The Middleman Of Middle America

David Zalik never graduated from high school, much less college. But the numbers whiz could Do the math: making money from Both sides of a home renovation loan, without the risk of Defaults, can make you a Billionaire.

- Lauren Gensler

David Zalik pulls his black Mercedes SL550 convertible into the parking garage of an aging low-rise office building in the outer reaches of Atlanta and removes the baseball cap that shielded his balding head from the sun. “This is a less glam version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where nobody goes,” he warns me as we approach the entrance.

With that I become the first public witness to the long, irregularly shaped basement office where GreenSky, America’s third-most-valuable fintech company (after Stripe and SoFi), has been incubating in obscurity for the past decade. And it’s Zalik who holds the golden ticket: Last September, GreenSky raised $50 million at a $3.6 billion valuation. The 43-year-old cofounder and CEO still owns more than half of the company, shooting him well into the billionaire ranks.

His secret starts in the dimly lit labyrinth of cubicles, where employees with headsets pitch GreenSky’s simple-to-use mobile app to . . . home remodeling contractors. It’s an odd customer base for a fintech unicorn, but Zalik figured out that contractors are the gatekeepers of one of the great markets in America, homeowners, whom yet another tranche of the company’s phone reps are cajoling to catch up on their loan payments. Collecting money on time usually isn’t a problem, though: While GreenSky makes quickly approved, unsecured loans, it does so solely to borrowers with passable FICO scores, letting a slew of other online lenders chase the more marginal candidates.