Yesterday, I posted a preamble for today’s post about my new startup, MoneyPath. I truly wasn’t trying to be coy and I’ll try to explain below how MoneyPath came about. To keep this as simple as possible, let me explain what MoneyPath does, who’s involved and next steps.
What is MoneyPath?
On the surface, MoneyPath is Lending Tree for commercial loans. MoneyPath matches a business wanting a new loan (or refi) with banks that want those specific types of loans. The easy description still is Lending Tree due to banks competing for loans, but we view it more like eHarmony because we took loan competition one step further.
Our algorithm truly matches your loan details to the criteria a bank looks for in a loan prospect such as revenue size, ZIP, loan size and industry. We view it as a win-win, as the business gets banks that want THEIR loan and banks get warm, qualified sales leads based on what THEY want. I could go on and on about the other reasons it works, but the true “win” happens because we’re letting both parties submit criteria of what they want and connecting them.
Who’s Involved?
On August 20, 2008, Kevin Frey and I met for coffee at Heine Brothers on Chenoweth. For several weeks prior, I had already been meeting with regional banks to define concretely what I thought was an opportunity to create what we now call MoneyPath. I invited him to coffee because we had had drinks with some mutual friends and I was told he’s a software stud (and he is). He probably thought this was just a normal coffee meetup , but I was on the hunt for a CTO.
So, after almost two hours of talking about the initial idea, we departed with the knowledge I’m looking for a CTO to develop some software banks say they want. You can read my follow up email here. Following that first meeting, I dug around the web for the scoop on Kevin. I asked mutual contacts, friends and a few of Kevin’s co-workers and the answer was consistently he’s REALLY good at software development, fun to work with (very imporant) and liked more than just writing code. Lucky for me and MoneyPath, all those things have turned out to be true.
Kevin and I continued our discussion over IM, email and of course more coffee and meals. After refining the idea, collecting additional feedback from banks and fleshing out our roles we decided to build MoneyPath together.
Kevin works as a Lead Software Engineer for a very successful, Louisville tech company and is not going to leave his job. We’re bootstrapping MoneyPath and taking customer’s payments to fund our growth (novel concept focusing on profits, eh?). It’s been exactly 104 days since that coffee meeting and we’ve spent an immense amount of time creating OUR product and getting to know each other over Louisville football games, Ryder Cup rounds, BW-3 happy hours and of course, more Heine Brothers coffee.
Kevin and I’ve talked quite a bit with each other on Twitter, so most of our friends there will just see this as explanation for all our back and forth. MoneyPath is set to launch in January, but in the mean time, here’s how you can get involved.
Request our demo
Rather than just give a wide-open testing site, we’ll just let those who want to play with MoneyPath, request a demo. You can click the link at our site or email us, demo AT moneypathDOTcom. Maybe that’s not 2.0 enough for some of you, but just drop us a line and well give you a login. Please don’t assume because you’re friends with us that we know you want a login. We’re interested to see which of you wants to know more. 
Read our company blog and grab our feed!
I know Kevin and I both struggle to keep up a steady blog pace, but there’s so much going on with MoneyPath’s progress, the credit market and the economy, we think this a great way to keep up with us. The URL is http://blog.moneypath.com.
Tell a friend
If you know a business owner who recently completed a business loan or might need one, let us know. If you have connections to folks in banking, we’d love to talk to them too. We’ve talked to numerous banks and business owners, but it’s never too many. Even if you know someone who runs a business association, we’d love to get feedback on MoneyPath.
Follow @MoneyPath on Twitter
If you prefer to keep up with MoneyPath in 140 characters or less, follow @MoneyPath on Twitter.
So, now the cat’s out of the bag. We’ll continue to post about how we got here and some of the (what I think are) interesting stories that led us down this path. There are too many people to thank in just this post, so I’ll save that for another day. Just know that Kevin and I both appreciate all the support, feedback, encouragement, criticism and input we’ve already been given and expect nothing, but heavier doses of the same since anyone can test MoneyPath.com (with a request).
Finally, if you’re one of my current clients reading this, please understand that I’ve planned for this. I haven’t kept a business going for nine years without a little foresight. I am not closing down and have a great staff in place and other resources available to keep everyone happy.
