The Broker: How Kunal Bhasin and His Team of Closers Make Deals in NYC

Kunal Bhasin, President, 1 West Finance

His title:

President and owner of 1 West Finance in New York City. He founded it in May of 2017 in New York City. The company is a team of seven.  

His background:

I was at World Business Lenders for 6 years. That’s where I learned this business and figured out how things worked. Then I left WBL and started 1 West Finance. At WBL, I worked in business development…And I think I was in a good space there to get experience to start my own shop.

His morning:

I get up around 7:00, usually will take my kids to school. I’ll have one cup of coffee, then pick up a cup of coffee for my train ride. On the train, I answer any overnight emails and follow up on whatever outstanding deals I’m working on. So usually I’ll be pinging funders to say “What’s going on with this? What’s going on with that? What’s next, what’s next, what’s next?” Then I buy another coffee when I get to Penn Station. I get to the office by 9:15 / 9:30.

Two times a week at a minimum, will bring in all the guys into the conference room. We will go through the pipeline…Who needs my help?  Or who needs the sales manager’s help on a certain deal?…Things tend to move really well after that meeting.

Biggest challenge:

Because of the nature of our relationships, we get a lot of clients that haven’t done this type of financing before. And there’s always some level of sticker shock that the client experiences when you tell them, “I’m going to give you $100,000 and you’re going to pay me $130,000 or $135,000.” And they’re like “Oh my goodness. How is that possible?” “And by the way,” we say, “I’m going to take the payments daily or weekly.”   

For clients who haven’t experienced this before, getting over this initial sticker shock is a challenge.

How do you respond to this shock?

I usually say “Hey, listen, we are not a bank.” I say “we fund clients everyday and clients fall into two buckets.” Either they have already gone to the banks and have been told “No.” Or, they can get the money from the bank but they just don’t have the time, because the bank is going to take 40 days or 60 days. And they need the money today or tomorrow.

So I say “If you think you have the 60 days and you can go to the bank, you should go to the bank. Don’t take this money. But if the bank says ‘No’ or you can’t wait, then I’m the next stop.”

Some of his favorite funders:

OnDeck – “by far, my favorite”

Green Peak Capital

InAdvance

Wall Funding

Average monthly volume funded:

$2.7 million.

Largest deal:

$1 million. We made $50,000. That was this year.

The Team

His funding process:

A deal first goes to two processors [we have]. They make sure everything is there. No pages missing. They’ll make a decision – is this a good deal for OnDeck or is this a better deal for InAdvance or Fundworks? They’ll actually make the submission, update the CRM, and once the approvals come back, if it meets what the client needs, then the deal goes round robin around the sales team…We try to keep it very fair. And all my guys can close. They’ve all been in business for at least 5 years.   

His weekends:

I’m a husband and the father of three and a half year-old identical twin boys. I work a lot and my kids are generally asleep before I get home. So weekends are dedicated to my wife and kids. I try to put the phone away and spend some quality time with them.

Todd Stone was a reporter for deBanked.