Building and scaling a startup to multiple 100 million is celebrated as a mean feat globally, especially because countless studies suggest more than 90% of startups fail in the initial few years. Only a select few entrepreneurs have what it takes to defy conventional legacies and build sustainable businesses that simplify problems in particular domains.
And then, there are entrepreneurs who build several successful businesses, and Jessica Zi Jun Zhang is one such entrepreneur. Jessica is the Chief of Staff, key executive at Stilt and founding team for Onbo. Onbo by Stilt is an original and revolutionary lending infrastructure that has earned the title of "AWS for lending" in the business community. Onbo has changed the proposition of building lending infrastructure for companies, similar to how AWS revolutionized data storage by replacing old-school procedures.
Scaling Onbo to becoming a pioneer in the lending infrastructure space
Onbo is a one-of-a-kind solution that has revolutionized the space with an end-to-end modern lending infrastructure, which is offered through a plug-and-play API. Onbo enables companies to save millions of dollars by facilitating financial access to a large population.
Jessica has played a crucial role in designing, defining, and executing critical components of Onbo, including loan origination and servicing, debt capital integration, credit reporting, and compliance systems. She is behind the research and detailed analysis of use-case verticals and business viability for product development. She is the bridge between engineers, finance, and compliance teams while building Onbo from the ground up.
The efforts of Jessica and the team at Stilt have grown it to raising $375M+ in equity and debt capital backed by prominent investors, including Y Combinator, Link Ventures, Streamlined Ventures, and executives from Doordash, Stripe, Brex, etc.
She has helped grow Onbo's customer base to 20+ companies and helped to execute $3M+ contracts within only a few months of the launch.
Co-founding Oppti and Building BLOC
Jessica is not new to the world of business and has successfully co-founded a startup and a non-profit before. She is credited with the success of Oppti (Google for Startups S21), an all-in-one career development platform (EdTech startup) with $700K+ ARR. Oppti has received funding from the US Department of Education to increase STEM opportunities through practical experiences for students in underserved communities.
Oppti partners with some of the largest high school districts across the country and numerous Fortune 500 companies including Johnson & Johnson and VMware to support student development and internship placements. She has helped grow its customer base to 96 schools and 168,000+ students across 24 states with 15,000 active opportunities.
Another feather to her hat is co-founding Building BLOC, a 501c3 Non-Profit Organization that provides high school students with personal and career development opportunities through mentorship, community service, and professional networks.
Building BLOC partners with Clinton Global Foundation, Deloitte and Orange County to enable safe and secure access to mentors for underage students. During the COVID-19 time, Jessica helped pivot the traditional in-person mentorship program to virtual mentorship and grew the platform by 24.5x, which is currently serving 12,000+ mentees from 500+ schools located across 15 states.
How is Onbo pioneering the lending industry?
Onbo is highly recognized by the industry as a pioneering product. PYMNTS describes it as a "first of its kind credit-as-a-service offering," while Fintech Futures describe it as a "leading embedded finance API in the market." Another comment describes it as "Onbo represents a new path forward for companies looking to launch a credit product" - Global Fintech Series.
For the first time ever, Onbo replaces outdated infrastructure and revolutionizes how lending products are built. The existing infrastructures were not working because they were fragmented, outdated, and complicated to integrate and scale. Onbo saves companies, on average, 10-12 months in launch time and millions of dollars in resources.
Onbo also represents expansive industry coverage with over $5B in loans processed, 1.5 million transactions, and covers over 90% of the US population. It supports numerous industries, including trucking, e-commerce, healthcare, construction, real estate, payments, etc.
Jessica as a judge and speaker on prominent panels - Fintech Expert and Leader
Given her outstanding achievements and industry expertise, Jessica is frequently invited as a judge and speaker to share her expertise and insights with peers and other industry leaders. Some of her recent speaking engagements include the Product Hub Panel on "How embedded finance drives the next wave of growth" and the Fintech Nexus Webinar.
She was also a part of the judges' panel in the 12th Annual Business Excellence Awards by Globee Business Awards, Fintech Finance Awards 2022, Global Stevie Awards for Women in Business, Engage to Empower Hackathon by Cornell's College of Computing Info Science, and the 15th Annual 2022 Women in Business and the Professions World Awards. She is also a member of some elite business communities, including Y Combinator, Google for Startups, and others.
Planning the road ahead
Going forward, Jessica aims to further reimagine and reshape the future of financial services and financial access so that more Americans and global communities can benefit from technology.
She plans to further deploy forefront technology solutions to facilitate innovations in the financial services world.
On a broader scale, she aims to enable more companies to be successful by sharing her industry insights and expertise. Jessica believes this will create more jobs, economic incentives, and financial wellness for Americans and the world.
