Already managing $25M in user debt, KC fintech startup Destiny banks on New York accelerator

Newly launched accelerator programming could help Kansas City-based Destiny Wealth secure customers and funding as the startup makes key pivots. 

“This accelerator gives us a brand new network,” said Parker Graham, Destiny co-founder and CEO. 

Part of the newly launched fintech track of the Nex Cubed Accelerator, Graham and Destiny will spend 16 weeks immersed in the semi-remote, New York City-based program which is designed to prepare fintech startups to take on institutional funding. 

Funding and growth on the horizon, click here to read why Destiny was chosen as one of Startland News’ Kansas City Startups to Watch in 2020. 

“[Back home] we’re in that tough spot. Kansas City’s still trying to figure out how to serve that early, seed-stage, development. [Nex Cubed] has direct access to investors in that group,” he said, excited by the possibility of securing the startup’s first round of funding and realizing what its roadmap looks like with banks identified as primary customers. 

“Toward the end of 2019, we really saw the writing on the wall. Banks, specifically, really struggled to talk to the millennial customers and a lot of services that a bank currently provides just don’t meet the needs of the digital first customers,” Graham explained. 

Enter Destiny — an app that creates a customized debt repayment schedule optimized to quickly erase debt — which currently manages more than $25 million in user debt. 

“I think most of the banks would tell you that [they struggle to help customers with debt] and we saw the opportunity to say, ‘Hey we have this platform, let us help you figure out how to leverage it and be a better bank for your customers,’” he said. 

Frank Keck, CoreBuild; Parker Graham, Joe Krywicki, and Jerry Workman, Destiny; Startland News’ Kansas City Startups to Watch in 2020

Part of the first Fountain City Fintech cohort in 2018, Destiny has come along way as it enters its second program, Graham joked. 

“I don’t think we have enough article space for the differences,” he laughed, noting the startup spent most of the nbkc bank-backed cohort conceptualizing the company. 

“We didn’t have a product built. We really had an idea on a napkin and they kind of looked at us as founders and took a chance on us,” he recalled, noting the program helped to develop Destiny’s structure and prepared for the company for its March 2019 launch. 

The company is also part of the current Digital Sandbox KC cohort. 

A product that’s now driving impact, participation in the Nex Cubed program will see Destiny 2.0 take its shape, Graham teased. 

“We’re at a completely different spot in our company timeline,” he said. “Now you look at us going into this thing, we have a fully commercialized product. We have customers, we have a full tech timeline of what we want to build over the next year, we have connections into a lot of financial institutions in the heartland … we’re just going to continue to juggle and keep grinding.”