Matching small businesses with creditors: Lendio

When the economy tanked in 2008, enrollment in Olya Losina’s fledgling art school began to wane. Marketing the San Diego-based Losina Art Center to a new crop of students required cash the painter and her husband/business partner, Bill Beatty, didn’t have. So in late 2011, they created a profile on Lendio, a free online service that matches small businesses with lenders. Within minutes, they had a customized list of half a dozen potential lenders offering the five-figure, short-term financing they were seeking, and within days, they received the cash they needed.

Lendio CEO and co-founder Brock Blake says 300 U.S. lending institutions and nearly 1,300 individual lenders participate in the automated web platform, from banks and credit unions offering traditional, long-term loans to fast-cash alternative financiers such as peer-to-peer lenders and merchant cash-advance providers. Each month, roughly 10,000 business owners come to the site looking for financing, 60 to 70 percent of whom are approved for a loan, Blake says.

In a conversation with Entrepreneur, Losina sketched out how Lendio and her specific lender, OnDeck, helped keep her art school afloat:

3 Ways to Build a Business That Gives You Mental Balance

When you are launching a new venture, it can sometimes feel like balance is a complete myth. Michael Schultz knows firsthand about working long, crazy hours, having worked in the restaurant industry since he was 12 years old. He has worked for big names such as Ruth’s Chris Steak House and Wolfgang Puck, and in 2015, opened Goddess and the Baker, a well regarded cafe in Chicago.

This spring, when he launched his new company, a specialty food and beverage chain called Fairgrounds Coffee & Tea Brew Bar, Schultz wanted to make work/life balance a part of the company’s mission from day one. While it’s something that’s incredibly valuable to Schultz now, he says that wasn’t always the case.