Tim Chen (entrepreneur)

Tim Chen is an American entrepreneur of Taiwanese descent. He co-founded and is Chief Executive Officer of NerdWallet, a personal finance startup with a valuation of $550 million.^[1]

Early life and career

He was born to Taiwanese parents, who were computers scientists that emigrated to the US to study at the University of Oklahoma.^[2] He grew up in Atlanta and went to the same high school as childhood friend Jake Gibson, who would go on to co-found NerdWallet. He went to Stanford for undergrad and after worked for Perry Capital, a hedge fund. In New York, Chen lived in the same Murray Hill neighborhood as Gibson, at the time another finance professional.^[2] During the 2009 global financial crisis, Chen lost his job during a wave of layoffs on Wall Street.^[2]

NerdWallet

The inspiration for NerdWallet came after he was asked by family members about personal finance decisions and found advice online to be unsatisfactory. With $800 he founded NerdWallet with Jake Gibson in 2009 as a website to advise consumers on personal finance.^[3] The website has sought to distinguish itself from competitors by having a "newsroom" of journalists who write journalistic type articles on personal finance that help the website appear in search engine results, and also listing unsponsored credit card options.^[2][4]

A feature piece by Inc. magazine on Chen and his management style called the organizational culture he created "transparent, glaringly self-critical, not always comfortable."^[2]In the initial days, Chen looked to "hire smart people; let them figure it out".^[2] This meant hiring other former Wall Street professionals who resembled the co-founders but Chen found the result to be a company with shaky teamwork.^[2] To reset his company, he fired 20% of his workforce at the end of 2013, calling it an "extremely gut-wrenching" decision.^[2] Chen then restructured the management organization to move away from silos to a matrix that "requires near-constant communication among NerdWallet's leaders".^[2]

In raising capital, Chen has favored waiting for the company to grow before taking major financing.^[3] Six years after the founding the company held its first round of investment, raising $64 million from investors and $36 in bank lending from Silicon Valley Bank in 2015.^[3]

References