How Petal founder Andrew Endicott proved alternative credit works, and what he’s betting on next

The credit industry is shifting how it evaluates borrowers. Traditional credit scoring has left over a billion people without access to financial services, but lenders are increasingly turning to alternative data—bank transactions, spending patterns, real-time financial behavior—to make more informed decisions about creditworthiness.

Andrew Endicott has been at the center of this shift. As co-founder of Petal, he pioneered what they called “cash flow underwriting”—using real-time bank data alongside traditional credit reports to approve people for credit cards who would otherwise be turned away. The approach worked: Petal raised nearly $1 billion, proving that alternative underwriting isn’t just better for consumers—it’s good business.

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After starting his career during the 2008 financial crisis, Endicott went to Harvard Law School, worked as a corporate lawyer, then moved into investment banking focusing on specialty finance companies. Around 2015-2016, he spotted the opportunity that became Petal and left his banking job to build what would become one of the most successful alternative credit companies of the last decade.

Now as co-founding partner at Gilgamesh Ventures, Andrew is investing in early-stage fintech companies across the Americas. The fund typically invests at the seed stage, putting in about half a million dollars into rounds of several million, with a particular focus on companies in the United States, Brazil, and Mexico.

In our conversation, Andrew shares the biggest hurdles Petal faced in the early days—from lack of FinTech infrastructure in 2016 to sophisticated fraud attacks that required constant innovation. He explains how alternative credit has evolved from a novel concept to mainstream adoption, and why he believes we’re entering a new wave of FinTech innovation distinct from the post-financial crisis era.

We explore Gilgamesh Ventures’ investment thesis, including their focus on companies solving compliance challenges, AI-powered financial services, and B2B marketplaces. Andrew provides insight into why he’s bullish on the Americas as a region for FinTech investment and shares his thoughts on emerging trends like stablecoins.

The big points

• • The catalyst for Petal: “I had a really good friend named Burke who actually also co-founded Petal with us, who’d come from Switzerland. He had all these amazing job offers and internships, and this guy was going to do financially well, it was kind of obvious. Yet him, in particular, he was this edge case for underwriting credit where you didn’t have any history.”

• • The power of bank data: “The biggest and best source of really signal in the financial system that was available, and I think still available today, to make those decisions, really is the information in your bank account. That information is very fresh. It’s updated constantly.”

• • Fraud as the biggest challenge: “The people that are committing fraud in the economy, particularly with financial products, are probably some of the smarter people out there… they never sleep. And you have to get it right every time. They have to get it right once.”

• • The current FinTech moment: “Three or four years ago, the number of ideas that were financeable was beginning to narrow… today, the pie has been completely rebaked, and everything is up for grabs.”

• • Investment approach: “We don’t want to be kind of the boring of kind of slow moving fund… We like to get in the trenches with people. We want to help in tangible ways.”

• • Compliance innovation opportunity: “A lot of the frustration of using any financial product is caused by these other forces… You can really kind of stiff arm that problem in a lot of ways, and make financial products delightful to use.”

Read the full transcript (for TS Pro subscribers)