About His Business & Career: Jason Wilk is the CEO at Dave, a banking app that protects its customers from overdraft fees by offering them advances on their paycheck to be reimbursed on pay day. Wilk has experienced firsthand what it is like to be struggling to pay your bills only to get hit with overdraft fees, effectively kicking you while you’re down. That is why he created Dave, which maintains the mantra: banking for humans. Dave also offers a number of other services to support its customers in their financial life, such as budgeting help, credit building, income creation and more.
Why He Made the Worthy 100: Wilk saw that big banks were (and are) taking advantage of their customers by treating them like machines rather than humans. That is why he created Dave—to protect the interests of everyday people and offer them a system that allows for human error without penalty. Wilk told the Los Angeles Business Journal that he does not hate big banks because he understands that they need to use their model in order to make a profit, but he believes that there is a better way. Managing personal finances can be an intimidating endeavor for many. However, with apps like Dave that believe in banking built on compassion and are committed to transparency, protecting their customers and finding innovative ways to solve problems, it doesn’t have to be.
Industry: Finance/Tech
Year Founded: 2016
Headquarters: Los Angeles, Calif.
