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.

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:

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.

June 20, 2023

As we've built up 4 years of track record and knowledge about how private credit transactions work from start to finish, we've been able to whittle down one by one all the major tasks that we have had to do manually. Whether it's chasing down signatures for subscription documents, confirming investment requests, sending out compliance attestations, the list is lengthy but these were all the things we knew we had to build in order to run an efficient and effective marketplace.

June 12, 2023

It's an interesting time in technology as we've seen AI come at full force to the point where it almost feels like that's all anyone can talk about. To its credit, it has done an incredible job at bringing a sense of wonder as we are in awe at its potential. Still, we're very much in the early innings and it's a technology that has delivered uneven results.

June 5, 2023

Building a company with longevity can often be compared to getting a massive freight train to move. You’re adding cars to the train by building all the components of the product and you’re priming the engine by putting in place all the operational structures it takes to scale. Every little win, every small success, and the gears start to turn but it’s still slow going early on. The train crawls forward inch by inch and all the effort being put into it doesn’t seem to compare to the results.

May 22, 2023

It's been a long road to get here and I recognize that the path itself has been difficult. We were forced to make hard decisions, rein in our spending, and oftentimes that has led to us having to change our culture to adapt to the new normal. While we've been able to hit the ground running this year with an incredibly strong start, we've also ended up losing some of what makes our team tick.

May 15, 2023

Today marks an important milestone in our company’s life. Five years ago to the day, we officially incorporated ourselves in our small office in Tribeca that we shared with a few other companies. Five years later and I could have never imagined we’d be what we are today.

May 8, 2023

As we've been wrapping up the last remaining items for the Series B, we've seen palpable demand from so many investors who were forced to be left out. In market conditions that are more favorable, it's normal to just leave the demand as is and prime them for the next round of financing. In times like this though, it's never a bad idea to pad the war chest and prepare for the what ifs that could happen in the coming quarters ahead.

May 1, 2023

Companies are defined by key milestones in their history where their business evolved and took the next step towards their future. We've had many in our past, the most recent of which was our shift towards taking a step back away from underwriting our own deals and pushing for every new borrower to be paired with an underwriter starting in January of this year.

April 24, 2023

And that's that. We're done. We've successfully closed on our Series B. There's of course still a few administrative items to get to the finish line but all the commitments are in and ready to be signed for and wired. Amazingly enough, we were actually oversubscribed, with several groups this past week trying to figure out how to squeeze into the round with checks as large as up to $[ ]M beyond this $[ ]M we already have committed.

April 17, 2023

It was a good week. Starting things off on Monday with a $[ ]M commitment from [ ] was a huge win. Following that up with another full day of diligence with [ ] on Wednesday just kept that momentum going. [ ] has done a tremendous amount of diligence work on us already, with many of you involved in that process.