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 (also stylized as 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 numb ...

Early life

Hecht studied political science at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, 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 (pronounced "tumbler") is a microblogging and Social networking service, social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and is owned by American company Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content ...

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 Sharpness (cutting), sharp, cutting portion of a tool, weapon, or machine, specifically designed to puncture, chop, slice, or scrape surfaces or materials. Blades are typically made from materials that are harder than those they a ...

and Splice who was then a software engineer with

Gilt Groupe Gilt Groupe is an American online shopping site launched in 2007. In 2016 the company was sold to Hudson's Bay Company for approximately $250 million, which was less than the $268 million taken from investors. Prior to the Hudson's Bay acquisiti ...

. They won the

South by Southwest South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It began in 1987 and has conti ...

breakout ward in 2011. The two raised $11 million from

Khosla Ventures Khosla Ventures is a private American venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California. It was founded by entrepreneur Vinod Khosla in 2004. The firm works with early-stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile technology, artifici ...

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

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

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

Zach Sims Zach Sims (born 1990) is an American entrepreneur who co-founded Codecademy, an online platform offering interactive coding lessons and tutorials. Sims served as the CEO of Codecademy, overseeing the platform's growth and development into one of ...

, 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 13 different programming languages including Python, Java, Go, JavaScript, Ruby, SQL, C++, C#, Lua, and Swift, as well as markup languages HTML ...

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

Sweetgreen Sweetgreen (legally Sweetgreen, Inc., stylized as sweetgreen, previously swɘetgreen) is an American fast casual restaurant Chain store, chain that serves salads. It was founded in November 2006 by Nicolas Jammet, Nathaniel Ru, and Jonathan Ne ...

, TransferWise, 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 Capital is a US-based venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage funding to technology companies. Founded by Josh Kopelman and Howard Morgan First Round typically provides seed-stage funding and focuses on po ...

, David Tisch, 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 founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

"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 American information technology businesspeople West Morris Mendham High School alumni