Jared Hecht is an American entrepreneur, and the co-founder and CEO of Fundera, an online small business lending aggregator as well as group messaging app

GroupMe GroupMe is a mobile group messaging app owned by Microsoft. It was launched in May 2010 by the private company GroupMe. In August 2011, GroupMe delivered over 100 million messages each month and by June 2012, that number jumped to 550 million. I ...

Early life

Hecht studied political science at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, where he received his bachelor's degree in 2009. While a student at Columbia, he was the managing director and publisher for the university's student-written guidebook, ''Inside New York.''

Career

Hecht was an early employee at

Tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...

and led business development. In 2010, Hecht co-founded group messaging app,

, which allows users to create a private group to which they can send text messages or make conference calls, with his friend Steve Martocci, founder of

Blade A blade is the portion of a tool, weapon, or machine with an edge that is designed to puncture, chop, slice or scrape surfaces or materials. Blades are typically made from materials that are harder than those they are to be used on. Histor ...

and Splice who was then a software engineer with

Gilt Groupe Gilt is an online shopping and lifestyle website based in the United States, launched in 2007. On January 7, 2016, The company was sold to Hudson's Bay Company for approximately $250 million. Prior to the Hudson’s Bay acquisition, sales were ex ...

. They won the South by Southwest breakout ward in 2011. The two raised $11 million from

Khosla Ventures Khosla Ventures is an American venture capital firm founded by Vinod Khosla, focused on early-stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile, financial services, agriculture, healthcare and clean technology sectors. Some of its most successf ...

and General Catalyst in 2011. After being live for 370 days,

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

purchased GroupMe for $80 million. One of Hecht's early hires at

, Zach Sims, also a Columbia alumnus, went on to found the online code-learning platform

Codecademy Codecademy is an American online interactive platform that offers free coding classes in 12 different programming languages including Python, Java, Go, JavaScript, Ruby, SQL, C++, C#, and Swift, as well as markup languages HTML and CSS. The ...

. Hecht later became an angel investor and invested in companies such as Sweetgreen,

TransferWise Wise (formerly TransferWise) is a London-based financial technology company founded by Estonian businessmen Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus in January 2011. History Wise was founded by Taavet Hinrikus (Skype's first employee) and fi ...

, and Flatiron Health. In October 2013, he launched Fundera, an online broker that helps small businesses get loans from non-bank lenders, after seeing a family member struggle with bank loans, and raised a total of $18.9 million for his platform from investors such as

First Round Capital First Round is a venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage funding to technology companies. Founded by Josh Kopelman Joshua Kopelman is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and philanthropist. Kopelman is best ...

David Tisch David Tisch (born 1981) is a businessman and angel investor based in New York City. He is managing partner of BoxGroup, a seed-stage capital firm, and a co-founder of TechStars New York City. He is the grandson of American businessman Laurence ...

, and more. A year since it was launched, the company has secured more than $60 million in credit for 1,200 small-business owners. In 2015, he was named in ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

"30 under 30" list for the Consumer Tech category.

Personal life

He is married to Carrie Weprin, a film producer, and the couple live in Brooklyn with their two children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hecht, Jared Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American chief executives American company founders Columbia College (New York) alumni Businesspeople in information technology West Morris Mendham High School alumni