SoFi Blog

Chiara McPhee and Jen Kessler are great friends and the owners of San Francisco-based Bizzy, a startup offering a state-of-the-art email marketing platform for ecommerce businesses in varied industries and stages. They each refinanced student loans with SoFi, and they’re members of our Entrepreneur Program, which not only allowed them to defer their student loan payments for up to 6 months, but also provides access to valuable mentors and investors. Read about how they grew their friendship into a business and made it past a near-crippling initial failure to success.

Launching a startup always feels somewhat risky. Launching a startup when you have student loan debt to pay? That can feel downright dangerous.

Elena Lucas knows the feeling well. Despite owing what she calls “Monopoly money” worth of college and graduate school debt, Lucas turned down a secure position with a large solar company to co-found UtilityAPI, a renewable energy software company. “It was a leap of faith,” she remembers, “but I had to give it a go.”

Name: Melissa Stanton

Locale: Norfolk, VA

Alma Maters: Michigan State University and Eastern Virginia Medical School

By Day: Physician’s Assistant

By Night: Marketing, Promotions, Accounting, Retail

SoFi Member Since: 2015

SoFi Savings: ~$12,600 on a 7 Year Student Loan Refi

Andrew Dietrich refinanced his student loans with us. Then he went through our Entrepreneur Program to help start Final. Within two days of launching their site last year, Final had 20,000 signups. Read on to hear how the idea came about, the challenges the founders have faced, and why it’s important to take advice with a grain of salt.

Conferences are typically filled to the brim with free stuff: fliers and posters and brochures that may or may not make it past the recycling bin on the way out. So earlier this month when we sponsored the Near Future Summit (a conference dedicated to world positive solutions), we thought, why not try something more meaningful?

We featured three SoFi members who are on a mission to change the world. Our intent: to donate $20,000 that would help them pay off their loans. In order to choose the winner, we had conference attendees vote for their favorite stories. Now, the results are in.