A Founder’s Guide to Pivoting Without Killing the Company | Misha Esipov

People's feeling of worth in a company is ultimately a function of of whether you are winning. And if you're not winning for too long of a period of time, no one wants to be on that team anymore. And there was a a quote that, you know, an investor adviser said to me that, you know, really resonated, which is something like, you know, ships are safest in harbor, but that's not what they're built for. And so I went out in front of, you know, our virtual all hands every couple weeks, and that was the cover slide. Today on the Eric Ries show, I sit down with Misha Esipov, the cofounder and CEO of Nova Credit, a Series D credit infrastructure company working with thousands of institutions, including some of the world's largest, like Chase, HSBC, and Scotiabank. Isha's story is quintessentially American. He and his parents immigrated to this country when he was only three years old. They came from Russia and had to adjust not just to language and culture, but he had to watch his parents rebuild their lives from scratch. When he came of age, he set out to solve one of the most painful problems immigrants face, being shut out of the financial system. In this conversation, Misha shares how Nova Credit was born inside Stanford's startup garage, how the team survived a near death moment when COVID completely erased their market practically overnight. Remember, there was no immigration happening at all. And how they rebuilt the company into a market leading platform, powering fairer financial access for millions of people. If you care about courage, product market fit, or what it truly takes to build new civic infrastructure inside one of the most entrenched industries in America, this is a conversation you won't wanna miss. Alright. Misha, thank you very much for, coming on. Pleasure to be here. So I wanna talk a little bit about your path into entrepreneurship because Nova Credit, you know, it's so much about connecting with immigrants and being a financial support to to immigrants. Like, you yourself have a really interesting immigration story. So I wonder if you could share a little bit about the background, how you came to this country, and, you know, when was the first time that you encountered the idea of entrepreneurship as, like, a potential career that you could have? So, I was born in The Soviet Union, and, my parents were scientists, and we immigrated to The States when I was a little kid right after the fall of the of the wall. And, you know, like many people that move to The States kinda start out, you start over when you immigrate. Right? You don't have the you have to learn a new language. You oftentimes have to retrain professionally. And on top of that, you don't have, the same social safety net. And, I mean, I can spend a lot more time talking about the immigration …