Ken Lin will never forget February 24, 2020. The company he founded 13 years ago was about to be acquired for more than $7 billion. The stock market was in free fall.
The futures of the stock market were down 600 points when Lin woke up. I woke up at 5 o'clock in the morning and the Dow was red, and we were all wondering if we were going to do this.
You can't pivot on a dime because a business that had been profitable for a long time is now unprofitable. There were a lot of decisions to be made. Ken Lin is the CEO of Credit Karma.
Markets were getting jittery as it became clear that the coronaviruses had spread beyond China's borders, as case numbers were increasing in Italy and South Korea. The S&P 500 fell 3.5% on that day and started a weeklong sell-off of global securities as the WHO warned of a potential global epidemic.
We all agreed that it was the right decision to move forward, and that all the externalities and unknowns at that point were immaterial. We got the deal signed and announced after we pushed forward with it.
By the time the deal closed, Credit Karma had been forced to sell its tax business because of a Justice Department review, and had seen its business impacted by a tightening of the credit markets.
In the year since, Credit Karma has seen a dramatic rebound in its business, thanks in part to a reversal in the financial markets, but also due to commercial adoption of its Lightbox decision-making engine and acceleration of consumer interest.
