Host

The Garrison Institute co-founder, urban visionary and award-winning author Jonathan F.P. Rose.

Guest

Samir Goel is the co-founder and co-CEO of Esusu, a leading fintech company helping renters build credit and unlock economic opportunity. A 2020 Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient, and 2023 TIME100 Next honoree and EY Entrepreneur of the Year, he previously co-founded Transfernation, a non-profit that directed excess food from corporate events to those in need. Samir also serves on the boards of MoMA PS1, the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business, and SaverLife.

Read and download the full transcript.

Show Notes

• [02:28] Samir shares his family’s journey from New Delhi to the United States, growing up between two cultures, and how witnessing his parents struggle with financial exclusion despite working hard shaped his understanding of opportunity, belonging, and economic justice.
• [03:23] Reflecting on his unconventional path, Samir discusses choosing entrepreneurship over the career his parents envisioned, founding Transfernation to reduce food waste, and discovering a lifelong commitment to “bridging the access gap.”
• [05:35] Samir explains how his parents’ experience navigating America’s financial system inspired Esusu’s mission: ensuring that someone’s financial identity never determines their future.
• [09:33] Jonathan and Samir examine the growing wealth divide in America and why credit—often overlooked—is one of the foundational building blocks of economic mobility, homeownership, and wealth creation.
• [12:01] Samir describes how America’s credit system often treats people as “guilty until proven innocent” and argues for a model that begins with trust rather than exclusion.
• [14:56] The conversation explores the meaning of “Esusu,” drawing on West African savings circles and collective financial traditions that rely on community trust rather than individual creditworthiness, with strong results.
• [18:37] Samir explains how Esusu evolved from digitizing community savings groups into helping renters build credit by reporting on-time rent payments, aligning the interests of renters, landlords, lenders, and society as a whole. Rental data is a particularly powerful type of alternative data for thin files of credit scores, as it is recurring and long-term.
• [24:31] Jonathan highlights Esusu’s core innovation: translating the invisible qualities of trust, responsibility, and reliability – social capital – into visible financial capital that traditional credit systems can recognize.
• [25:04] Samir recounts the difficult early years of building Esusu—bootstrapping the company, accumulating debt, receiving more than 300 investor rejections, and eventually finding mission-aligned partners who believed in the vision. Now the company is valued at $1.2 billion.
• [30:45] The discussion turns to ethical technology and data privacy, as Samir explains why Esusu’s business model ties revenue directly to positive social impact and why the company reports only positive rental payment data (because evictions are already recorded through collections) while refusing to sell consumer data to predatory actors.
• [35:43] Looking ahead, Samir outlines Esusu’s vision beyond credit building, including flexible rent payments, financial coaching, new partnerships, and expanding the use of rental data to improve mortgage underwriting and long-term financial mobility.
• [38:25] Jonathan asks what a truly just financial system would look like. Samir reflects on stakeholder capitalism, employee ownership, housing affordability, asset creation, and the need for economic systems that generate prosperity without extreme inequality.
• [43:39] The episode concludes with a conversation about spirituality, as Samir shares how Hindu philosophy—and the belief that “selfish action imprisons the world”—continues to shape his approach to leadership, service, and the common good.