6th Avenue Capital Builds Business Development Team with Veteran Hires
February 6, 20186th Avenue Capital has hired three seasoned employees to its business development team: Mitch Levy, Gary Lockwood and Marc Seidel.
Chief Operating Officer
“We’re putting together a team that I wanted to put together,” said Chief Operating Officer Darren Schulman. “They didn’t come knocking on my door, I knocked on theirs.”
This is part of an expansion of the New York-based company, which launched formally in 2016 and was reorganized in April 2017 with the hiring of Schulman.
Strategy Officer
Mitch Levy, who used to work with Schulman at AmeriMerchant (now known as Capify), will oversee the company’s business origination strategy. Levy joins the company with more than three decades of alternative financing experience across multiple disciplines including origination, underwriting, investing, operations and legal.
“6th Avenue Capital has quickly established itself as a major force in the Merchant Cash Advance business,” Levy said. “In this role, I have a great opportunity to work closely with the leadership team and our strategic partners to help small businesses across the country gain fast and efficient access to capital in times of immediate need.”
Business Development Manager
Gary Lockwood, who also worked with Schulman at Capify, joins 6th Avenue Capital as Business Development Manager. He built and led a successful consulting business where he opened several business financing sales offices. Lockwood was a Senior Vice President of Partnerships at Fundation and worked at Capify as Director of Business Development with responsibility for onboarding, managing and training broker and partner groups.
VP Business Development
Schulman has never worked with Marc Seidel, but told deBanked that he knew of him and came highly recommended by Levy. Seidel will be 6th Avenue Capital’s Vice President of Business Development. Previously, Seidel spent more than 10 years working at Bizfi, where he started his career in the alternative financing industry as a Risk Analyst. He then worked his way up to a Senior Underwriter position and landed a business development role where he was responsible for managing relationships with brokers and driving deal demand.
Chief Executive Officer
“Adding these industry veterans in business development will undoubtedly advance our mission to expand our existing network of ISOs and other strategic partners to ensure small businesses have access to capital in hours,” said 6th Avenue Capital CEO Christine Chang.
Schulman takes pride in assembling a veteran team that does the right thing by clients, he said.
“We don’t want to give merchants more money than they can afford,” he said.
He said the the company now employs 20 and is growing.
“We’re looking to form long-term relationships with brokers and merchants and we’ve been successful at getting merchants to refer us to other merchants.”
Kabbage Extends Credit Lines to $250,000
February 2, 2018
Kabbage, the online business lender, is now offering credit lines of up to $250,000, which it says is the largest credit line available from any online lender and will allow the company to expand its customer base to serve larger companies.
“Increasing our lines of credit to $250,000 significantly enhances our ability to solve financial hurdles for larger and more specialized businesses,” said Bob Sharpe, COO of Kabbage.
The company finished 2017 having crossed the $4 billion threshold for loans issued to more than 130,000 small businesses. And its Chief Revenue Officer, Victoria Treyger, told deBanked back in December that loans were getting larger.
“Our lines of credit and amounts taken continue to increase as we begin serving more and larger small businesses,” she said. “We see great momentum across all industries in all 50 U.S. states.”
Back in September, the Atlanta-based company received an investment of $250 million from Japanese telecommunications company, SoftBank, and the company has been thriving.
By the end of last year, it had lent a total of $4 billion since it was founded in 2009. According to American Banker, Kabbage worked with its banking partner, Salt Lake City-based Celtic Bank, to develop the larger line of credit.
Kathryn Petralia, Kabbage’s president and co-founder, is excited about this new development.
“[This] helps us close the capital gap that businesses encounter today,” she told American Banker. “It allows us to better the customers we have who qualify for more credit.
LendingPoint Hires Citibank Veteran as New CFO
February 1, 2018
LendingPoint, the Atlanta-based online balance sheet lender, announced today that Citibank veteran Tony Martino would be joining the company as CFO. This comes less than one month after the company’s acquisition of LoanHero, a fully integrated, one-stop-shop loan origination and payments platform. LoanHero helps merchants provide access to consumer finance, increase revenue and eliminate friction at point of sale.
Martino, who worked at Citibank for 18 years in multiple roles including CFO for the bank in Israel and Turkey, said he thinks that LendingPoint’s acquisition of LoanHero “triples the size of the markets available to us.”
LendingPoint focuses on making loans to what it calls “near prime” consumers. The company defines “near prime” to include personal-loan applicants with FICO scores from 600 to 700, according to an earlier discussion with deBanked. LendingPoint has even trademarked “NEARPRIME” as a single word in all capital letters.
The company’s CEO, Tom Burnside, told deBanked in the fall that it received $2.5 billion worth of loan applications in September alone.
“We are delighted to add Tony Martino to our team at LendingPoint,” Burnside said. “His deep experience with multi-product balance sheet lenders as well as his experience in rapidly growing markets match perfectly with where we are in our journey at LendingPoint.”
LendingPoint is not yet four years old and this will be Martino’s first time working at a startup. He told deBanked that he’s very excited about this challenge, but acknowledged that his work overseas in emerging markets, like Poland and Turkey, was a lot like working at a startup.
“Although [LendingPoint] is new,” Martino said, “the employees have a depth of experience here.”
In Wake of Fraudulent DocuSign Emails, How to Recognize The Real Thing
February 1, 2018
Fraudulent emails with DocuSign attachments have permeated the MCA business in recent weeks. Independent MCA broker and Small Business Banker Paul Kelly told deBanked that he received up to 15 emails over the last few weeks from both Edwin Torres and John Edwards at the MCA company RET Capital. The emails had an attachment that encouraged the reader to “View Document.”
Staff at deBanked also received similar emails from Edwin Torres on January 16 and from John Edwards on January 23. Suspicious of the email, Kelly didn’t open the attachment, which was wise. According to DocuSign’s Trust Center page, people should “not click on attachments within an email requesting your signature. DocuSign emails only contain PDF attachments of completed documents after all parties have signed the document.”
The page lists other signs that may indicate a fraudulent DocuSign email, such as misspellings or conveying extreme urgency.
When we asked Torres if he had intended to send these emails, he said he not. Instead, he said he was the victim of a virus from DocuSign, which was likely hacked, he said.
“This has ruined my life for the past few weeks,” Torres said.
He also urged people not to open the attachment, as he had, which allowed the virus to send emails from his email account. Torres said that other companies in the industry had also been affected by the virus. But he said that his company’s computers had been cleaned for the virus last week and, so far, he hasn’t received any complaints this week.
Facebook Bans Crypto Ads. Is it The Right Move?
January 31, 2018
Facebook announced yesterday that it had banned all ads promoting Bitcoin or anything related to cryptocurrencies.
The new item on the Prohibited Content list for Facebook ads reads: “Ads must not promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings, or cryptocurrency.”
In light of the fact that Bitcoin rose in value by about 1600% in 2017, cryptocurrency has received enormous mainstream interest in recent months.
At a memorial last week for the former owner of The Strand bookstore in Manhattan, actor Fran Lebowitz finished her remarks by saying “And can someone tell me what Bitcoin is?” Lucky for her, the well-known economist, Paul Krugman, happened to be speaking next and answered the question.
Right as momentum is building for cryptocurrencies, Facebook’s action warns the public that digital currencies are still shady.
Aside from the inherent mystery of cryptocurrency – that users are not identifiable – recent revelations have revealed that a cryptocurrency called Tether may be artificially sustaining Bitcoin. If this is true, it could have a devastating effect on the value of the most traded cryptocurrency.
In an explanation of Facebook’s new policy, the social media giant’s product management director, Rob Leathern, wrote: “This policy is part of an ongoing effort to improve the integrity and security of our ads, and to make it harder for scammers to profit from a presence on Facebook.”
Leathern wrote that the new policy is “intentionally broad” so that Facebook can better identify deceptive practices.
Is Facebook doing the right thing?
James Altucher, an investor and finance writer who has invested in cryptocurrencies since 2013 and sells “Crypto Trader,” an educational package for $2,000, thinks so.
“Ninety-nine percent of cryptocurrencies are total scams,” Altucher has written on his blog.
“I think this is a very good move for Facebook,” he told Recode.net.
StreetShares Completes $23 Million Investment, Sticking With Their Plan
January 30, 2018
StreetShares, the small business lender focused on making loans to veteran-owned businesses, completed a $23 million series B funding round last week. The round was led by a $20 million investment from Rotunda Capital Partners, LLC, with an additional $3 million from existing investors, including Stoney Lonesome Group.
According to the company’s June 30th 2017 fiscal year-end financial statements, it only made 751 loans in a 12-month period. Other companies may make thousands in the same period.
However, this is because StreetShares approach to earning is different than most online lending companies. Rather than relying primarily on increasing the volume of loans to generate revenue, they also earn by co-investing in loans, according to Mark Rockefeller, CEO and Co-founder of the three and a half year-old Reston, VA-based company.
In an email, Rockefeller, who is himself a veteran, also conveyed that they have sought out VC equity investors who are patient and want them to issue high quality loans.
According to StreetShares’ June 30th fiscal year-end financial statements, the company’s revenues were $2,168,067 and its losses were $6,193,154. While this might be of concern to other companies, this isn’t alarming to Rockefeller. It’s part of the plan.
“Our patient approach means we’re not going to be profitable for a couple more years. But it also means we’ll still be here in 50 years.”
