2020 Startups to Watch: Destiny drops into debt-laden users’ lives as startup’s dominoes fall
January 22, 2020 | Anna Turnbull
Editor’s note: Startland News selected 10 Kansas City firms to spotlight for its annual Startups to Watch list. The following is one of 2020’s companies. Click here to view the full, ranked list of Startups to Watch.
The founders behind Destiny owe a debt to the platform’s early adopters, said Parker Graham, eager for the FinTech startup’s efforts to pay off.
Elevator pitch: Destiny helps financial institutions bridge the technology gap for their young and debt-laden customers through a personal financial management platform. Our solution increases customer engagement, retention, and uncovers unforeseen loan opportunities with the most valuable demographic in banking.
• Founders: Parker Graham, Jerry Workman, Joseph Krywicki
• Founding year: 2018
• Amount raised to date: $100,000
• Noteworthy investors: nbkc bank, Nex Cubed
• Programs completed: Fountain City Fintech accelerator, Nex Cubed Accelerator, Digital Sandbox KC recipient
• Current employee count: 4
“This is going to be a game-changing year and we are really excited,” said Graham, CEO of Destiny.
Over the past year, the company has been diligently correcting its software while heeding customers’ feedback on improvement implementations, he said ahead of the release of a completely overhauled user interface for early adopters.
“Current users are the reason we are where we are today. [Their feedback] molded [the app] into what they wanted and it made us take it to the next level,” Graham added, teasing next steps could shift the early-stage startup well into growth-stage territory in 2020.
“We are going to get our first big batch of enterprise-level customers. That is the biggest thing that we are looking forward to,” he said, noting the startup’s product is in place and ready for customers, likely to be secured during Destiny’s participation in the San Francisco, California-based, Nex Cubed accelerator.
“This is in a good spot to take off,” he said optimistic for the months ahead which are expected to include more funding and increased visibility, named one of Heartland Credit Association’s Top Five most innovative companies for Credit Unions.
“We really think it is going to be a growth-minded year … We were awarded a Digital Sandbox grant, which we are deploying to beef up our AI and data mining capabilities for our platform.”
And while Destiny doesn’t boast the sizeable funding of some Kansas City-based startups, it’s all about how a company uses its capital, Graham said, noting the startup’s financials are all but guaranteed to rise in 2020 — in addition to stabilizing revenue and the close of three deals with major U.S. customers.
“We think 2020 is the year when all the dominos fall for us. We have a lot of work to do, but we have the relationships in place to really make a large impact,” Graham said.
1) United American Hemp
2) Tesseract Ventures
3) ELIAS Animal Health
4) Healium
5) Fishtech
6) Draiver
7) Backstitch
8) Stenovate
9) Boddle Learning
10) Destiny
This story is possible thanks to support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a private, nonpartisan foundation that works together with communities in education and entrepreneurship to create uncommon solutions and empower people to shape their futures and be successful.
For more information, visit www.kauffman.org and connect at www.twitter.com/kauffmanfdn and www.facebook.com/kauffmanfdn
Featured Business
2020 Startups to Watch
stats here
Related Posts on Startland News
City Market eats: Master roaster hopes hungry Kansas Citians will flock to Murmuration
A new eatery and cocktail bar that now shares a space with the popular City Market Coffee Roasters is designed to reflect a vision of bringing people together, fostering connection, and embracing the diversity that makes the City Market so special, said master roaster Nikole Ammer. Plus, the people are hungry — from day to…
Chamber showcase fills Union Station with real-life social networking for small biz owners
Entrepreneur Dane Moss likes to do things a little over the top, he shared Wednesday from inside the Grand Hall at Union Station, noting that simply handing out T-shirts and koozies to event attendees simply doesn’t fit his style. So for his first KC Chamber Small Business Celebration Candidates’ Showcase, Moss and his team from…
1 Million Cups relocating back to Kauffman Foundation, renewing weekly meetup’s energy, sense of purpose
After more than six years connecting entrepreneurs in Midtown, 1 Million Cups Kansas City is returning to its roots — relocating the weekly event series April 9 to the Kauffman Foundation Conference Center where the now-coast-to-coast morning meetup series first percolated. Changing the brew for the Wednesday entrepreneur pitch showcase came from the same voices…
Why the Savannah Bananas founder is coming back to KC (with a tip of his hat to winning leadership styles)
Jesse Cole isn’t afraid to reimagine the way things are done in business, he shared, and his brand of Banana Ball is paying off. In the past nine years, the ringleader of the Savannah Bananas — baseball’s answer to the trick ball-handling and exhibition athleticism of the Harlem Globetrotters — has gone from selling his…