March 2, 2020
TORONTO, ON
Meet the Founder: Troy Wright from Lendified
This week FrontFundrs John Hill caught up with Troy Wright, Co-Founder and CEO of Lendified Holdings Inc. The company’s on a mission to help small businesses across Canada get the fast and affordable capital they need to grow, and have so far have received funding requests for over $500,000,000!
Not only that, their listing on FrontFundr is the first time ever in Canada that a pre-go-public raise is open to all investors, accredited and non-accredited alike. Over to Troy to find out more about this exciting startup.
So lets get started!
John: How did Lendified get started?
Troy: While I was still working at one of the big five banks, I saw the need for a fast and efficient way to provide capital to small businesses. This is because the challenge for financial institutions is being able to efficiently measure the risk of small businesses.
The vision I had for our company was to create a fully digital process using machine learning to assess risk and be able to provide loans to small businesses quickly and efficiently.
John: Tell us a bit about your background working in finance.
Troy: I have been in the financial services industry for over 25 years. I started out as a credit analyst in corporate banking and worked my way through to eventually become an Executive Vice President and CEO of various business lines at Scotiabank.
John: What’s been the most surprising thing about founding Lendified?
Troy: The most surprising thing about starting Lendified has been the huge amount of traction and interest we have gotten. I always felt we were onto something when we started but the market has really proven that to be the case.
John: And the most challenging?
Troy: Definitely the most challenging thing has been to raise capital in order to allow us to grow. We have done a great job at doing this but it has also been very challenging.
John: What do you do when you’re not at work?
Troy: I love to do things in the outdoors. I go hiking, I like to work out and I love sports like fishing and cycling.
John: You’re someone with a wealth of professional experience and industry knowledge. Who do you look to for ideas and inspiration?
Troy: I enjoy reading books and articles about people who have been successful and have built great businesses. I always enjoy hearing how they went about achieving what they have done.
John: Why are you now launching a crowdfunding campaign?
Troy: We are launching this campaign because we see a huge opportunity to leverage a new market place and a new way of finding funds to grow our business.
John: Why FrontFundr?
Troy: Listing our private placement on DealSquare [FrontFundr’s sister company], as well as benefiting from the outreach to retail investors that FrontFundr allows for, is a unique opportunity for Lendified to access more investors previous to completing a public offering process.
John: Lendified is Canada’ first pre-go-public raise open to all investors, accredited and non-accredited alike. How do you feel about that milestone?
Troy: We are very proud to be part of this new milestone. It’s amazing to see both accredited and non-accredited investors being able to participate in the future of our company. We are very excited about our growth and the support we are getting from this investor base.
John: Why do you think it’s important?
Troy: It’s important because it brings diversity to our investor base which, in turn, is important for the success of our company.
John: Where do you see Lendified in 5 years’ time?
Troy: We believe Lendified will continue to grow and to build its business. We see the small business lending space as one which has a huge amount of demand and we expect to be able to fill that need successfully and become much bigger than we are today.
Lendified’s campaign is now live on FrontFundr, and runs until 12th March. Head over to their campaign page for all the details!
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