Greenlight, an Atlanta company that offers debit cards and bank accounts for kids, is suing a former Facebook executive who recently began a job at rival startup Step, whose products serve a similar customer group.

Why should we care?
Jordan Nichols, a former Facebook executive, was Greenlight’s Facebook client partner overseeing marketing efforts via the social media platform. According to a court filing, Greenlight alleges that Nichols misappropriated trade secrets in violation of a non-disclosure agreement as he moved to rival Step as partnerships lead. As client partner at Facebook, Nichols was privy to sensitive information about Greenlight’s customer acquisition costs, product roadmap, marketing tech stack, performance metrics, and other trade secrets, Greenlight said. In addition, weeks before moving to Step, Greenlight alleges that in a Zoom meeting, Nichols asked the company’s chief marketing officer Rachel Hamilton “leading questions” about Greenlight’s business, priorities, pipeline, targets, and competitive response to Step. “Nichols has gathered sufficient information via the Greenlight Trade Secrets from Greenlight to essentially re-create Greenlight’s business model and successful marketing efforts at Step, a direct competitor of Greenlight in the parent and child sector of the fintech industry, without any of the expenditure, time or effort that Greenlight expended, which is irreparably harmful to Greenlight,” the filing said.