September 5, 2023

As we get closer to the day when we have the multi-market software suite ready to launch, we've been putting in the work to ensure we find the right anchor client to go to market with first to help us get our legs underneath us. An anchor client like this should ideally meet certain criteria:

In 2018, my company had a marketplace with investors lined up, no borrowers and 60 days to close a deal or lose our equity funding. That scramble taught me the toughest truth about marketplaces: Getting both sides to believe in something that doesn’t exist yet matters more than the launch itself.

If you're building a marketplace from scratch, here's what you’ll likely face before launch, and what you need to know to make the market believe in your product.

August 28, 2023

As we head into Labor Day weekend and the last weekend of summer, I wanted to express how proud I am of each and every one of you for what we've accomplished not just this year but this summer alone. It's been an incredible few months and the pace at which we're getting things done (deals, releases, fixes, clients onboarded, investors acquired, and more) is at a level of which the company has never seen before.

August 21, 2023

We're not one to waste time, that's for sure. Fresh off our broker dealer approval, we managed to launch and close a new offering that simply wasn't possible before. Limited partnership (LP) interests in funds are the first of many new asset classes we can expand into, allowing our investors to become institutional investors in the truest sense of the word.

August 14, 2023

Finally, two years after we first kicked off the discussion around becoming a broker dealer, we officially have our application approved. To say this was a journey is an understatement - the amount of times we had to explain what we do, outline how our business operates, answer the same questions again and again, and then re-explain all over to another group who needed the same explanation but worded differently, was an exercise in persistence like nothing we’ve ever seen before.

August 7, 2023

Heading into our board meeting last week, there was cause for concern. AUM has been stagnant, we missed on our revenue targets as a result of the broker dealer delays, and software revenue still needs time to be realized. And yet the sentiment all throughout the meeting was one of optimism and momentum. There's an undertone of growth and opportunity that this company has not felt in years.

Private credit funds often use “volatility laundering” to make returns look smoother than they are. In this episode, I talk about why Percent decided to do things differently, what radical transparency looks like in practice, and how sharing the full story with investors has helped us build lasting trust and a stronger business.

July 31, 2023

Another quarter is in the books heading into our Q2 board meeting this week and we have a lot to be proud of despite the headwinds facing the business, from delays in broker dealer approval to challenges with getting more institutional capital on board. Despite all this, we managed to top revenue forecasts after backing out the broker dealer servicing fees. The acceleration from here, though, becomes all the more challenging.

July 24, 2023

Before this year, we had focused most of our efforts on acquiring accredited investors as we had a strategy that had proven itself effective through digital ad campaigns and other means to get them on board. As we had seen in the past though, in times of market volatility, accredited investors become more fearful and they tend to invest less or pull out altogether.

What happens when a capital markets pro pivots to product? In this episode, Kiley Lubeck and I discuss her journey from manually confirming allocations on a broken CMS to building tech that processes billions. We cover the brutal art of roadmap prioritization, why fintech PMs think like compliance officers, and how our biggest product wins came from solving our own worst pain points.

July 17, 2023

It’s been a fantastic few weeks for our marketplace as the volume of deals coming to market has been happening at a rapid pace. Credit to the Underwriting and Commercial teams that have been working on overdrive to clear out this backlog and pipeline that we have. In the past week alone, we’ve launched three new borrowers, one of which was with an inaugural underwriter, closed on one new deal with a new underwriter, and have likely two more borrowers on deck for next week, one of which is for another new underwriter. 

July 10, 2023

A bit of a departure from the usual weekly email but when Paul Graham (founder of Y Combinator, one of the top startup incubators in the US) writes something, it's usually worth pausing and taking the time to read. In his latest piece, "How to Do Great Work," he shares his perspective on what anyone needs to do to be successful in any field. Some key takeaways that were most impactful for me and directly applicable to what we're building here below:

I break down the absurdity of today’s private credit markets: no liquidity, no standards, no real price discovery. But I also talk about what comes next—and how real infrastructure could double the market and unlock access for 199,000 underserved companies.

July 3, 2023

Over the past week we've inadvertently stumbled into meetings with prospective underwriters who are intrigued by our value proposition for the white labeled solution. Discussions that were supposed to be about partnerships in some way shape or form have led to demos of the product.

June 26, 2023

The next few months will be incredibly exciting as we begin to push through key improvements on our own internal workflows, deliver on the first pass of multi-market functionality, and get real feedback from real beta clients who can give us the first glimpse to where we're headed and what we need to do next to provide a comprehensive software solution.