Founders Couch

Today, we welcome Chukwunonso Arinze! Chukwunonso (aka Chooki) is a current PhD student at UChicago studying Physics. Hailing from Nigeria, he is the cofounder of Kaoshi (https://kaoshi.network/), a fintech company creating technologies that enable banks to provide financial services to their citizens living in the diaspora. So far, they’ve built an MVP for their technology which gathers financial data on immigrants in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, and the Netherlands. They have also gotten two banks to test out their technology. Chooki has mostly bootstrapped the company, but they’re also backed by Dorm Room Fund, UChicago, and the Royal Academy of Engineering. They are currently trying to close an $800K seed round. We talk: How did Chooki's Physics background lead him to fintech? Why bootstrap instead of going to VCs immediately? What are the unique challenges of being a graduate student founder? How does he balance pursuing a PhD and running a company? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/founders