Like most business owners, Chris Meyer found the loan process tedious, impractical, and drawn out. In ten years of running various businesses, he obtained fourteen different loans. Each loan package he prepared required a couple months to prepare: three years of business and personal tax returns, a personal financial statement, and an application for each bank. He always wondered where all of his highly private information would end up; he couldn’t believe it was never returned. He thought there had to be a faster, more secure way to apply for a loan.
So, Chris reached out to a dad at his son’s school, real estate developer Dean Sioukas, to ask if he knew of a lending website similar to what Kayak does for flights. Sioukas, a self-taught tech aficionado, searched the web and, when he saw it did not exist, the two friends built it, and an app to boot. Magilla boasts a whopping $1.7B of loans funneled through its website since launching in September 2015.
In this latest episode of Sacramento Startup Profiles, I met Chris and Dean at Impact VC to chat about the origins of evolution of their startup. Check out the video below or scroll down for the audio-only podcast version.
Audio-only Podcast
Catch more profiles and interviews with Sacramento startup founders.
