December 11, 2023

As we round out the year, there's been no shortage of predictions for 2024, including from us in our most recent private credit outlook. Most calls for an outright recession have faded but there is an undertone of volatility and general market uncertainty that is permeating throughout.

December 4, 2023

Another month and another one for the record books. We're coming in for November at $[ ]M in AUM, a $[ ]M increase from October. This makes for the best month ever for AUM growth, pushing last month into second place. Even more importantly, this is $[ ]M above the forecast we had just made and shared with the board, translating to a revenue beat of $[ ]K above forecast as well. 

November 27, 2023

After the board meeting at the end of October where we got buy-in around the general direction of the forecast for 2024, the next step was to fine tune all the details. Between updates on vendor negotiations, finalized contracts, and a better assessment of deal volume growth based on the latest numbers from the past few weeks, we presented the final locked-in plan for revenue and expenses for 2024 to the board this past week.

November 20, 2023

It has been a productive week in Japan as I’ve been on a roadshow with [ ] to find ways to enter the Japanese market. It’s a fairly unique market in and of itself, dominated by a select group of mega banks and anchored by several other investment banks, all of whom offer comprehensive banking services from deposits and wealth management to investment banking and capital markets. 

November 13, 2023

We’ve spent the past few weeks scrutinizing each line item of our expenses to try and squeeze every last possible cost saving. Over this time, we’ve reached out to every service provider and vendor to renegotiate pricing as we head into 2024. These are never easy or fun conversations to have but they are absolutely necessary as we continue to make our push towards profitability. The years of good will we’ve built up with these providers has paid off as we managed to shave tens of thousands of dollars off current and future expenses that keep our business going.

November 6, 2023

We've been tracking it all throughout the month but to finally have the books close on a record month of over $[ ]K in revenue for the marketplace is a step in the right direction. Prior to this, we could never reliably predict out even just one month ahead for revenue and AUM because we didn't have clarity around how much captive capital we had to deploy nor could we figure out how much deal flow we could confidently close as a result.

October 30, 2023

We launched our first ever institutional research report on Thursday, giving us additional credibility as we continue the push for institutional qualified purchaser investors. I recommend all of you give it a read through as the insights extracted from these interviews with a broad range of institutional investors (family offices, asset managers, and investment advisors) shed some light on where their interests lie.

October 23, 2023

As we close in on the last few days of the month, we can now safely take a look back at just how much we've accomplished in this first month where we had all the pieces in place post-broker dealer and post-credit facility.  And what a month it's been. We're looking at over $[ ]M in net new AUM, the largest increase ever in the history of the firm.

October 16, 2023

As we've begun to make preparations for 2024 planning, it's abundantly clear how far we've come compared to last year in terms of being able to accurately project out the growth of our business. At this time last year, we had just an inkling of an idea of how underwriters would use us and what they'd want to see when it comes to features and functionality.

October 10, 2023

With the credit facility ready to deploy and the accredited investor acquisition on sound footing, the final piece of the puzzle has been the institutional qualified purchasers who can anchor our growth. These are the family offices and investment advisors who can bring much more stable capital onto the platform, slotting right in between accredited investors and the credit facility when it comes to quantum/size of capital deployed and stickiness of capital. 

October 2, 2023

Since the very beginning, we have tried to operate our marketplace like a stepladder - we found investors in order to get borrowers, then we found more borrowers so that we could find investors, and on and on it went. In good times, we can count on this stepladder to continue to grow our AUM. In more challenging times, whether during COVID or now as the economy is on the ropes, one side tends to outweigh the other.

September 25, 2023

Multi-market is coming to life. Starting this week, we're going to be able to fully launch a brand new market for the very first time, free from any of the past history, the past deals, and the past track record that we have built up ourselves over these past few years. We are nearing the point where our two distinct business lines are becoming ever more clear.

September 18, 2023

Another week, another milestone achievement. On Friday afternoon, we officially closed our credit facility with [ ], something that's been months in the making. We're taking a three-pronged approach to hitting our AUM target and there's nothing like a nice $[ ]M boost to help us get there faster. While it won't be immediate and there's a few rules we have to follow, the groundwork is there to start deploying their capital as early as next month. 

September 11, 2023

Companies are constantly maturing and evolving and often times things reach a point where the processes, policies, and practices that got them there need to be revamped to help them reach their next stage. Sometimes this stems from growth in the team's size, other times it's the result of fundamental changes in the business. Still, the theme above all else is a willingness and desire to adapt and change.

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: