December 19, 2022

It’s that time of year again, when the work begins to slow down a bit and clients start to shut things down for the holidays. These are often the important weeks of the year as we can spend quality time with friends, family, and those we love to remind ourselves what matters most in life.

I encourage all of you to take the time to rest and recharge and come back refreshed for the year to come. The journey for every startup is a marathon not a sprint and getting there is an exercise in resolve, perseverance, and sheer will to defy the odds.

December 12, 2022

I'm pleased to announce that we have officially locked in our plan for the $[ ] in venture debt that's coming due on Thursday. After much back and forth, [ ] has agreed to take down $[ ] of the position, with an additional ~$[ ] being syndicated back out to our investors.

This was a combined effort by so many teams to get this over the finish line. Underwriting played a part in pulling together the materials and structure needed to support a new transaction with an investor like [ ] coming into the fold. Investor Relations and Syndicate had to start pulling together an order book on an extremely compressed timeline as documents and terms weren't locked in until last Friday.

December 5, 2022

Amidst all the work being done internally on 2023 strategic planning, there's been quite a bit happening overall in the industry and several good articles that have come out in the past few weeks that are worth reading through.

November 28, 2022

The last few years have been a portrait of excess without good governance. Startups raised at astronomical valuations, getting term sheets for fundraising rounds in days often times without even needing to provide a data room. If anyone ever tried to do real diligence, the company would push back and just go with the investor who didn't need it. After the rounds were done, the normal process of setting up a board, holding quarterly meetings, adhering to thresholds that required board approval, all went out the window. Founders felt empowered to do as they pleased because in their mind, investors needed them more than they needed investors. The downstream impact of these decisions have hit fairly close to home for us these last few weeks.

The gap between the president-elect’s claims and market expectations may offer temporary reprieve, but small businesses should prepare for turbulence.

A stark reality check looms for America’s 33 million small businesses: While campaign promises suggest dramatic economic shifts, market indicators tell a different story. This disconnect—between political rhetoric and market expectations—creates both uncertainty and opportunity for SMBs, which represent 43.5% of U.S. GDP and employ nearly half of private-sector workers. 

November 21, 2022

This past Wednesday we held our latest board meeting and it was our first real one in months given the amount of time dedicated to fundraising this year. It was also the first time we presented our plan for the upcoming year and the key workstreams we're going to be focusing on to help make that transformation into a pure play technology company.

All in all it was a productive discussion about where we came from, why we pursued the various paths we did, and where we go from here. Each workstreams' key initiatives were carefully dissected to assess whether we were spreading ourselves too thin or if there was a realistic chance to achieve these objectives.

November 14, 2022

It's been another productive week in the books for a multitude of reasons. First, we secured another commitment for the Series B from [ ]. They are keen to figure out ways to become not just investors but users of the platform as well to syndicate their club deals where they share deal flow with the counterparts.

More importantly, as the deadline looms large, we have locked in our timeline to refinance our venture debt with the Tier 1 investment bank. They've committed to take down $[ ]M, extend the term out for 18 months, and syndicate out the remaining $[ ]M to our investors.

November 7, 2022

We went into the weekend with another $[ ]M commitment into our Series B from a new fintech focused fund that has been incredibly impressed with what we've built and the impact the platform can have on this very analog industry. We are now over the 2 month mark since the term sheet was signed and we're slowly but surely chipping away at the $[ ]M total we're aiming for, with a target for firm commitments and a final order book to be locked in before Thanksgiving. This market has made it one of the most challenging fundraising markets ever as many VCs are simply not deploying capital, others are promising a commitment and then downsizing it materially, and others are even committing and then backing out.

Nik Milanovic interviews Nelson Chu, founder of Percent, a private credit platform. Nelson shares his journey from starting in tech at Apple in 2007, through his finance roles at Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, and BlackRock, to founding multiple companies, including Lumenary and My Support. He discusses the inception of Percent in 2018, which has facilitated over $1 billion in transactions. Nelson emphasizes the importance of standardization in private credit, the role of venture capital in scaling his ventures, and his involvement in nonprofits like Yama Yama Malawi and Womankind. He also touches on his passion for art collection.

October 31, 2022

A key part of our growth story in 2023 is going to have to come from increasing our total assets outstanding, regardless of whether we're underwriting the transaction or not. With our marketplace, we have the opportunity to generate revenue from borrowers, investors, and now underwriters as well.

October 24, 2022

It's been quite the hectic week and a half as we've managed to squeeze in 3 conferences back to back. ABS East, Opal's Family Office Conference, and Money 20/20. It's also a bit of a coming out party for us as this is the first stretch of conferences where we've had the chance to demo our platforms from end to end.

At ABS East, the team collectively took ~30 scheduled meetings over two days in Miami, predominantly with prospective underwriters.

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.