Employee Spotlight: Denisha Kuhlor on aerospace engineering, her music industry newsletter, and the importance of consistency
Introducing Employee Spotlights! Get to know the Grasshopper Bank team during this series where we’ll ask personal and professional questions of our employees across the organization.
First up is Denisha Kuhlor from the Early Stage Tech team. Denisha joined Grasshopper back in October, coming from Silicon Valley Bank. She chats with us about her background in aerospace engineering, her interest in the relationship between musicians and their fans, and why she thinks consistency is so important for founders.
How do you explain to your family what you do?
I work with businesses in technology to get them set up with bank accounts and help them grow their business
Why did you decide to pursue a career in banking? And what did your journey look like?
I did not know I would be in banking. I originally started off studying nursing in college and I stumbled upon my first role in banking through a tweet on Twitter. I reached out and I’ve been in banking ever since. It kind of happened by accident but once I started it, I really liked it, so I stayed.
A stranger just asked you to describe Grasshopper Bank in one sentence…you say:
Grasshopper is a commercial bank that helps companies & their investors get further, faster.
Walk us through a typical day in your life.
No one day looks the same but there’s probably the same 3–4 things that I do each day. In the morning, I typically like to read and figure out what’s going on in the ecosystem and in finance more broadly. Then, I spend time making sure none of my clients have any fires and that everything is going smoothly on the banking side. Later in the day, I’ll check in internally with our banking team- our banking team & the early stage team. Post check-in, I’ll work on a project or initiative I’m working on. Later in the day I’ll have more calls w people in the ecosystem or clients.
Why did you join Grasshopper?
I joined Grasshopper because I wanted to play a role in helping companies and their investors do more, in some ways, with less. It’s been frustrating to see the technical debt that a lot of banks have and what the implications of the technical debt meant for the founders and people using their products. So, it was really exciting to help companies be able to grow faster with a digital platform and also maintain the human relationship.
What do you consider to be the most important thing you’ve learnt since joining?
That good things or great things are built with time and consistency. It can be easy and exciting to want to go do a bunch of things but the devil is really in the details- continuously iterating, looking at what works, what doesn’t work and improving upon that. That way, it allows you to see what you’ll keep or not keep. Without doing things consistently, you won’t even have enough feedback to know what you can keep and not keep.
What makes a good Relationship Manager?
That question assumes I am one (laughs). I’d say empathy. Putting myself in a founder’s shoes and thinking about what they can be going through at any given moment. Allowing that empathy to affect how I show up and what a relationship manager looks like. I think a lot about pre-COVID and getting to see founders I work with at the same event, or just getting to catch up and learn about what they’re going through in the different phases of their company. Having empathy for the founders I work with allows me to get to know them better and ultimately be able to work with them better.
You are an avid writer. Tell us about your newsletters and why you started them.
So I have two. My first one is Stan, which I’ve been writing for a little over a year now. It explores music technology and the intersection between fans and the artists that they love. I originally started writing Stan because I’ve always been interested in music and the business of music, more broadly. I wanted to study the dynamics of fan relationships and how it affects the bottom line for artists and people who have a vested interest in artists. The second {newsletter}, Friends and Family, which I launched more recently, is about helping founders get access to capital. I think so often we think about capital through venture funding or raising institutional capital but a gap that’s still really prevalent is the earliest days — getting the initial money to get your idea off the ground and perfect what that looks like. I think sometimes for a founder it can be discouraging to not have the $100k check instantly written or not have money that you can tap into. So, I wanted to think about it on a more weekly cadence — what are some more tangible things you could apply to and hopefully yield some cash from?
What advice do you give to founders most frequently?
I’m big on thinking about what the long term and short term journey is and balancing the micro and macro. I find that a lot of founders have a clear vision of the macro and what the company will be, but thinking about micro, and the steps they’ll take to get there and how, always seems a little less fleshed out. So a strong understanding of the direction, because even if it doesn’t work out — going back to consistency — it lets you have a barometer to test what’s working and what’s not.
What accomplishment (personal or professional) are you most proud of?
I went to high school for aerospace engineering. I didn’t like flying things that much but I definitely started to like it more and more. I ended up being able to fly (not by myself of course, there was a trained pilot next to me) but I got to fly a plane for 2 hours. It was really fun and it reframed how I thought about flying and about what I was learning and studying, in general. Now I have a drone which I don’t get to fly as much but I love to fly. I think it reframed how I thought about a whole area and I actually enjoyed it.
And to finish, here some quick 🔥 questions:
Most used app on your phone?
Twitter.
What’s your most used emoji?
💯
What is the last show you binge-watched?
Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You. It’s phenomenal. One of the best shows ever. I’m completely obsessed with it.
What are you reading right now?
I just finished Elaine Welteroth’s book {Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say)}. I really enjoyed it. It’s her memoir. She was the youngest Editor in Chief at Teen Vogue and the second black woman to be an Editor in Chief at Conde Nast. Her story was really interesting. I’m also reading Radical Candor, which I’m enjoying.
What’s your next vacation destination when things are back to normal?
I really want to go to Ghana again. As soon as the border opens up I might just go. Or probably Puerto Rico because I really love it there as well.
If you could have lunch with anyone, what would it be?
Clarence Avant. Netflix did a documentary on him. He’s known as “The Black Godfather”. It’s a fascinating documentary about how he stayed behind the scenes and connected people and was an advisor to all these influential people. He was a big part in getting Barack Obama to make a speech at the Democratic National Convention, which of course was a catalyst to him being looked at as a presidential contender. I just think he’s fascinating.
