Gowid’s Kim Hang-gi uses real-time data to open financing to startups without collateral

Gowid CEO Kim Hang-gi has built a financing business for startups without tangible collateral by using real-time cash-flow data to assess their finances. In an interview shared by EO Korea, he described how the company moved from putting up deposits equal to its corporate card limits to securing limits worth 20–25 times those deposits five to six years later.

Gowid now has about 4,000 corporate clients. Its approach rests on Kim’s argument that conventional lending practices, built around physical assets and financial statements published long after the period they cover, cannot adequately assess fast-changing technology companies.

For Kim, the opportunity lay in the gap between advancing technology and a financial system that had remained rooted in older practices. Finance’s fundamental purpose is to supply funds where they are needed, but the businesses needing that money have changed.

“Factories are now online,” he said. “Traditional financial institutions decide on loans based on collateral or buildings, but innovative companies often have no visible collateral.”

Kim said roughly 80 of the 500 largest companies in the United States were such innovative businesses. Yet, in his assessment, finance remained geared toward funding the factory-based companies associated with the Industrial Revolution, even as modern technology businesses operated online. That industrial shift was the decisive reason he founded Gowid.

Why year-old financial statements fall short

Kim identified the delay in financial data as a critical weakness in conventional assessments. Companies generally disclose their financial statements a considerable time after the end of the fiscal year, leaving lenders to make decisions using information that can be at least a year old and, in some cases, as much as two years old.

He illustrated the problem with a specific timeline: financial statements for 2025 would not become available until April 2026, while a decision made in January 2026 could still rely on statements from 2024. His argument was that year-old financial statements cannot accurately diagnose the current condition of an innovative company undergoing rapid growth or change.

Working with data engineers, accountants and other specialists, Kim developed an algorithm that uses a company’s joint authentication certificate to track cash flow in real time. The system retrieves corporate bank account transactions in a manner similar to MyData and uses them to create a cash-flow statement.

According to the account in the interview, Gowid built a system using at least 4,000 algorithms to map revenue, operating cash flow, investing cash flow and other financial information in real time, allowing it to analyze the financial condition of startups without collateral immediately.

Kim founded Gowid with the conviction that “if we could solve this technology’s blind spot, we could monopolize the market.”

A 10 billion won deposit to win card issuers’ trust

The technology did not make entry into the market straightforward. Startups’ financial structures could appear unstable, making established card issuers reluctant to work with Gowid. Kim had to demonstrate that the company could be trusted to manage the risk.

Initially, card issuers required Gowid to provide a 10 billion won deposit in exchange for a 10 billion won limit. In effect, Gowid would bear full responsibility for losses against the limit it received.

Confident in the market’s size, Kim committed the substantial deposits and launched the business. “We believed this market would grow,” he said.

Gowid’s account is that it progressively demonstrated its ability to manage risk through real-time data analysis. Five to six years after those early arrangements, card issuers now provide limits equivalent to 20–25 times the deposits Gowid puts up.

A corporate card as a 45-day financing tool

Kim describes a corporate card as a “45-day interest-free short-term loan product.” In that view, Gowid’s cards serve as more than a payment method: they help innovative companies maintain cash flow while managing operating expenses efficiently.

He explained that a corporation is a “legal person,” just as an individual is a natural person, and that understanding the flow of its revenue and expenses is central to assessing it.

Alongside providing financing limits to startups, Gowid sells advanced risk management systems to card issuers, diversifying its revenue model. When defaults occur, it also takes over a portion of the receivables to help minimize issuers’ risk.

The business thus seeks to act as a financial artery, using technology to channel funds to innovative companies that have fallen outside conventional financing.

From stock investing to startup finance

Kim brought nearly 20 years of experience as a securities analyst and fund manager to the venture. He began investing in stocks while at university and, during the IMF period, founded a stock-trading education company that he later sold in a deal worth 10 billion won.

He subsequently built his career in retail sales at Daewoo Securities, gained recognition as a top analyst and became a prominent figure in the financial market. The interview described him as someone who commits himself to an assignment until he reaches first place by society’s standards.

His performance during his securities-industry career earned him an annual salary of at least 1 billion won. At Gowid, he applied that financial experience to the problem of getting funding to companies whose value could not readily be measured through buildings, collateral or old accounts.

Source: EO Korea (YouTube)