Sahill Poddar is co-founder and chief executive of Parafin, the San Francisco company that embeds lending and other financial products into marketplaces and software platforms for small businesses. He grew up around small-business owners, trained as a particle physicist, and later led machine learning at Robinhood before starting Parafin in 2020 with Vineet Goel and Ralph Furman.
Physics and early tech work
He earned a PhD in physics through work connected to Heidelberg and CERN, where he contributed to the Higgs boson discovery. After research he moved into technology, including data science and revenue-growth work at Facebook, then machine learning leadership at Robinhood. That path left him with both experimental science training and hands-on experience building risk and underwriting systems for consumer finance.
Founding Parafin
He co-founded Parafin in 2020 to put capital, underwriting, servicing, and compliance behind the platforms small businesses already use, rather than forcing merchants through a separate lender. The company about page says Parafin has launched with partners including DoorDash, Amazon, and Worldpay, and has extended more than $25 billion in offers. Backers listed there include Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, GIC, Notable Capital, and Redpoint Ventures. On his Forbes Finance Council profile he ties the founding idea to watching small businesses struggle for financing.