An Interview with Cred Leadership: ‘We Bring Credit to an Asset Class that Will Grow to Trillions in the Next Few Years’

“We’ve shaped the formation of a new set of crypto assets coming to the market, including a crypto version of the US Dollar and the Euro.”

Cryptocurrency has opened up a new world in the financial sector that was primarily owned by banks, namely the borrowing and lending of capital.

While peer-to-peer borrowing and lending has developed in recent years in the fiat currency space, it is only recently that companies have been finding methods of replicating these ideas in the cryptocurrency space.

In light of the above-mentioned scenario, we’re thrilled to present Cred.

The company has shaped the formation of a new set of crypto assets coming to the market, including a crypto version of the US Dollar and the Euro. It has formed a joint business relationship with PwC to introduce new risk management, security and custody standards to the market. Cred has also announced a partnership with Uphold to launch the first crypto line of credit to users in over 180 countries.

The company partners with financial institutions, crypto exchanges, alliances, stable coin providers, identity verification providers, and many other companies around the world.

Cred was launched in 2018 and is headquartered in San Francisco.

Dan Schatt & Lu Hua, Cred Co-founders, spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review. Below is an excerpt.

Q. Why was the company set up? And how did you expand your company and its offerings since founding,

Mr. Schatt?

When I was traveling from country to country earlier in my career, every time I would open a new bank account and apply to get credit, each bank would start me off with a $500 credit line. I would say: “I worked my way up in the U.S. or other countries” and they would say: “Well you’re in a different country now and you’re with a new bank now” – and I would have to start from scratch each time. This idea that my reputation — the sum total of all the responsible things I have done in my life — could have been recorded immutably on a blockchain. My reputation or ‘cred’ could be more equitably acknowledged and I could get more economic value for what I had done.

Eventually, Cred was set up and has been performing well on all fronts.

Q. What challenges did you face initially, Mr. Hua?

Crypto has its ups and downs and that’s certainly true in today’s market. Things don’t always go as expected when you’re building the next generation financial services product in a bear market. In good times, it doesn’t feel like much of a risk to expand quickly with exceptional people. But if you don’t have the right set of treasury management capabilities, you can quickly find that the long airport runway you once had is reduced to that of an aircraft carrier. Sometimes, it’s the mundane things, like treasury services that can offer companies the value, but, like insurance, it’s best to get it in place when you don’t need it.

Q.“Earning the trust and respect of consumers all around the world is through consistent focus on delivering high quality in all of our actions.” How do you interpret this statement, Mr. Schatt?

Every company has their own personality and style, but what’s important is that you deliver your product in the most authentic way you can, and to the best of your ability. There are no shortcuts to delivering a service that is valued by many customers – by definition, every customer is different and if you are making many of them happy, it means you’ve solved many of the crazy corner cases that always come up when launching a complicated service.

Cryptocurrency is highly volatile, but there are things that can be done to help stabilize this new burgeoning financial services ecosystem we are building. One way is to take things that are familiar and make them available to the community in a way that can help spur confidence and trust. We created a transparent crypto dollar that’s pegged 1:1 with an underlying US dollar that is available for everyone to verify. It allows people to get out of something volatile, into something familiar without having to resort to getting into fiat currencies directly.

Q. If you have to list five success factors, what would they be and why, Mr. Hua?

Persistence: Whenever you’re creating something new, you will be told many times that it can’t be done, it’s too hard, you will fail, etc. Stick with it, and get a thick skin.

Agility: There are many different types of agility – organizational agility, intellectual agility, physical agility…You need to recognize when the world around you is changing, and change with it — keep intently listening to the market, the data, the people around you, and let that new information serve as a guide to making the iterations, and changes needed.

Gratitude: When you wake up and think about how lucky you are for the many things that are going right, versus going wrong, it resets your outlook. Success seems to come much more often to people who can keep that in mind.

Collaboration: A great team is motivated by the best ideas, which always come through so many debates, discussions, and iterations that nobody ever remembers whose idea something was in the first place. The goal is to build something greater than yourself, so make sure to get out of your own way and focus on the idea, and not your ego.

Enthusiasm: If you’re not passionate about what you do, or how what you do aligns with your personal mission, then you are in the wrong profession. The company’s ideas have to line with your own; that creates the sense of shared mission and enthusiasm necessary to weather storms.

Q. Do you have any new products ready to be launched, Mr. Schatt?

Yes, in addition to the first crypto line of credit that allows a customer to get the equivalent of a home equity line of credit against their crypto, we also are introducing the ability to earn a return on crypto assets. All of these products are rolling out as we speak.

Q. Where do you see your company a couple of years from now, Mr. Hua?

We see ourselves as the undisputed leader of our industry and will continue to stay ahead of the pack.

Cred Leadership: A Brief Background

Dan Schatt, Co-founder: Dan Schatt served as General Manager of financial innovations and head of mobile at PayPal. Mr. Schatt also served as a general manager at Yodlee and an investment banker at Salomon Smith Barney.

Lu Hua, Co-founder: Lu Hua served as co-founder and CEO of Mo9, a mobile payments platform. Previously, Mr. Hua served as PayPal’s head of core payments for China and as a lead engineer for Verisign Payments.

“Cred allows retail ecosystem partners to benefit from new forms of revenue and engagement, and institutional partners benefit from its significant lending, fintech and investment background.”