From the CERN Large Hadron Collider to Funding Working Capital Loans to SMBs

When deBanked stumbled upon a scoop that DoorDash had begun offering merchant cash advances in late 2021, the tech and financing team behind it had not been on anyone’s radar. That company was Parafin which at the time appeared to be a startup comprised of former Robinhood engineers. But the backstory is a bit more wild because its CEO and Co-founder Sahill Poddar previously worked on getting his PhD by discovering the Higgs boson particle at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. His credentials include a Doctorate (summa cum laude) in Particle Physics at European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland and before that he was a Visiting Researcher for the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Germany. But today, at Parafin, his company makes $10 billion in funding offers to small businesses EACH DAY. The company has now funded more than 30,000 businesses since inception.

Turner Novak at The Peel secured Poddar as a guest on how Parafin came to be and it’s a must watch.