New year, new initiatives
January 22, 2024
As we head into another board meeting this week, we are coming off of one of the most successful quarters in the company's history. The recap for 2023 will be short and sweet but it's about what we do with 2024 that is going to make all the difference. The key themes for this year that we will be going over with them are below:
Grow AUM - We have a goal of ~$[ ]M per quarter but every month that we do better than our plan brings us one step closer to profitability. This will require a delicate balance of supply and demand and we're better equipped than ever to match both sides of the market. We've pinpointed which underwriters are high volume, we're better at figuring out which types of underwriters bring quality clients, and we've been able to standardize our contracts with them in a way that maximizes our chance to close. For accredited investors, we have years of history to figure out how to maximize the lifecycle for acquisition, conversion, and retention, as we've seen their behaviors come through in the data time after time. And for our institutional investors, we've been at it for over half a year now which means the relationships we've built up over that timeframe will start to pay dividends as they've been able to observe our track record.
Maximize Net Income Generating Activities - Between new revenue generating activities and finding additional opportunities for expense savings, there are no shortage of ways to both push forward our timeline to profitability. We've already turned deposit interest online and statements are next on the list. We are gearing up to secure our first software client and will continue to do so opportunistically throughout the year. There's opportunities to leverage our broker dealer license to do more strategic placement opportunities. Where we can find new opportunities to pass on our costs to underwriters for the services we provide we most certainly will. All of these serve to both build up a buffer in the event we experience some volatility with AUM growth while also showing our prowess in getting to cash flow breakeven.
Portfolio Management - We mapped out a clear path to reaching these AUM goals for 2024 in our OKRs. Each month has its own targets for new borrowers, underwriters, deal launches, and more. Getting there will require pipeline prioritization to ensure that it's not just supply meeting demand but getting into the specifics of what the demand is looking for (eg. ABS deals) and where we're going to get that supply from. We also can't afford more defaults either as each deal we have to write-off is going to dampen our AUM growth prospects. We need to gain more conviction around the deals we bring to market and elevate our standard for listing one step further. We also need to develop ways to be more efficient in staying on top of each and every one of our borrowers' performance. Last but not least, we also need to manage the defaults that we have to ensure the confidence of investors both old and new aren't rattled and they continue to power our growth.
Three key strategic initiatives is all we have for this year but the mandate couldn't be more clear. Let's get after it relentlessly - we got this.
