Scott Rosenberg is only a few weeks into his tenure as the new chief financial officer at Atlanta fintech unicorn Kabbage, but he’s jumped right into speaking to the company’s small business customers to devise a detailed plan for strategic growth. The experienced CFO is taking the long view, focusing on “building a much bigger, better, more efficient business for the long-term.”
 
As president and CFO of payroll-deduction company Purchasing Power, Rosenberg doubled cumulative revenues from $1 billion to $2 billion in less than three years, and helped raised more than $600 million in outside capital to fuel faster growth. Now he hopes to see similar growth at Kabbage.
 
“My focus as CFO there was one to [oversee] process efficiency and scale perspective to support the growth. That previous experience really dovetails nicely with what the mission here is at Kabbage, especially focusing on hyper growth business opportunities,” says Rosenberg.
 
Kabbage, a machine learning-powered loan platform for small businesses, recently acquired online lending startup Orchard for their data capabilities. As of June 2018, over 145,000 small business customers accessed over 1,000,000 loans through Kabbage, in a record total of more than $5 billion in funding.
 
From the team and business model to its fast-moving growth trajectory, Rosenberg shares that there were many factors that attracted him to the fintech company, but one stands out. “There’s a social aspect to this business model in terms of the fact that we’re in business to help small businesses be successful.”
 
“It’s not all about us; it’s about us and the small business owners in America.”
 
Rosenberg shares insights into his evolving road map for Atlanta’s fintech unicorn, how he’s getting to know Kabbage’s customers, and discovering potential M&A’s to fuel organic, disciplined growth.
 
What are your immediate goals for Kabbage?
 
There are several tracks for growth. First, there’s the organic growth track, which is building upon the legacy business that has been built over the last six, seven years. We’ll continue to help fuel that growth by bringing in the right amount of process improvement to help the business scale in the business that it was founded on.
 
Secondly, there’s organic growth of new products and services that we can develop. How do I help influence the best way to bring products to market? Then once they’re in market, again, it’s an efficiency scale play over time.
 
Then the third leg of the growth, still in mind, is merger and acquisitions activity. These strategic options include M&A’s, partnerships and joint ventures in any number of ways. This helps drive speed to market, to expand the business platform, and the opportunity to drive those small businesses.
 
Read the full article on Hypepotamus here.