Dara
Dara is a financial infrastructure company. We're building the rails that let immigrants bring their financial identity with them when they move to America.
The American Dream has a credit check. Every year, thousands of professionals leave Africa for the United States. Doctors. Engineers. Researchers. MBAs. They arrive with degrees, job offers, and years of financial history. None of it transfers. On day one, they are credit invisible. No score. No history. No way to rent an apartment, finance a car, or get a credit card without a cash deposit. The system treats a surgeon from Lagos the same as an 18-year-old with their first job.
This is not a policy problem. It's an infrastructure problem. The rails don't exist. We're building them.
The problem is structural
Credit systems weren't designed for mobility. FICO was built in 1989 for Americans who stay in America. It has no mechanism to recognize financial history from other countries – even when that history is verifiable, documented, and demonstrates years of responsible behavior. This isn't a bug. It's a gap in the infrastructure that no one has filled.
The cost of being invisible is enormous. Immigrants pay higher deposits, get denied housing, and spend their first year in America rebuilding trust they already earned. This affects their ability to work, live, and contribute to the economy that recruited them. It's a problem for immigrants, but it's also a problem for landlords, employers, banks, and the broader financial system.
We work with the system, not around it
Banks want to serve this market. Immigrants are among the most educated, employed, and financially responsible populations in America. Banks know this. The problem is they lack the infrastructure to underwrite someone without a US credit file. We're building the infrastructure that connects foreign financial history to American financial systems.
Credit bureaus need a reason to change. We're not asking Experian to rebuild their systems. We're creating the connective tissue that lets verified foreign credit history translate into something the existing system can recognize. We work with regulators, banks, and bureaus – not against them.
This is personal
I moved to America last year after building and running a venture-backed company in Africa. I had a decade of financial history: bank accounts, credit, employees, investors. When I landed in Dallas, none of it mattered. My first credit card required a $300 cash deposit.
I'm not unique. This is the default experience for every immigrant, including the ones America actively recruits. I'm building Dara because I lived the problem and I know it's solvable.
Join us
We're hiring engineers and operators who want to build something that matters.