Kafene, a financing company that offers lease-to-own services to underbanked communities, announced it has appointed Jonathan Kurzner as its first Chief Revenue Officer. The company is also hiring, with several open roles across marketing, sales, product and more.
Kurzner has years of experience in leading and scaling businesses across a variety of industries. Prior to joining Kafene, he served as Chief Revenue Officer for research technology company Cint, presiding over the company’s $300 million commercial business and sitting on its executive committee. Before that, he led revenue and sales for Earnest Research’s financial services clients, and worked as a senior researcher at Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds.
Now, Kurzner is bringing his expertise to Kafene, which helps underserved consumers purchase expensive items like furniture and electronics through flexible payment plans. Consumers can get approved in minutes on Kafene’s website, with no credit score required. Kafene then buys the product they want on their behalf, and rents it back to them over a period of months. Once the user makes all the payments, they own the item.
Despite ongoing economic headwinds, Kafene recently surpassed $100 million in financing to consumers in less than three years, and the unit economics of its product are profitable, according to a statement from co-founder and CEO Neal Desai.
Kurtzner plans to help drive that growth even further.
“I’m incredibly excited to join Kafene, which addresses the clear and growing need for better forms of consumer financing in an innovative, affordable, and frictionless product that offers a rare win-win in business,” Kurzner said in a statement. “With a best-in-class product already in-hand, the next step for us is to fully build out an industry-leading service organization that is laser-focused on approaching and serving partners with care and dedication, making it easy to understand and realize the benefits of partnership with Kafene”
