October 17, 2022

The senior leadership team has had several productive meetings this week around 2023 strategic planning. The outcome of this is several workstreams that are going to be further developed over the next few weeks and presented in detail at our next all hands in November.

October 11, 2022

It's been a good week on the Series B front. As the final docs were signed and we began to take in wires, we also had several new commitments come through as well. These commitments were years in the making, with both dating back to 2019 when they first diligenced us.

The first fund has partners that all come from traditional finance. They saw us initially when we were touting ourselves as being able to power the future of digital assets for private credit markets, which we pivoted from shortly thereafter.

In this episode, I’m diving into how Percent helped one of our borrowers reduce their cost of capital by over 400 basis points while accessing $7 million in debt financing. I’ll walk you through how our platform empowered this borrower to grow, how we brought retail investors alongside institutions in this deal, and why this success story matters for the future of private credit. Tune in to get an inside look at how we’re leveling the playing field for investors and borrowers alike.

October 3, 2022

As our Series B is slated to close soon, we have the question of our venture debt outstanding that we need to figure out what to do with. The terms on the $[ ] we raised via our platform stipulated that the debt would have to be refinanced either when we close our Series B or by December 15th, whichever one comes first. We have been actively looking towards institutional venture debt providers to take over the debt in order to extend the maturity out much longer and reduce the exposure our platform investors have in the deal.

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.