September 26, 2022

As we approach year end and with the Series B closing process underway, it’s time to begin to map out what 2023 will look like for us. This upcoming year will be unlike the past as we have no more excuses, no more foundational work left to do. This is the year where we pull all the growth levers we have at our disposal to deliver on a lofty target for recurring technology revenue.

September 19, 2022

You may have heard this past week about one of the largest acquisitions ever made of a private company - Adobe buys Figma for $20B, about 50x their current year ARR. The media loves to highlight the final number but behind the scenes was a 12 year journey where the future was not always so bright or definitely not so certain. 

In 2018, I'm tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt, frantically trying to get Percent off the ground. Fast-forward to 2022, and we're staring at a bank account with barely anything left and a $350,000 payroll looming in just days. Yet by 2023, we closed an oversubscribed series B round, found our product-market fit and saw our marketplace take flight. This roller-coaster ride is not an unfamiliar story.

September 12, 2022

As we move the Series B towards a close, the next phase of our company's life becomes all the more exciting but also all the more critical. The strategic decisions and moves we make in the coming months will reverberate over the next few years, having material implications for our future success.

In this debut episode of Founder Notes, I’m taking you behind the scenes of my journey to build Percent. I was tens of thousands in credit card debt when I decided to take the leap and create something new in the private credit space. In this episode, I talk about the lessons learned from that experience, my family’s influence on my entrepreneurial mindset, and why I believe in building in public. Get a first-hand look at the raw realities of founding a disruptive fintech platform.

Nelson Chu, Founder & CEO of Percent, delves into the rapid growth of private credit and its implications for the financial landscape. Learn how this expanding sector is reshaping investment opportunities and whether or not a bubble is emerging in the market. 

August 29, 2022

So much movement is happening on the third party underwriting side now that we've had ample time to demo the platform to numerous different groups. We just received a term sheet from a credit fund this past week to do co-underwriting with us and they are committing to deploy into deals that they are running lead on underwriting and structuring and using that capital to take down anywhere from 50-80% of the deal. Doing some quick math, this equates to [ ] in new recurring revenue but more importantly, it establishes a captive capital base when it's becoming harder to come by with just retail investors.

August 22, 2022

As we look to try and find a resolution for [ ], the deal we currently have in workout, I thought it was important to highlight the differences in how we're approaching this deal versus other defaults we've had prior.

Unlike [ ] where the primary recourse has to be by going through the court system, [ ] is in a situation where they are struggling to sell the assets themselves and as a result, defaulted on our note.

Nelson Chu, Founder & CEO of Percent, Jack Macdowell, Chief Investment Officer of Palisades Group, and Mustafa Humayun, Partner & Portfolio Manager at Sagard Credit, join Jill Malandrino on Nasdaq TradeTalks to discuss generational trends regarding investments in alternative assets and the value of disciplined deal selection.

August 15, 2022

As we've made the strategic shift to opening up our platform for third party underwriters, it's allowed us to transition how we pitch the platform as well. Dozens of platform demos were made these past few weeks to VCs for our Series B, strategic partners, and prospective underwriters and the feedback has been resoundingly positive.

Our platforms have seen tremendous progress over these last few months and we're shipping new features at a pace we've never been able to do before.

In this episode, the host John Siracusa had a remote chat with , Founder & CEO of . Percent is a platform for sourcing, structuring, syndicating, monitoring, and servicing private credit transactions. We candidly discuss his initial reluctance towards going into fintech in the first place, the conception and early challenges of building Percent, and his leadership style fostering a stable and efficient work environment.

August 8, 2022

It's been a whirlwind of a week as we had one meeting after another for the Series B. Topping it all off, we managed to squeeze in a board meeting in between it all to give them the full update on the state of our business.

To say they came away excited is an understatement. Hearing about what we were able to do with [ ] as the first third party underwritten deal and seeing the margins we are able to produce only serves to validate the future of our business.

Private credit has rapidly expanded beyond its Wall Street niche, drawing in everyone from seasoned titans to wide-eyed Main Street investors. However, the sector’s meteoric rise hasn’t gone unnoticed by the establishment. Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan Chase’s CEO and Wall Street’s perennial voice of caution, recently sounded the alarm on private credit’s potential default risks, making headlines in the process.

August 1, 2022

It's a big week for Series B discussions as we have [ ] different groups actively looking into our materials and setting up meetings. We'll have a lot more clarity in the next few weeks for sure as we move this process forward.

July 25, 2022

As of last Friday, we officially reached an inflection point in the company. For the first time ever, we closed a third party underwritten transaction, one where we left the infrastructure that we've built do the talking. We couldn't have scripted a better story for how this first deal came to life and everything worked exactly as planned.