The Kalder founder shares details about her journey and advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
When RCQ interviewed Gökçe Güven in 2022, it was clear that she was going places with her company Kalder. Kalder helps businesses strengthen their customer relationships through white label rewards programs that tap into a network of brands for partner rewards. In just over two years, Kalder is backed by $11 million in funding at a $35 million valuation. Güven was recently recognized for her achievements by making it on Forbes’s 30 Under 30 list.
RC truly shaped Güven’s journey: “Social Entrepreneurship with Aybike Öguz was life changing. Inspired by that class and as a soccer player on the RC Bobcats, I co-founded Girls on the Field Academy with Melis Abacıoğlu. I interned at Ashoka Foundation, followed Aybike Ögüz to events like Impact Imece, and immersed myself in social entrepreneurship. Mr. Carter’s business classes taught me the fundamentals. My programming class showed me how technology can build the future. Debate Society honed my storytelling skills—essential for founders. Mr. Hoovler’s Modern Novel class taught me to think radically. He’d say, "If you don’t present a radical idea, you’ll get a 50." That shaped my belief that entrepreneurs must be bold and unconventional, and fiction is the best source of inspiration to go out of the box. Everything I needed to become a founder, I found at RC.”
Before Kalder, Güven worked at fintech companies like Robinhood and Celo, where she saw firsthand how rewards and wallet ecosystems operate: “I realized that giants were turning their rewards programs into fintechs and asked, ‘Why can't every brand do this?’” From that question, it took a lot of work to create Kalder’s success: “The journey from pre-seed to today has been about staying close to early customers for feedback, iterating ruthlessly, staying true to the problem space and learning from failures.”
She has two pieces of advice for budding entrepreneurs in the RC community:
1.Always have a hypothesis—in life, career, or personal goals. Strong hypotheses are valuable because they’re either right or wrong. If you’re right, double down; if you’re wrong, iterate and improve. Don’t operate without a hypothesis because then you don’t know what you like or not—always have a goal or purpose.
2.Choose your category and join the best companies in that space. For example, if you want to be in fintech, identify the type of fintech that excites you, join the best Series A or B companies in that space. Work way more than expected, get close to the founders and best team members and get the projects that matter. This exposure will teach you what it takes to build a startup and you will naturally find an unaddressed problem within that space instead of trying to find a problem to solve in a vacuum. I came up with the first ideas of Kalder in Robinhood and took years to build hypotheses. Keep your eyes open to problems and people you are excited about on the way. I keep a list of the best people I want to work with and problems I am excited to solve in my notes app.
Published January 2025
