Our story.
In 2023, the FDIC invited Derek to a conference he had never heard of: the Interagency Minority Depository Institution and Community Development Financial Institutions Bank Conference. He was running a fintech bank, serving many of the same communities that CDFI and MDI banks had served for decades, just from an entirely different direction. The challenge was to find out how the two types of institutions could work together. He knew no one in the room.
At the end of the first day a community bank president introduced himself, worked out Derek’s background in about thirty seconds, noted it was strange, but interesting, that Derek was there, then told Derek to follow him. That led to a birthday dinner with a dozen community bank presidents and a late-night jam session where the idea of Stitch was born.
A year later Derek left his bank to pursue Stitch. Dave had left his CDFI. Multiple mutual friends had been hearing the two tell the same story from opposite ends. Dave had spent years watching community lenders lose good borrowers to speed they could not match. Derek had spent years building that speed, but had a gnawing concern that too much human touch was being lost. The meeting was inevitable, and at a deli at 15th & 15th in Salt Lake City they went from introductions to building Stitch.
Dave had spent years watching community lenders lose good borrowers to speed they could not match. Derek had spent years building that speed, but had a gnawing concern that too much human touch was being lost.