SoFi Blog

We are excited to announce the 2018 class of SoFi Entrepreneurs! These ten companies stood out amongst the hundreds of incredible applications we received, representing a diverse set of industries, backgrounds, and big problems they’re trying to solve. We are excited to ride shotgun and help them all navigate their entrepreneurial journeys. Over the next ten months, we’ll devote our coaching and resources to helping each of these ten companies get off the ground, culminating in our Demo Day in October:

By John Foley, CFP®

As you’ve no doubt read in the news, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 is about to become law. And while the bill contains over 500 pages of changes to the tax rules for corporations, privately held businesses, and individuals, what you’re probably wondering most is: How will the tax plan affect me?

There are three big changes in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that will impact most individual taxpayers:

1) New income tax brackets with lower rates for most taxpayers

2) A higher standard deduction—$12,000 for single filers, $24,000 for married filing joint

3) A $10,000 limit on the combined deduction for state and local income and property tax (and that’s the same whether you’re single or married)

While you can’t change the rules, there are things you might be able to do to potentially lower your overall tax burden this year and next, namely, shifting certain deductions into 2017 and certain income into 2018. But the clock is ticking: These provisions are expected to go into effect on January 1, 2018, so December 31 is the last day you can do anything that impacts your 2017 taxes.

Here are a few important actions you could take before the new tax bill kicks in. Ask your tax preparer if they are right for you.

First of all, congratulations to recent MBA graduates! Many members of the SoFi team have been in your shoes and we know the sense of accomplishment you feel when you finally earn your MBA. While the journey of higher education has come to an end, the journey outside of graduate school is just beginning. For many, the top priority is now to find or a job and to pay off any student loans that you may have accrued.

by Jing Liao, Chief Human Resources Officer

This year’s events at SoFi have served as a stark reminder about the importance of company culture. Since September, our board and leadership team have been taking a hard look at SoFi’s culture—and we have identified several areas for improvement. To address those areas, we have launched an initiative called “One SoFi” to work together to define the culture and values we want to embrace as a community across our nearly 1,300 people and seven offices.

We began the initiative with a company-wide survey to assess the present state of our culture, recognize our strengths, and identify opportunities for improvement. We had extremely strong participation across the company, with 81 percent of employees taking the survey. Once the results were compiled, we held discussions on the issues raised amongst leadership, across teams, and together as a company.

Interest in cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoin, has taken off like a rocket in the last 30 days, spurred largely by the precipitous spike in Bitcoin’s price. While the interest is driving conversation, we feel there hasn’t been enough advice offered to individual investors of how to both make sense of the cryptocurrency boom and to make a decision on whether buying any is a good idea.

Bitcoin is network software that facilitates the secure exchange of digital tokens–called Bitcoins–among anonymous users of the network, anywhere in the world. This New York Times article explains how it works. Other cryptocurrencies work much the same way.

Cryptocurrencies act in some ways like actual currency and can be used to buy a limited number of things, but they are not created by or backed by any government. The full faith and credit of the US government stands behind the dollar. Bitcoin is not backed by anyone. It is hard to create more of most cryptocurrencies, so the interest in them has created demand that is difficult to match, and this has driven up their prices.