Fintech For Creatives: Willa's Plan to Expand Banking to the Nation's 60 Million Freelancers

Bernard Mendez
Bernard Mendez is an editorial intern at dot.LA. He attends UCLA, where he is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics. Mendez was previously an editor at the Daily Bruin, the student newspaper at UCLA.
Fintech For Creatives: Willa's Plan to Expand Banking to the Nation's 60 Million Freelancers
Photo by Andre Taissin on Unsplash

For freelance workers, getting paid is anything but certain. That's especially true for social media influencers who can wait weeks or months for the checks to come in, if they get paid at all.

Fintech company Willa promises to make the payment process simpler and more reliable for creators.


Targeted toward established social media influencers, Willa's IOS app pays gig workers immediately after they file an invoice, in exchange for a 2.9% transaction fee. It's one of several emerging fintech companies that are challenging the old ways of banking.

Services like PayPal also offer semi-automated invoicing tools for freelancers, but unlike PayPal, Willa pays creators directly and immediately, sidestepping the wait time and taking on the risk if a contractor doesn't dole out cash.

Other fintech companies offer advances on paychecks that help strapped workers cover the financial gap.

"There's so many things that just don't work for creators today that we want to solve," said CEO and co-founder Kristofer Sommestad.

Users can join Willa by applying through the company's app, though it may take a while. The company already has a waiting list of over 150,000 freelancers.

Sommestad declined to comment on the exact criteria Willa uses to accept users, but said the services are tailored to creators who make money primarily off brand collaborations and users who have an average of more than 30,000 social media followers.

The company — which is headquartered in Los Angeles and Stockholm, Sweden — announced on Wednesday it raised an $18 million Series A round, bringing its total funding to $21 million. The round was led by FinTech Collective and included Entrée Capital and EQT Ventures.

Created by some of the early members of the Spotify team, the founders want to expand its user base beyond social media influencers to the broader freelance market.

There are around 60 million freelance workers in the U.S., and that figure is only expected to grow. By 2027, about half the U.S. workforce is expected to take on some freelancing work, according to Statista.

Sommestad said Willa is also considering offering other financial services, like credit or lending, to creators. That's because creators — with their multiple contract gigs — often can't get loans or other services from traditional financial institutions which look for a single employment history, he said.

"I think there's a big opportunity and a need for someone like us to come in and be on their side ... and actually create services that are adapted for their needs," Sommestad said. "If you go to the bank and want to get a good mortgage to buy a house, [banks] don't really trust [freelancers] because you haven't held a proper job, from their perspective, ever."

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The Impact of Authentic Storytelling. LA Latino/a Founders and Funders Tell All

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

The Impact of Authentic Storytelling. LA Latino/a Founders and Funders Tell All
Decerry Donato

As one of the most diverse cities in the world, Los Angeles is home to almost 5 million people who identify as Hispanic or Latinx. Yet, many feel they still lack representation in the city’s tech space.

“I can safely say that last year’s LA tech week hosted all of the events on the west side, and very few were focused on telling Latino and Latina entrepreneurial stories,” said Valeria Martinez, investor at VamosVentures. “We wanted to change that this year.”

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LA Tech Week Day 3: Social Highlights
Evan Xie

L.A. Tech Week has brought venture capitalists, founders and entrepreneurs from around the world to the California coast. With so many tech nerds in one place, it's easy to laugh, joke and reminisce about the future of tech in SoCal.

Here's what people are saying about day three of L.A. Tech Week on social:

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LA Tech Week: Female Founders Provide Insights Into Their Startup Journeys

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

LA Tech Week: Female Founders Provide Insights Into Their Startup Journeys
Decerry Donato

Women remain a minority among startup founders. According to Pitchbook, even though women-led startups in the United States received a record $20.8 billion in funding during the first half of 2022, U.S. companies with one or more female founders received less than 20% of total venture funding in 2022. U.S. companies solely led by female founders received less than 2% of the total funding.

The panel, titled Female Founders: Planning, Pivoting, Profiting, was moderated by NYU law professor Shivani Honwad and featured Anjali Kundra, co-founder of bar inventory software Partender; Montré Moore, co-founder of the Black-owned beauty startup AMP Beauty LA; Mia Pokriefka, co-founder and CEO of the interactive social media tool Huxly; and Sunny Wu, founder and CEO of fashion company LE ORA.

The panelists shared their advice and insights on starting and growing a business as a woman. They all acknowledged feeling pressure to not appear weak among peers, especially as a female founder. But this added weight only causes more stress that may lead to burnout.

“The mental health aspect of being a founder should not be overshadowed,” said Kundra, who realized this during the early stages of building her company with her brother..

Growing up in Silicon Valley, Kundra was surrounded by the startup culture where, “everyone is crushing it!” But she said that no one really opened up about the challenges of starting your own company. .

“Once you grow up as a founder in that environment, it's pretty toxic,” Kundra said. “I felt like I really wanted to be open and be able to go to our investors and tell them about challenges because businesses go up and down, markets go up and down and no company is perfect.”

Honwad, who advocates for women’s rights, emphasized the value of aligning yourself with people with similar values in the tech ecosystem. “[Those people] can make your life better not just from an investment and money standpoint, but also a personal standpoint, because life happens,” she said.

Moore, who unexpectedly lost one of her co-founders at AMP Beauty, said that entrepreneurs “really have to learn how to adapt to [their] circumstances.”

“She was young, healthy, vibrant and we've been sorority sisters and friends over the past decade,” she said about her co-founder Phyllicia Phillips, who passed away in February. “So it was just one of those moments where you have to take a pause.”

Moore said this experience forced her to ask for help, which many founders hesitate to do. She encouraged the audience to try and share their issues out loud with their teams because there are always people who will offer help. When Moore shared her concerns with her investors, they jumped in to support her in ways she didn’t think was possible.

Kundra said that while it is important to have a support group and listen to mentors, it is very important for entrepreneurs to follow their own thinking and pick and choose what they want to implement within their strategy. “At the end of the day, you really have to own your own decisions,” she said.

Kundra also said that while it is easy to turn to your colleagues and competitors and do what they are doing, you shouldn’t always follow them because every business is different.

“When I was in the heat of it, I kind of became [a part of] this echo chamber and that was really challenging for us,” Kundra added, “but we were able to move beyond it and figure out what worked for us [as a company] and we're still on a journey. You're always going to be figuring it out, so just know you're not alone.”

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