Paul Ricci has gone from seasoned start-up man to the top executive of one of the fastest-growing companies in Delaware.
The Best Egg CEO first came to Delaware in 2000 to work for the internet bank Juniper. At 26 years old, it helped chart the course for the next four start-ups he joined over the years. Juniper was eventually bought out by Barclays where Ricci worked for a few years, but he still remembers it 25 years later.
“You had to rally and get things done, and that was with curveballs like the dot-com bubble burst and 9/11,” Ricci said. “You saw so many moving pieces and it’s being exposed to the entire business in a way you couldn’t be at a more established business. You did whatever needed to be done, no matter what area you worked in.”
Ricci’s vantage point from the first man in on many companies have served him well at Best Egg. In 2024, the company reached $30 billion in personal loan originations and added a cash-out refinancing option to vehicle equity loans.
The financial tech company has also gone all in on its unsecured personal loan business under Ricci’s leadership, with establishing partnerships with AB Carval to grant $1 billion in funding to offer more vehicle equity loans and $500 million purchase facility from Fortress and Edge Focus.
After a few years at start-ups like Energy Plus and Epic Research, Ricci became one of the first 11 employees at Best Egg in 2013. By that point, Ricci believed his role was to build the strongest start-up he could — from the fiscal side — to be eventually bought out or continue on under other leadership.
After serving as Best Egg’s chief financial officer for a few years, he was tapped to become its next leader after the company’s founder Jeffrey Meiler.
“Filling those shoes was a lot, but it turned into me thinking, ‘it’s not just about managing the balance sheets and investments. It’s about managing external stakeholders and employees?’” he said. “Those were skills I had to continue to develop, and it’s a muscle you have to build. I’d say that’s the most important lesson.”
One of the prime challenges Ricci had to face head on as CEO was working to focus the company. Best Egg started to scale back on some offerings while focusing on personal loans, leveraging analytics and risk management to do so. Back in 2023, Ricci was also facing strong financial headwinds with the economy and inflation, but he opted to focus on returning to the core business – and found that clear communication helped rally the organization around one mission.
“If you communicate what’s most important really clearly and bring the organization around it, you know you can get there. That’s what really built our momentum,” he said.
