Spinwheel is excited to welcome Michael Zheng to the team as our SVP of Finance & People to support the company’s next phase of growth. He is a seasoned operator with deep experience building and scaling Finance and Operations at high growth startups, helping companies scale effectively, and raised over $250M in capital. 

Prior to Spinwheel, Michael was SVP of Finance & Operations at CapIntel, where he built the Finance, People, and RevOps functions from the ground up, led the company to 4x growth, and supported multiple financing initiatives. Before that, he was the first Finance & Operations hire at Affinity, helping scale the company 30x in ARR, expand internationally, and raise $120M from leading venture firms. Michael is also a Venture Partner at F-Prime Capital, where he advises portfolio companies on Finance, Operations, and Scaling best practices.

We sat down with Michael to learn more about him, check it out!

What drew you to Spinwheel and this role?

It was the combination of a foundational problem — simplifying credit and debt for consumers — and a team that’s genuinely capable of solving it. 

Today, the consumer credit ecosystem is incredibly fragmented as many companies need to stitch together data, workflows, and payments in inefficient ways. Spinwheel is trying to reduce that complexity and become the connective tissue in this ecosystem.

From a role perspective, this is another opportunity for me to help build a strong G&A foundation and ensure Spinwheel is a repeatable and efficient business. That’s the part I enjoy most: bringing structure to growth and helping teams execute at a high level.

What excites you most about our mission to simplify the consumer credit ecosystem?

Spinwheel’s mission isn’t just a technical challenge but also about solving real friction in how people and lenders interact with credit and liabilities. 

Consumers want a clearer understanding of their financial obligations and better ways to act on them while lenders need faster, more reliable data to make decisions. When Spinwheel gets this right, we’re not just improving workflows but making credit easier to understand, more transparent, and more accessible. It’s a rare opportunity to build something that has real impact while also creating a durable business.

What’s your vision for the next chapter of growth at Spinwheel?

The next chapter for Spinwheel is about translating early wins into sustainable accelerated growth. Over the past few quarters, our team has shown that we can land high-quality enterprise customers while delivering innovative products. What’s become clear is that customers aren’t just adopting a single use case as they’re bringing us deeper into their workflows. In the future, our focus is on building a platform where each new capability compounds value across existing relationships — driving both growth and efficiency to become the default infrastructure layer in this space.

What trends in fintech and credit data infrastructure are you most excited about right now?

First, we’re seeing a huge shift toward real-time, API-driven infrastructure. The default expectation is moving from static data pulls to dynamic, actionable workflows where data, decisioning, and payments are all connected.

Second, it’s the emergence of AI as a workflow layer and not just an analytics tool. AI is enabling faster iteration, better decisioning, and more personalized experiences but this only works if the underlying data and infrastructure are clean and reliable. That’s where companies like Spinwheel become critical

What has impressed you about the culture at Spinwheel?

Our team has a great combination of high standards, low ego, and a sense of humor. There’s a clear focus on execution and accountability as everyone genuinely cares about getting things done in the right way. At the same time, there’s a strong willingness to collaborate and challenge ideas constructively, which is especially important in a space as complex as financial infrastructure. 

What is the best advice you ever received?

“Focus on the problem, not the noise.” In high-growth environments, there’s always new ideas, new challenges, and constant change but the ability to consistently identify what actually matters is critical. Afterwards, execution and constant reiteration is what drives great outcomes. It's simple advice but it’s shaped how I approach building teams, making decisions, and prioritizing where to spend my time.