About Nook

About US

What Is Nook?

We specialize in building focused communities to build trust and enhance engagement by leveraging our Niche Experience Platform.

The entire banking industry is in the midst of exponential change fueled by new technologies. Consumers now make purchase decisions long before they walk into a physical branch location if they walk into a branch at all. At the same time, mobile banks, digital lenders, and fintechs have transformed traditional growth models rooted in legacy broadcast marketing and branch sales strategies. Top-tier banks and credit unions understand this and have been shifting their focus to building powerful online brands, specifically niche brands designed to engage consumers through helpful and entertaining content.

By partnering with us, credit unions get the benefit of their own niche brand strategy without sacrificing their existing brand. You no longer need a new brand, website, and technology stack to bring Niche Experiences to your members.

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Austin Wentzlaff is the Co-Founder & CEO of Nook and brings 10+ years of credit union industry, CUSO, and Fintech startup leadership experience.

Prior to starting Nook, Austin was the Founder and CEO of Fintech Accelerator, a consulting firm focused on bringing new technologies to the credit union industry, whose client list included CUSOs, RenoFi and Illuma, among other successful startups. Prior to founding Fintech Accelerator, he was the Chief Revenue Officer overseeing sales and marketing efforts at OnApproach, a CUSO acquired by Trellance in 2019. He has spent the entirety of his career in the credit union industry, where he has worked exclusively for Fintech startups from the earliest stages of growth through exit. Austin has extensive experience working with Fintech startups as an early employee (joining OnApproach, Illuma, and RenoFi all with less than 10 employees) and a key contributor, instrumental in their early success.

Austin is an alumnus of Gustavus Adolphus College, where he received a degree in Financial Economics.

Mark brings 10+ years of marketing experience with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services, software, and food/beverage industries. Mark has proven skills and results in inbound/content marketing, strategic planning, and event marketing. He recently worked as CMO for OnApproach, driving the inbound marketing strategy and establishing the company as the premier information and analytics solutions provider to credit unions.

He earned Bachelor's Degrees focused on Entrepreneurial Management and Public/Nonprofit Management from the University of Minnesota - Carlson School of Management.

Paul is the Founder, CEO, and Chief Investment Officer of Anasazi Holdings, LLC, which was founded in February 2019 after the sale of his Fintech SaaS company, OnApproach.

Anasazi Holdings is a Private Equity fund that is focused on making strategic investments in projects with strong investment fundamentals and a solid value proposition in targeted growth markets. The majority of the fund is currently focused on the acquisition and development of assets in the real estate industry, more specifically, the Short-Term Rental and Residential Multi-Family markets that are geographically diversified.

Prior to Anasazi Holdings, Paul was the Founder and CEO of OnApproach. OnApproach developed and patented middleware that enabled credit unions to integrate banking data from disparate systems and then normalize that data to a common standard necessary for analytics, aggregation, and machine learning. OnApproach quickly emerged as the market leader for data integration middleware to the point where the company was acquired in February 2019 by Trellance, Inc., based in Tampa, Florida.

Paul has a passion for business transformation and a track record of success. His experience spans multiple industries, including finance, energy, manufacturing, sensors, software, and for the last ten years, retail banking. He earned a business administration degree with honors from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, where he graduated in 1988.