Cushion
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Cushion was a San Francisco fintech founded in late 2016 by Paul Kesserwani, a former Twitter employee. Its consumer app ingested users' bank transaction history, identified assessed fees, and negotiated refunds with banks on their behalf, taking a commission only on returned cash. It later expanded into a 'Plaid for buy now, pay later' system that connected users' email accounts to BNPL obligations, processing more than 30 million emails and over $300 million in BNPL loans, plus bill tracking and credit-building features. The company claimed $15 million in fee refunds secured for users and more than a million consumers onboarded.
02 / Cushion FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Despite bringing multiple new fintech products to market and raising $21.6 million in venture funding, Cushion never reached the scale needed to sustain the business. Founder and CEO Paul Kesserwani said the company failed to maintain sustainable growth and its financial performance was insufficient to keep operations afloat, leading to a wind-down at the end of 2024.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Operations ended
TechCrunch (30 Jan 2025): CEO Paul Kesserwani said on LinkedIn the San Francisco BNPL/fee-negotiation fintech was wound down at the end of 2024 after it did not reach the scale needed to sustain the business.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
In January 2025, founder and CEO Paul Kesserwani announced on LinkedIn that Cushion would shut down at the end of 2024 after eight years of operation.
- 02
The company had raised $21.6 million from investors including Afore Capital and Flourish Ventures; its 2022 Series A valued it at $82.4 million post-money.
- 03
No bankruptcy filing, asset sale or creditor recovery was reported; it was a voluntary wind-down.
- 04
The $21.6 million raised was venture funding, not a disclosed loss; no reliable loss figure, loss subject, period or basis was publicly disclosed, so no loss amount is recorded.