# Salomon Serfati

> Salomon Serfati is the co-founder and CEO of Chariot, the New York fintech building payment rails for the $326 billion donor-advised fund market. Its flagship product, DAFpay, turned the clunky multi-step process of donating from a DAF into a three-click checkout button now live on over 100,000 nonprofit donation forms, from the American Cancer Society to GoFundMe, and was named one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2025. A University of Pennsylvania computer scientist and former BlackRock engineer who opened a separate 10%-of-income charity account with his first paycheck, Serfati turned a personal tithing habit into financial infrastructure for giving.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Chariot
- **Organizations:** Chariot, Forage, BlackRock, Myten / MyTenPercent
- **From:** Caracas, Venezuela
- **Nationality:** Venezuelan-American
- **Education:** B.S. in Computer Science, University of Pennsylvania, High school, Scheck Hillel Community School (Miami)
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads Chariot, building payment infrastructure for the $326B donor-advised fund market., Created DAFpay, named one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2025., Grew DAFpay to live placement on over 100,000 nonprofit donation forms, including the American Cancer Society, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and the University of Pennsylvania.

## Career timeline

- **~2016** — At age 18, co-built a roommate-matching app that reached 5,000+ users within two months.
- **2020** — Graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a computer science degree; President's Innovation Prize finalist.
- **2020-2021** — Worked as a backend engineer at BlackRock, building the team's first external API gateway server using mTLS and OAuth (earned an outperformance rating).
- **2021** — Founding engineer at Forage (Y Combinator S21); launched MyTenPercent, a banking app for charitable dollars.
- **2022** — Co-founded Chariot with Aaron Kahane and Drew Schneider; launched in March and joined Y Combinator's Summer 2022 batch; raised ~$4M seed.
- **2025** — DAFpay named one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2025; Chariot raised an $11M Series A led by Maveron.
- **2026** — Chariot launches its first full gift-processing platform for nonprofits, expanding beyond DAFpay.

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads Chariot, building payment infrastructure for the $326B donor-advised fund market.
- Created DAFpay, named one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2025.
- Grew DAFpay to live placement on over 100,000 nonprofit donation forms, including the American Cancer Society, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and the University of Pennsylvania.
- Raised an $11M Series A led by Maveron with Spark Capital, SV Angel, Y Combinator, and angels including Adam Grant and Angela Duckworth.
- Built BlackRock's first external API gateway server (mTLS/OAuth) and earned an outperformance rating.
- President's Innovation Prize finalist at the University of Pennsylvania.

## Latest updates

- **2025-10** — DAFpay named one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2025.
- **2026-01** — Chariot launches its first gift-processing platform for nonprofits, expanding beyond the DAFpay button.

## Links

- Website: https://givechariot.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/salomon-serfati-8ba836112
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/SalomonSerfati

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/salomon-serfati
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-06