Portrait No. 001
Sonia Nigam
CEO & Co-Founder
Change
Raised — $6M
My grandfather never finished high school but supported his family through a small electronics business in India that he built from the ground up. His entrepreneurial grit and generosity continue to inspire me every day. After starting my career as a software engineer at Braintree, I saw how technology could empower people to participate in financial systems that once felt inaccessible. When COVID-19 hit, my co-founder and I realized that the same infrastructure powering e-commerce checkout could also power the $450 billion giving economy still running on paper checks. We quit our jobs and built Change, a platform backed by NEA and Freestyle that embeds giving into the next generation of the Internet. Today, companies like Lyft, Mars, and the NBPA use Change’s payments APIs and legal AI to power millions in donations and automate compliance.
In her words
“We quit our jobs and built Change, a platform backed by NEA and Freestyle that embeds giving into the next generation of the Internet.”
Chapter I
The toughest challenges you've faced as a founder.
I left my software engineering job on March 13, 2020. My co-founder and I officially started Change three days later. Just after lunch, San Francisco announced shelter-in-place, throwing us into the complete unknown. I was remote and unproven, raising as a woman founder pitching a fintech company built on the belief that the next generation will shop differently. To get our first customers, we hit the streets of Hayes Valley and convinced local boutiques to join a pilot for checkout giving. We raised our pre-seed round and began integrating into online checkout, focused on making payments simple. A year later, we landed a major enterprise customer who challenged us to solve not just payments but compliance. Overnight, we lost them to a corporate restructuring. Instead of folding, we rolled up our sleeves and tried to unpack our customers’ compliance needs, uncovering a mountain of legal chaos behind charitable giving. That discovery became our breakthrough. We began automating the compliance filings every company needs to legally fundraise. Today, thousands of companies run donations through Change, powering millions to charity each month and automating thousands of state filings. We have raised six million dollars to date and built a team of seven.
Chapter II
Your vision.
Giving should be easy, transparent, and everywhere. Today, it isn’t. The space is opaque, riddled with fraud, paper checks, and outdated laws that make it hard for people and companies to give with confidence. We are building the infrastructure that powers generosity on the internet. If you want to help, you should be able to do so instantly and legally. Our vision is to double the global giving economy by removing the friction between intent and impact. We believe every dollar should reach the right place, in real time, with full transparency. Change makes that possible by automating the compliance requirements and money movement behind every donation.
Chapter III
The impact you want to leave behind — for your industry, your community, and the women who come next.
Thirty years from now, giving will be second nature. When the next natural disaster strikes, families in need will receive funds instantly. If you want to support a cause halfway across the world, you can do it without hesitation and see exactly where your money goes. Generosity will be built into every purchase, every brand, and every action online. Giving will be transparent, trusted, and growing because people know their dollars make an impact. Change will have doubled the global giving economy and fundamentally shifted how people give, turning it from something occasional into something effortless and universal.