Wemimo Abbey

Wemimo Abbey is the co-founder and co-CEO of Esusu, which fosters financial inclusion for the millions of Americans without access to credit. Esusu collaborates with property managers, tenants, credit bureaus, and government institutions to include rental payments into renters’ credit scores and transform the credit system – helping renters improve their financial future, lowering eviction rates, and providing a pathway to home ownership. Founded in 2018, Esusu has helped its users access $13 billion in credit, and itself reached a $1 billion valuation in its 2022 Series B. Its service is available in 4 million rental units across all 50 states.
 
The Entrepreneur
 
At 32 years old, Nigerian-born Wemimo Abbey already has a long history of building impact-driven enterprises. Prior to co-founding Esusu, he founded a social venture called Clean Water for Everyone, as well as the Open Aid Initiative, a tech company that tracked and mapped the trillions of dollars of development finance invested in Africa, which was acquired a year after its founding. Wemimo founded Clean Water for Everyone in 2013 and remained involved with it until 2020. The organization used local forms of drilling and pressure pumps to provide water in developing countries, primarily focusing on schools. It was supported by the Clinton Global Initiative and at its peak provided water to 250,000 people in seven countries across Africa and Asia.
 
Building on these experiences, Wemimo co-founded Esusu in early 2018. Esusu aims to leverage data to close the racial wealth gap in the United States, as well as to fundamentally transform the credit score system, which currently prevents millions of people from building wealth.
 
The number one driver of personal wealth in the United States is home ownership. However, owning a home is elusive for many U.S. citizens, due to the need for a positive credit score to obtain a mortgage (or any kind of loan). Credit scores are tracked by three main agencies – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion – and are primarily based on a person’s history of taking on and servicing debt, such as credit cards. It is a system that is hard to break into for those with lower incomes and no such history. According to Wemimo, millions of people are being treated by this system as “guilty until proven otherwise.” Deemed not creditworthy, they are not provided with loans or credit cards, or charged far higher interest rates due to their perceived riskiness. Therefore, without a viable way to establish and build a credit score, they have no hope of ever becoming a homeowner. 

This cyclical financial exclusion disproportionately affects Black and other minority populations in the United States. 49 million U.S. adults have no conventional credit score. This includes 27% and 26% of the Black and Hispanic population, respectively, compared to 16% of the White and Asian population. Partly as a result, Black Americans are 40% less likely to own their homes than White Americans. Notably, the median White household has nearly 10 times the wealth of the median Black household.

Esusu seeks to transform the credit score system by including pertinent data beyond debt history, beginning with what is most people’s largest monthly expense: Rental payments. Unlike mortgage payments, rental payments are not traditionally included in credit scores. Until recently, only 2 million of the 80 million adults who rent had their payment history reflected in their credit score. Due in part to that, the average renter’s credit score is roughly 100 points lower than that of the average homeowner. To address this discrepancy, Esusu partners with many of the country’s largest property owners and reports their tenants’ payment histories to the three leading credit rating agencies. Offered as an opt-in to tenants, Esusu helps them leverage their on-time rental payments to establish and improve their credit score. 

Less than five years in operation, Esusu’s service is available in 4 million rental units across all 50 states, and its impact is clear. The company has helped over 50,000 people establish their first credit score, and the average user has seen their credit score increase by 43 points. Crucially, this is helping many of Esusu’s users transition from being renters to being homeowners. According to the company’s own metrics, it has helped its users access $13 billion worth of credit, the majority of which in mortgages.

In addition, Esusu provides its users with free courses on financial literacy and financial empowerment, and it actively fights to keep working families in their homes. In April 2020, when 62% of its users couldn’t afford their rent due to a sudden loss of income, Esusu launched a COVID-19 rent relief fund, offering 0% interest loans to users who faced eviction. The initiative raised over $500,000 by the end of 2020 and has grown significantly since then. It not only inspired similar government-run schemes – such as New York State’s $100 million rent relief fund – but also developed into a key pillar of Esusu’s work. Supported by philanthropic partners, including Target and Acumen, Esusu provides users in need with 0% interest loans, to cover up to 3 months of rental payments, stave off eviction, and prevent homelessness.
 
Esusu’s solutions are not just good for renters. Landlords, who finance Esusu’s service by paying a $2 monthly fee per unit, benefit too. Esusu helps them drive on-time payments, since 70% of renters are more likely to pay on time when their payments are being reported. It also helps to lower eviction costs and makes landlords’ income streams more predictable, as the 0% interest loans are paid to landlords directly. On a non-financial level, Esusu provides landlords with a way to show their tenants they care for them, by helping their tenants improve their financial standing and lowering the risk of eviction. Finally, Esusu provides rental agencies with data-driven ESG metrics, showcasing their impact in areas such as prevented homelessness and improved access to credit.
 
Beyond renters and landlords, Esusu actively engages all other key stakeholders in an effort to transform the credit system. This includes the three major credit rating agencies, who benefit from Esusu’s data to help them price risk more accurately. Esusu has also found a partner in several state governments and some of the largest federal government agencies. To encourage its adoption, government-funded financial institutions Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have started sponsoring the $2 fee for landlords who have exposure to their loans. In addition, those agencies, as well as the Federal Housing Finance Agency, now accept rental payment data as part of their mortgage underwriting process. Through its work and vision, Esusu both helps these agencies better deliver on their mandate, while at the same time leveraging these partnerships to dismantle some of the inherently exclusionary aspects of the current system.
 
Finally, by filling a space that no one had managed to until now, Wemimo believes that Esusu is helping to significantly bolster the U.S. economy. The average U.S. citizen has around $100,000 in debt, primarily in mortgages. Therefore, bringing those 45 million people without credit scores into the credit system represents a multi-trillion dollar growth opportunity. As Wemimo says, Esusu’s work is not just creating social impact – it is fundamentally good for the U.S. and its economy.

The Vision
 
Wemimo staunchly believes in Esusu’s core premise: Where you come from, the color of your skin, and your financial identity shouldn’t determine where you end up in the wealthiest country the world has ever seen (or really, any country). However, despite recognizing the systemic inequalities that prevent this from being reality, he also fundamentally believes in the founding promise of the United States, as well as the idea of capitalism. As someone who grew up in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria, Wemimo sees the U.S. as the only country he could have possibly built a life this successful. Therefore, rather than trying to bring capitalism down entirely, he specifically wants to tackle the inequalities that the current system breeds and continues to uphold.
 
According to Wemimo, a new class of “justice capitalist” entrepreneurs is rising up to do just this: To make the United States more perfect and take it up on its promise of being a society where everyone can make it. In Esusu’s case, their role as a young, relatively small organization is to lead the way towards a more financially inclusive society. Through their work and partnerships, they enable much larger institutions like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which are notoriously hard to nudge, to follow suit. In addition, by showing that one can do well by doing good, these entrepreneurs are setting a new standard, which Wemimo sees as the only viable way to progress out of the current system.
 
Wemimo has an expansive, “the rising tide lifts all boats” mindset, where the path to closing the racial wealth gap is not through making those in privilege suffer, but rather through creating a more inclusive economy for those who are currently left out. Indeed, he recognizes that the way forward will need to include and empower everyone involved. He laments the fact that people in San Fransisco, New York, or Washington, DC talk about designing a better society, but don’t include people from rural places like Minnesota or South Dakota in their conversations. As someone who knows both environments well, he recognizes that what unites people is still greater than what divides us. Only by working together and having honest, empathetic, and compassionate conversations will we have a chance of jointly building a better society. Wemimo notably enshrined this perspective in the name of his company, Esusu, which is a Yoruba word for communal savings and credit groups and a nod to the famous African proverb “If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.” 
 
In addition to setting new standards of financial inclusion with Esusu, Wemimo is keenly aware of his role as one of the few Black people at the helm of a unicorn start-up. He has a unique understanding of the difficulties faced by founders who look like him, as he received a grand total of 326 rejections when trying to find investors for Esusu. He aims to amplify his ultimate success and kick the door open for other founders – stating that, until there are at least 100 Black-led unicorns, success has not been achieved.
 
Both Wemimo and his co-founder are deeply committed to achieving this vision. They view the venture capital environment as exclusionary and elitist and aim to demystify it for other founders. After they closed their $130 million Series B in 2022, they hired an outside consultant to help them tell the story of how they did it. The result is a free and publicly available playbook that explains, in layman’s terms and actionable detail, how the fundraising process works. In addition, Wemimo is very intentionally active on LinkedIn. Over the years, he has shared in great detail the story of how Esusu was built, as well as the struggles he dealt with and how he overcame them. His goal is not only to show people who look like him that it’s possible to achieve this level of success, but to inspire them to do even better. Wemimo aims to have the dream of Martin Luther King and the execution of Jeff Bezos, and also make it free, open-source, and available for anyone to improve upon.
 
The Person
 
Wemimo grew up in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, with his mother and two older sisters, after his father passed away when he was only two years old. His mother, who had lived in the U.S. in the 1970s but came back to Nigeria, strongly believed in the value of education, and used the income from her post office job to send Wemimo to one of the best high schools in the country.
 
In high school, Wemimo quickly found his entrepreneurial talent. Asking himself why his wealthy classmates got to travel to places like London in the summer, while he was stuck at the post office with his mother, he figured out a way to create value and get paid for it. As a day student, Wemimo bought Playstation CDs and Game Boy cartridges at the market and then sold them at a 300% premium to his boarding classmates, who couldn’t leave the school compound. By age 14, Wemimo made twice as much money as his mother, and he was able to pay for his SATs himself.
 
Like in high school, asking “why” is at the heart of each of Wemimo’s entrepreneurial endeavors, which have all been deeply personal to him. Clean Water for Everyone was his way of asking why so many people are still dying of dysentry and tuberculosis in a world this wealthy – like he himself nearly did as a child. Esusu’s mission is a direct result of his own experience of being denied a bank loan when coming to Minnesota with his mother and having to take a payday loan at 400% interest, as well as pawning his late father’s ring. With Esusu, Wemimo asks the question: “Why is this happening in the wealthiest country on Earth?”

Wemimo’s understanding of the answer to that question, rooted in America’s history of systemic racism and inequality, comes from both his personal experiences and his education. After his BS in Business Management at the University of Minnesota, he studied Public Policy at UC Berkeley and obtained his MPA in Non-Profit Management from New York University. His time at Berkeley, especially, gave him a deep understanding of U.S. history, and it was here he conceived of the idea for Esusu. After several more years of building professional experience – with Accenture, Goldman Sachs, and PWC – he left his corporate career to create Esusu full-time.
 
Being able to overcome more than 300 investor rejections is indicative of the unapologetic and uncompromising relationship Wemimo has with his vision for Esusu. He refuses to accept mediocrity or a status quo that isn’t working. As an entrepreneur, he believes he must be “jingoistic” about what he is trying to achieve and the impact he wants to have. He maintains that the day Esusu starts sacrificing impact for shareholder value will be the day he resigns from the company.
 
At the same time, while being steadfast in the “what” and “why,” Wemimo is highly collaborative and flexible when it comes to the “how.” Often invoking the saying: “It takes a village,” he is keenly aware of the need to collaborate with institutions that move slower than he’d like, as well as the responsibility he carries towards his investors and employees. He looks at his investors’ capital and confidence as a mortgage he’ll need to repay over time, and he actively builds a culture of gratitude and empowerment for the Esusu employees who help him do so. With his co-founder, Wemimo has agreed to always leave their egos at the door, as what they’re building together is greater than either of them. They can disagree amongst each other, as long as they fully support and commit to their mutual decisions in front of the rest of their team.
 
As a former kid from the slums of Lagos who built a unicorn start-up in the United States, Wemimo is driven by an endless optimism – about what’s possible in a more perfect capitalist America, about our ability to close the racial wealth gap, and about a future where a kid from South Dakota and a kid from New York City will recognize how much alike they are. His faith also continues to be an important driver for Wemimo, given the “against all odds” nature of his journey.
 
Apart from his optimism, Wemimo’s journey has also imbued him with a sense of responsibility to pay it forward, for example through sharing Esusu’s fundraising playbook. He is deeply committed to eradicating homelessness, being outraged at how common it is when he walks out of an investor’s multi-million dollar home in San Fransisco. Beyond working to keep people in their homes with Esusu and collaborating with United Way in Los Angeles, Wemimo has made a commitment to dedicate part of his future wealth to an eviction prevention fund, in case Esusu goes public or gets acquired. Wemimo is also passionate about art and making it accessible to everyone. Working with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, he aims to make its exhibitions more accessible and enjoyable for kids from places like South L.A.
 
Finally, despite his deep commitment to his work, Wemimo is a family man at heart. Until recently, he went by his last name, Abbey, as a way of honoring his late father. When he got married in 2022, he not only changed his name back to Wemimo, but also left Esusu’s home base New York City to support his wife’s career by moving to California. However, far from slowing him down, his move has only served to deepen his commitment to closing America’s racial wealth gap, one improved credit score at a time.

Wemimo Abbey has been a member of Ashoka's Entrepreneur-to-Entrepreneur Network since 2023.