credit-card-rewards
(5)
John Taylor Garner and the price of a free trip
A points-funded holiday sent a Wall Street trader into travel technology. Now the Odynn founder is building the machinery that lets banks turn rewards balances into somewhere worth going.
Ken Book Keeps Turning Financial Obsessions Into Products
A Goldman internship taught him what he did not want. A credit-card hobby revealed what other people did. Ken Book’s founder story is really a lesson in noticing the questions that keep coming back.
Pointwise
Pointwise is a New York fintech that tells you which credit cards to get and when, so you stop leaving rewards on the table. Founded by Ken Book and Ben Litvin and backed by Y Combinator (W23), the free app connects to a user's existing cards, analyzes their real spending, and runs it against a live database of nearly 4,000 credit cards to build a personalized, math-driven plan for maximizing cash back, points, and sign-up bonuses over time.
Kudos
Kudos is an AI-powered smart wallet that tells you which credit card to use at checkout to squeeze the most rewards out of cards you already carry. Built as a free browser extension and mobile app, it supports 3,000+ cards across more than a million sites, layers on extra rewards through its Kudos Boost partner network, and keeps track of card benefits so members don't have to. Founded in 2021 by ex-Google Pay and Affirm product leaders, the Los Angeles company crossed 400,000 members and raised a $10.2M Series A led by QED Investors in 2024.
Tikue Anazodo
Tikue Anazodo is the co-founder and CEO of Kudos, the AI-powered smart wallet that automatically picks the best credit card for every purchase and layers on extra rewards. Born in Lagos and trained at Columbia, he built consumer payment products at Google and Affirm before launching Kudos in 2021 with Ahmad Ismail. What started as a browser extension is now a 'self-driving wallet' with over 200,000 users, $200M+ in annualized checkout volume, and $17.2M raised from QED, Patron, SV Angel, Max Levchin, and The Points Guy founder Brian Kelly.