Company leader
Itzik Cohen
Co-founder and CEO
PayZen
Itzik Cohen is co-founder and chief executive of PayZen, a San Francisco, California, company that offers patients interest-free payment plans for hospital and physician bills. He spent two decades in technology and consumer lending, including as chief business officer of Prosper Marketplace, before turning to medical debt.
Early Career at WebEx and Prosper
His early career included corporate development at WebEx, the video conferencing company, and he went on to found and run ClipSync, an interactive video platform that partnered with large media companies.
At Prosper Marketplace, the online consumer lender, he was chief business officer, responsible for partnerships, sales, and corporate development, and he oversaw its new lines of business, including loans for elective medical procedures.
Founding Beyond Finance
Data he saw at Prosper led him to found Beyond Finance, which uses automation to help consumers settle their debts. He found it "very hard to get all the creditors signed up for something, everybody agreeing on the same model," and noticed something else along the way: medical debt was the fastest-growing type of debt the company enrolled.
Starting PayZen
After selling his equity, he returned to San Francisco to study why patients could not pay their bills and started PayZen with Tobias Mezger, a colleague from Prosper who became its chief operating officer, and his chief technology officer from Beyond Finance. "We never charge interest, we never charge fees from the patients," he said.