more customers for a planned June 1 launch.
Through its platform, whose financial activities are powered by San Francisco banking services partner Synapse Financial Technologies Inc., Nevly takes in a revenue cut from transaction and interchange fees on a user's financial transactions, as well as money transfer fees. The company, based in office space at 609 H St. NE, is a further extension of Blue's work at his past positions, most recently as CEO and chief investment officer at D.C. firm Valler Holdings Corp., as well as corporate attorney at Baker McKenzie and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, and an investment banker at Lehman Brothers.
Nevly hopes to fill the gap as the slice of the U.S. population that's considered financially healthy gets smaller in 2022, according to a report by financial nonprofit consultancy the Center for Financial Services Innovation, dropping from 34% last year to 31%. Per his research, Blue cites 151 million Americans who are financially insecure. “When you hear that number, that's a lot, of all of us,” he said. “Poor people, middle-class people, white people, brown people, Black people.”
Blue projects the 11-person company will reach 1,000 subscribers in February and, at a $69 monthly subscription, generate $70,000 in revenue for the month. He said it's important that the company make revenue and not live primarily off of venture capital dollars.
“Even before this meltdown, I didn't believe a Black man could go out and raise tens and hundreds of millions of dollars year after year for a business that just continues to eat and burn cash,” he said.
Indeed, the amount of VC funds that went to Black founders in 2022 amounted to 1%, making that route a less reliable one for him and Nevly. But despite those odds, Blue said he's looking to raise another seed round at the end of the year or beginning of next year.
“We believe technology can change the way money works for the lion's share of people in this country and globally,” Blue said. “Our products are just geared towards that.”
