Sasha Orloff

Yo, you gotta hear about Sasha Orloff. This guy’s a straight-up serial entrepreneur and a fintech beast. He jumped into the startup game with YC W12, so he’s been in the trenches for a minute. His whole vibe is about making finance work for everyone, especially the underserved.

He crushed it co-founding LendUp, which was all about giving folks better access to credit and fixing that broken financial system. That company was backed by Y Combinator, and he was CEO, so you know he’s got that real deal hustle. Dude raised over a billion bucks for his startups, no cap, showing he’s got the skills to get investors hyped and money flowing.

Before all that, Sasha’s been around the block. He’s worked at Citi in risk and finance, even as a Senior VP at Citi Ventures, so he knows the big leagues. Plus, he’s got roots in global finance and tech for new markets, with gigs at The World Bank and Grameen Foundation. Basically, he’s always been about financial inclusion, trying to level the playing field for the people who need it most.

Now he’s running Puzzle, a stealth startup that’s already well-funded. No one really knows what they’re cooking up yet, but you can tell it’s gonna be something big. His whole story screams that he’s driven by real purpose, using tech and finance to shake up how people access money and build a better shot at financial health.

His background in applied math and econ from UCSD, plus an MBA from Georgetown, shows he’s got brains, but what really makes him stand out is that hustle, jumping from the World Bank to startups, raising all that capital, and never settling. He’s about building tech that actually helps people, not just for the hell of it.

Bottom line? Sasha’s the guy who saw the bullshit in traditional finance and said, “Nah, we can do better.” He’s a builder, a disruptor, someone who’s been through the grind and still keeps pushing forward. If you want to understand the future of fintech and financial inclusion, you gotta keep an eye on him.