Crux is thrilled to welcome Kate Karas as the newest member of our Board of Directors. Kate is a seasoned fintech executive and trusted strategic advisor with more than 15 years of leadership experience in financial services. As the first General Counsel of Chime Financial, she helped guide the company through a complex and closely scrutinized regulatory landscape. She also built the company's first government relations and public policy functions and oversaw a variety of departments — playing a key role in Chime’s growth to a $25 billion valuation.
Kate recently sat down with Crux’s Head of Growth, Emily Hughes, to discuss her professional journey, why she decided to join Crux’s board, where she sees the company’s biggest opportunities, and more. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Emily Hughes: Thank you for the time today, Kate. Can you tell us a bit about your professional journey? What led you to focus on helping forward-looking companies scale in highly regulated industries?
Kate Karas: First, thanks so much for this conversation. Eager to connect with you and rap about all things Crux.
I started my career at a law firm doing financial counseling for big banks. I loved the creativity and promise of financial products and their ability to reflect and respond to the specific needs of a group. And while people often don’t speak fondly of their law firm days, I loved every second – working on a team, high-intensity projects, and smart and generous mentors all made me energized. Over time, though, I found that I wanted to be closer to the folks that were doing the building and defining the future. So I followed my nose to ProFounder, a six-person startup.
ProFounder was in the crowdfunding space back when Google used to skeptically correct the word when I typed it (“did you mean crowd fun?”). The JOBS Act had not yet passed and entrepreneurs were still looking for better ways to seek support for their small businesses from their communities. There, I discovered how critical it is to understand regulatory gray space to carve a path for products and services that are needed but missing from the market. I am deeply pro-regulation and pro-regulator. They protect the markets and enable durable ideas to thrive and consumers to flourish. I found and find it fulfilling and meaningful to try to channel the intent of existing rules and guidance and apply those lessons to new spaces where regulation is absent or still developing. ProFounder didn’t make it, but the experience was one of the very best of my career. Shoutout to those founders — still some of my favorite humans.
After ProFounder I spent some time in fund formation, digital assets, trading and markets, and consumer lending and investing. And then I went to Chime, a payments company where I was general counsel. It went public in June.
What I tend to love? Great people, tough problems, and complex environments in which to solve them. People view regulation as a constraint, but I think of it differently — as a tool. It provides scaffolding to build things. I've run toward highly regulated spaces my whole life, and imagine I will continue, in new spaces, to do that.
EH: Crux similarly came out of new legislation, and then a great deal of guidance and change came afterward. Is that part of what excited you about the company? What else drew you to be on our board?
KK: In order of attraction, the really honest answer is that the people drew me to Crux. I can't describe to you how meaningful it is to connect with people like Allen and Alfred. They are professionally visionary and interpersonally invested. They are hungry and humble. They have clarity, candor, and connection to purpose and people.
And honestly, it’s not just them. Crux has a differentiated team, differentiated leadership, and differentiated investors — that whole circle of people is what makes the company so special. You can feel the alignment and trust; everyone’s pulling toward the same mission. It’s rare to see that kind of clarity across every layer of a business.
I also find that the vision for the company is one I feel deep resonance with and connection to. I like working on a hard problem. But, like most of us, I am most amped for hard problems that elevate humanity when progressed or solved. I am blown away by how much this incredible group has already accomplished — building the strongest market intelligence in the space, executing more than 100 deals on the platform, and assembling the largest network of active participants. That kind of track record shows trust from stakeholders, credibility in the market, and unlimited impact on the world. I am eager and anxious to see Crux’s mission advanced and the brilliant minds powering that advancement supported, encouraged, and enabled. I can’t think of anything more important right now.
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EH: In building companies — particularly financial service companies — in the absence of clear regulation, what are the biggest challenges that crop up? What advice do you have for us about navigating those landscapes?
KK: It's a great question. Fortunately, there’s a really straightforward answer: invest in building trust. Be credible. Be reliable. Be transparent and candid. And surface your self interest so that it can be addressed alongside others’.
When you do this — as an individual or company — you build some antibodies to the skepticism that often arises about the intent or the potential impact of novel products and ideas. Where regulations are unclear, inapplicable, or developing in a space, regulators and advocacy groups worry about unintended harm at best and the consequences of bad actors at worst. Being a known and trusted brand is critical in those moments. It allows honest discussion, commercial progress, and stakeholder alignment.
The flip side of that same coin is one other nugget of advice I’ve received over time: avoid the warm comfort of defensiveness and tribalism when confronted with naysayers, doomers, question-askers, and skeptics. You know the advocacy groups that are worried about unintended impacts and the regulators that are eager to protect consumers? Listen to them — they are giving you a well-researched pre-mortem that you can use to build better products that won’t introduce unintended reputational and business risk.
Companies can be strategic and active in pursuing relationships with outside stakeholders. This doesn’t mean that it’s something to prioritize the day after you incorporate your startup: when you have two people and one computer, that's probably not the time to engage regulators, policymakers, and the press. But it is a reality that one of the privileges of success is attention from outsiders. So, before your website goes down or a vocal, angry customer takes to social media or a thorny policy question arises, make sure you have introduced yourself to the outside world and let people know your intentions, your openness to collaboration (if you are open), your “rising-tide-lifts-all-boats vibe” (if that is your vibe), and your capacity and willingness to engage non-consensus thinking (if you do have that willingness).
One mistake I see companies make is thinking that they can get to IPO by just keeping their heads down. If you’re lucky enough to be successful, the outside attention — positive or negative — will come. And at that point, the question will be who gets to tell your story — you, because you’ve laid the groundwork, or skeptics, because there’s an absence of information and trust. Get out in front of that — create those relationships in a productive way in advance.
EH: Putting on your lawyer hat for a moment, lawyers are an increasingly key partner for Crux. Broadly, why do you think their role is so critical in energy project finance? How can Crux best engage them to build and streamline transactions together?
KK: Lawyers are the absolute best. Don’t let jokes about us fool you — we’re a delight. Some people view lawyers as nay-sayers and impractical anchors on the funship of growth and business success. I imagine there are some lawyers that fit that description, but a good lawyer is the opposite. They’ll amplify the business’ moat and success.
A lawyer's fundamental job is three things: drive growth, protect against events and outcomes that could derail the business, and make sure the company is run at a level of maturity that matches its age and stage. Energy project finance is a highly regulated, highly complex space with sophisticated participants. Growth, durability, and operational maturity really can’t be achieved without them at the table. I’m impressed by how adeptly Crux identified the value lawyers bring to its space and how effectively the tools and platforms it has developed have unleashed lawyers to do their highest and best work.
To go one step deeper here, consider the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB). Lawyers are the folks that can tell developers how to get to commence-construction certification and the best ways to benefit from the highly complex rules and regulations, and they can give insight and cutting-edge intelligence (with the aid of Crux’s intelligence tools) on market-standard deal terms to drive more rapid deal-close. They help you make sense of diligence — to know what matters and what doesn’t. And the lawyers that work with Crux are not only the leading experts in this space, they are also the ones driving the whole space forward — using tools and technology to increase the quality of each of their clients’ outcomes and manage their clients’ costs. The lawyers Crux sees on its platform truly act as partners to the end client. It’s an exciting dynamic to observe.
One last note on this. I’ve been impressed by the exponential increase in outreach to and collaboration of law firms with Crux — it’s not theoretical. The webinars, content, feedback on transaction documents — all of it shows how seriously the company takes its partnership with firms and how ready the lawyers at each firm are for tools that increase the quality, speed, and breadth of their practice. The new Legal Select program is another great step, connecting top-tier firms with the right projects and clients in a way that makes the whole ecosystem stronger. I can’t wait to see how this program continues to grow and evolve.
EH: Crux focuses on making transactions more efficient, intelligent, and standardized, which fits naturally with AI. But as a heavily regulated financial industry, we face legal and policy complexity. How can those realities come together, and where could Crux best apply AI within them?
KK: I think there are phenomenal opportunities for AI where complexity and repeatability are high. And, of course, extreme complexity and highly commoditized work are present in financial and energy markets. The nuts and bolts of transactions — diligence checklists, document collection analysis, surfacing of red flags — AI has the potential to introduce a step-function change to the speed and quality of each of those undertakings. That’s especially so with a human-in-the-loop model, where AI generates, based on a user’s particular circumstances, the kinds of diligence they need to collect tailored to their institutional knowledge or experience. Each participant will be able to focus quickly, precisely, and with context on the areas of diligence or data of specific importance to them, curated quickly for them with an analytical second set of “eyes.” Here, then, I think AI will supplement and enable rather than replace.
And that’s exactly what Crux’s platform continues to build — technology, increasingly supported by AI, that makes this market more liquid, efficient, and intelligent.
EH: Perfect segue into the next question — this industry has operated in one way for a long time, and we come in with this tech platform that’s very disruptive, but, at the same time, we complement it with white-glove service and more advisory capabilities. How have you seen companies do both successfully, particularly in very complex environments?
KK: Another great question — how to make technology and high-touch service complement one another. The companies that seem to do the best are those that segment customer needs most effectively and precisely. Many tasks are happily, even preferably, done on-demand, on the timeline and schedule of the customer, amenable to tinkering and adjusting inputs and models. This kind of work is the right kind of work to uplevel through technology and tooling.
There’s another kind of work — the kind where industry expertise is crucial, trust matters, potential blind spots or complexities in data exist, or individual circumstances and needs are unique. For that kind of work, having a partner that is deeply immersed in the craft is critical. The singularity is reached when that partner and that tool work together — the former with tailored insights leveraging the latter for the most robust, efficient, successful outcome. I’ve seen that relationship play out time after time, and it’s the one Crux is showing itself to be a leader in creating.
EH: What unique perspective are you hoping to bring to the Board and to Crux?
KK: I'm a lawyer, a policy person, and a product builder in highly regulated spaces. And I am deeply relational — interpersonal dynamics matter a lot to me. Those are my specialties, and I hope to offer expertise in those areas. But the qualities I hope to bring to the Board, more than any tactical skill, are energy, enthusiasm, and human authenticity to the people behind the mission. I hope to emphasize the lived human experience and contribute to making it a rich, connective, and fulfilling one at Crux.
On the more personal front, and being a bit vulnerable here, I have some tactical goals, as well. I hope to avoid feeling the need to speak when others do. I’d like to seek to understand before seeking to be understood. And I hope to bring vulnerability and authenticity to group and one-on-one discussions. In my experience, the journey of leadership is wonderful, growthful, painful, unsettling, and rewarding. I really want to normalize the ups and downs. That's the thing I feel most juiced about. Leadership isn’t an Instagram highlight reel — the pain associated with it and personal transformation is wonderful and growthful and really hard. I hope to be available and helpful in the moments Cruxtaceans find themselves on any part of that journey.
EH: What are the biggest opportunities for Crux in the next few years?
KK: There are so many, I can't even name them. I believe that Crux will be a generational company. The world never changes as much as you think it will in the next one to two years, but it always changes way more than you think it will in the next 10. If you look at the unbelievable progress Crux has already made in a couple years, imagine the next several! The goal has always been to be the one-stop shop for clean energy and manufacturing finance. With the debt marketplace as the second product launch and tax and preferred equity also going live this year, Crux is iterating fast and well on its way. That’s incredible momentum for a company this early, and they have only just begun. The world of potential feels very unbounded.
I'm so thrilled to rely on Alfred and Allen and their clarity of vision. They have purpose, vision, and know-how and lead a company that elevates humanity. A company with this level of opportunity is rare, and I am elated to join them to run after it.
EH: This has been fantastic. Thank you for the time, Kate.
KK: Absolutely! Talk soon.
