175: Amber Fehrenbacher Shares How to Increase Small Business Credit Scores for Access to Capital with Tillful

Transcript

[00:00 – 01:24] We know the classifications of small businesses from startup to emerging onto scale up. And for many of us founders, we desperately want to advance through these stages onto the next level, mid-sized business. And for some to grow beyond that to a large enterprise, employing thousands of people.

Hi, I’m Alicia Butler Pierre, not only is business infrastructure vital to advancing through those stages but so is capital. As a startup, you need it to up the ante on your sales and marketing activities. But as an emerging business, you need it to hire more full-time staff and invest in new or upgrade existing equipment and technologies. Speaking of technologies, you’re about to discover a revolutionary FinTech product. That’s changing the game on giving small businesses access to credit. The company behind it is on a mission to level the playing field so that more small businesses have a fair shake at sustainable growth. Sadly, there’s a large swath of entrepreneurs who, although they have a high-demand product or service, they simply can’t scale their businesses because they’ve been unjustly cut off from funding.

It’s time to change that. After all, it takes money to make money.

This is Season 14, Episode 1 75. Let’s start the show!

 

[01:24 – 01:46] Welcome to Business Infrastructure, the podcast about curing back-office blues of fast-growing businesses. If you’re a business owner or operator looking for practical tips and solutions to scaling your business in a sustainable manner, you’re in the right place. Now, here’s your hostess, Alicia Butler Pierre.

 

[01:48 – 03:13]  Having a tough time, trying to explain ideas over a video conference? Try the ThinkSmart whiteboard. It’s the fastest whiteboard software in the world and allows you to upload flow charts and write on them while your colleagues are watching remotely. Call us today for a free demo. The number is 1-866-584-6804 or visit us online @getmytablet.com. Now that’s smart, ThinkSmart.

 

This episode is brought to you by Equilibria, Inc., the company behind this podcast, where we design business infrastructure for fast-growing small businesses, ready to scale. If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, then you know, this season, we’re focusing on game-changing technology. And so far we’ve explored technologies to improve operations, business development, marketing, and HR, just to name a few areas of business. And today we’re going to learn about a FinTech product.

Joining us today in Columbia, Missouri is Amber Fehrenbacher. Amber is the Marketing Director at Tillful, a technology designed to offer a smarter, more inclusive approach to business credit, scoring, and financial literacy for small and medium-sized businesses. Amber, welcome to the show. How are you?

 

[03:14 – 03:17] I am great. Thanks so much, Alicia. I appreciate you having me.

 

[03:17 – 03:26] And you know, Amber, I, it’s always fun for me when I can share how I meet people like yourself and it all started with the tweet.

 

[03:28 – 03:31] It did, it did. It started on Twitter. It did.

 

[03:34 – 04:19] Yes. I have a Google alert set up for any topics that are out there around small business, scaling, operations, processes, streamlining, automation. And so I came across an article about Tillful and I tweeted about it and Amber saw that and retweeted it at night. I saw who she was and the fact that she works at Tillful, until when I was like, huh, she would be a great addition to the podcast, especially this season because we’re focusing on technology. And as I started to look up more information about you, Amber, I was like, wow, she has such a fascinating background because you have a degree in journalism. Right?

 

[04:20 – 04:35] I do. Yeah. And magazine journalism actually, a very strange time to get a journalism degree. I graduated in 2009, which should be right after that, the entire, you know, the housing crisis and the recession kind of kicked off.

 

[04:36 – 04:38] When the bottom fell out.

 

[04:38 – 04:41] Right, when the bottom fell out. Exactly. But it works out well, it worked out okay.

 

[04:43 – 04:51] And I noticed that. So after you graduated, it looks, or maybe during the time you were still in school, is that when you had your internship at Elle Magazine?

 

[04:51 – 05:22] Yeah, so I was in New York. I landed an editorial internship with Elle Magazine and then actually had the opportunity there and it kind of kicked off my career in the digital space because my editor in my intern supervisor at the time, you know, asked me if I would prefer to work on the print side or on the, you know, the dotcom side. And she really advised me to go dot com and I’ll never forget that cause that was, I, you know, it was, I was doing HTML tags, that summer back in 2008. And so it served me very well.

 

[05:23 – 05:30] I was wondering about that. I was like, I wonder if that was kind of her introduction to digital and content marketing and it sounds like it was.

 

[05:31 – 05:32] Yeah. it definitely was.

 

[05:33 – 05:58] So, you obviously chose the dot com side. So can you kind of walk us through how you were able to transition from being a writer or, you know, a journalist – magazine journalism, as you, as you said specifically, into eventually becoming… I noticed at one time you were even a Chief Marketing Officer, the company, and now you’re, you’re a Marketing Director. So, how on earth were you able to make a career transition like that?

[05:58 – 06:37] I will say, you know, as much as I like to be very, very intentional and I had a really clear idea of what I was doing on the net but I felt my gut a lot. You know, I think that whenever you graduate, you’re kind of taking whatever you can get and I’ve never felt like I needed to take whatever I could get and be grateful for it. Then graduating into, like a job was job market in 2009. So, you know, obviously, my big goal is to, like, become a writer. I wanted to eventually write for, like Vanity Fair, The New Yorker or something like that. And now I still love writing. And I think that I actually do a great deal of it still at my day-to-day, which makes my parents really happy. You know, my mom’s a nurse and my dad’s an engineer.

 

[06:37 – 07:25] And so they’re like, do you want to go to journalism school? But I think that from looking back, my first job was very random and it was actually with a media buying a display ad network. It was just kind of my first base and they traded me and everything. And actually it was a kind of what you’ll see, anytime you see a display ad on the internet, you know, we, we kind of would work with different publishers to, to run those at an advertiser’s. And like one of our early advertisers was Netflix. And so Netflix actually was one of our clients that we were working with through their agency of record. So it was, it wasn’t like we were working directly with Netflix. So this is whenever they were still doing like DVDs, but we were serving ads on their behalf and, you know, helping grow that business through just like getting people to sign up for free trials.

[ 07:25 – 08:10] And it was like whenever top vendors are what they were called, which would be just ads that pop like popups really, but they were like, kind of popping behind your browser. And it was a great deal of, like, how we made money. And so we were basically just taking a cutoff of the margin on the ad buy, but then I kind of got interested, I started to work more directly with some clients. I started working directly with the people, that marketing in-house team at Coca-Cola, at Ralph Lauren. And that was really cool because I, I of got, I started to realize that he didn’t want to do want to do like sales so much as very like, basically like really get invested in starts to make a relationship with a new advertiser client and then kind of just like abandon that relationship and try to sell services to another advertiser and prospect.

[08:10 – 09:47] And so with that, I realized that I really liked digging in and doing the planning and executing and the testing. And so I wanted to move in-house. And so, you know, I got some more exposure from like SEO and kind of beyond just display digital marketing and then was able to, to get a pretty great opportunity with a InsurTech company called suretybonds.com, which was actually bought up by Houston Casualty Company, which was then bought up by Tokyo Marine. And so they’re a pretty big insurer. And so it was like a startup inside of a big enterprise company, which was great exposure. And so I was the CMO for that company and it was a startup. I was CMO for the startup inside of that, you know, giant conglomeration, but it was a great experience to kind of see just two different worlds collide and how an acquisition happens, you know, and, and what that looks like and how they operate together cause they really tried to grab us up. They bought the company further growth opportunity and the digital kind of, you know, ability to, like, create demand online and then was, actually my, my most recent posts was adequate and share, which is a YC company. And so I, you know, whenever I went on there, you know, for me, I knew very much say, the title change was not, I don’t totally care about titles either. And you know, the steam, I was, had a list for a much smaller company. The company was valued closer to like under 10 million. And so the company that I was going to is in the hundreds of billions. And so I said, you know, I like to, I’d say, very aware of, kind of where I am in the scheme of things. And so that’s actually led that company to their latest series D so we passed that $2.5 billion valuation earlier this year.

 

[09:47 – 09:47] Wow!

 

[09:47 – 10:17] So yeah, that was some crazy growth. If you want to talk about scale, there’s lots of tales of scale inside of that company for sure. But it was an awesome experience. And I think I’m still kind of recovering from all that, that crazy growth, but yeah. So now I’m at FinTech and like you mentioned Tillful and we’re kind of trying to do it all over again. So I’m excited to see where we can take it again, early stages, really kind of where I like to lay that. I think it’s the most exciting, I think it’s where I can add the most value and impact at this point in my career. So yeah, just kind of keeping on, keeping on.

 

[10:17 – 10:31]  So, early-stage Tillful, how long has, well first, what led you to Tillful? Did you know the founders, because it’s, it’s actually owned by a company called Flowcast?

 

[10:32 – 11:41] Yeah. Yes. Correct. So LinkedIn InMail recruiter, actually. Oh, wow. I won’t deny. Yeah. If you, I’m sure, you know, it’s kind of weird in the LinkedIn DMs, you know, it can be legitimate up until that point. I mean, I haven’t, I’ve seen some opportunities come through that were relatively like, you know, they weren’t, they, weren’t legitimate, but this recruiter was really good. You know, she just spoke very well. I kinda knew that, like I was coming up to my four years of equipment share and, you know, I kind of felt like I had done my part there and I was vested and everything like that. So it seemed like a good time to transition, but I wasn’t really looking, per se, for a new opportunity. But, yeah, I, you know, I met the founder, you know, again, there’s always, there’s more opportunity and, and again, kind of just whenever I started with equipment share, it was like the 126 employees. And when I left, it was like, you know, close to 1600 employees. Yeah. It was, it was a lot of growth and yeah, it was kind of just time for, you know, a new opportunity. I really liked the brand development. I really liked crafting more of that messaging and creating that brand equity. And I think that that really happens more at the earlier stages.

 

[11:42 – 11:50] So can you tell us what is Tillful and at what point, when did it start and at what point did you get involved in its early stages?

 

[11:50 – 12:52] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, Flowcast is the company. So the company that, you know, employees need proper, is going to be Flowcast and Tillful is a product of Flowcast, a little bit. Flowcast actually launched out of StartX, which is, kind of to, to, to Stanford in terms of it’s an accelerator, that’s got some ties and associations, I believe, whatever. I’m trying to think where Stanford is. In California. In California generally, but yeah. And so our founder, he went to, you know, Berkeley. He’s Berkeley, MBA grad and kind of founded the company. It was very much of an AAL AIML [Artifical Intelligence Markup Language] company focused on credit risk assessment. And so they launched Flowcast really focused on, you know, the data science aspect of it, and really kind of like machine learning and got a lot of opportunities with, you know, some really big clients right off the gate, like Hitachi, Nike, actually still one of our clients on the enterprise side.  Standard Chartered as well.

 

[12:52 – 13:39] ING is actually, we’re backed by ING Ventures, but they’re also, you know, one of our customers too. So we have a lot of really great exposure to the enterprise, like big, large financial banking institutions for like doing financial risk modeling, kind of seeing like with vendors that they’re more likely to repay, you know, kind of what the risk is on taking on certain aspects of different areas inside of these big businesses when it comes to risk assessment and credit risk. And so that kind of evolved into, okay, how can we actually leverage all of this, like a really great, you know, machine learning technology to impact the world better. And it really kind of led us to the SMB market. So, you know, when you talk about Tillful and really the best way to describe it is the “credit karma for small business.” If that helps a little bit better.

 

[13:37 – 13:40] The credit karma, is that what you said?

 

[13:40 – 13:41] Yes.

 

[13:41 – 13:47] And I know I’ve, I’ve heard of credit karma, but can you remind me? Sure, yeah, yeah.  What is it again?

 

[13:47 – 14:41] So credit karma was a, you know, it was a consumer FinTech that was really pop…well, it’s still popular and it really kind of focused on just consumer finances. So providing, you know, access to, like, financial literacy for consumers, for consumer credit. And what NerdWallet is, is another good example. And what Tillful does is provide access to your credit, poor credit score, but we have our own proprietary credit scoring method first for business credit scoring. So right now, you know, if you are on the consumer side of things, you don’t really have, there’s a pretty good standardization kind of set up, that it’s going to be FICO. You know FICO, if there’s Equifax, things like that. Whereas the business credit, it’s kind of a wild, wild west there’s DNB, which is fine, you know, Experian as well, but they’re, they’re not really like the gold standard.

 

[14:41 – 15:52] And so they also require you to pay for your credit report and score. And we’re pretty big firm believers that you shouldn’t have to pay for your own data for consumer, if you need access to recover and report and score, like you can get that for free once a year, then, you know, that’s what you’re allowed to do by, you know, just like the federal regulatory standards. So in business credit is kind of a black box and we were really trying to make that black box not so black because there’s a lot of gatekeeping to opportunity, we believe, when it comes to business credit. And there’s the underserved markets that live, you know, in minority-owned businesses, the Hispanic, the, you know, Latin X, black communities when it comes to access to credit capital and to financial literacy. So we’re really trying to bridge that gap. You know, I think it’s really easy to make money when you start with money and it’s very hard to make money when you don’t, it’s much harder to make money when you don’t come from money, if you will. So we’re really trying to make that credit invisible, you know market credit visible through products, through, free resources and through, you know, empowerment through technology as FinTech.

 

 

[15:52 – 15:54] Okay. I have so many questions.

 

[15:54 – 15:58] It’s a lot of information I know.

 

[16:00 – 17:02] And this was why I wanted to talk to you so badly because I can remember clearly several years ago when I needed capital for, I had an idea for a software and I had, I met my patent attorney and he was trying to help me figure out some sources through the SBA for funding. And I remembered having a conversation with him way back then. This was like back in 2008. And I was like, you know how there’s like a personal, you have your personal credit score? Is there such a thing as a business credit score? And so I did, you know, I knew about Dun & Bradstreet that, your DNB number, but I never understood how it was calculated. And I didn’t know if that’s what banks and other creditors, business creditors, is that what they actually look for? So if I’m, if I’m understanding you correctly, it sounds like, with what you all are doing at Tillful is you are creating something equivalent to a FICO score, but for us. Yeah. For biz. Okay. Got it.

 

[17:02 – 17:47] Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, you know, it’s one component, it’s not terrible. I, you know, whenever I think about it, this estimate is, is kind of a good way to look at it, you know, before there was market data, that was kind of, you know, again, gate kept behind different MLS things and like you’re a real estate agent, but you know, Zillow really kind of changed in brought a lot of transparency to like home values because they’re aggregating so much data and we’re doing the same thing. And, you know, my husband is actually a, he’s a mortgage loan officer and we kind of get into it a little bit sometimes because he’s like, you know, Zillow estimate can be off. And I go, actually it’s like less often you probably think because they have more access to data than anybody does in any one place.

 

[17:47 – 18:29] And the same kind of goes, you know, for us as well. You know, there’s a lot of, like, we offer and facilitate funding as well through different partners. So we do have, like, a funding product in addition that if you are looking for business funding, you can come to us and you can kind of, kind of get in the door of knowing your business credit score through our platform. Then you can kind of gauge whenever it would be a good time to kind of go in and grab that funding based on where you are on this, on, on the Tillful scoring spectrum. And then, you know, when it comes to funding, we work with all the different lender partners. So we can actually, we’re a better choice to kind of go through because we’re a marketplace model for the funding side of things as well.

 

[18:29 – 19:00] So we can get you better terms, more aggressive rates, as opposed to, if you go to, like, the bank and just get an ask for a loan, they’re going to like, you know, pull your credit. They’re going to look at you and they’re going to be there. If they don’t approve of you, then like, you paying your score, you’ve kind of like, and then you’re just like, okay, I guess, what am I going to do now? And, and we’re really trying to change that because that’s just, it’s, doesn’t, it’s not very, it doesn’t put the business owner and entrepreneurship and job creation first. It just kind of puts the people that are there holding the capital, the lenders first. And we’re not, we’re not a big fan of that.

 

[19:00 – 19:35] So, Amber, again, so many questions that I have for you each time you say something, I think of, I think of like at least five more questions that I want to ask you. So going back to the score, I know from experience just in trying to apply for capital over the years for, for my company, that they do ask for access to your personal, for me as the founder of the company, they want to have access to my personal credit history. Does the Tillful score, does it ask anything about a founder’s personal credit?

Source: Tillful.com/How-It-Works

[19:36 – 20:31] It’s really based on the business credit profile. So we really try to kind of stay away from that. I mean, I think it’s also, there seems to be a lot of conversations though, you know, especially on social media, there’s a lot of this kind of, like, hustle culture out there. That’s telling people, you can get like a GUI again and use, like, a text section of the business. And so, you know, I think that what people need to remember though, is that from an underwriting perspective, from somebody that worked in InsurTech, you know, you do have to remember that anybody that’s going to lend money. The smart thing for them to do though, is to look at you and say, are you actually somebody that is, is creditworthy? And are you, what is your credit risk profile? So I think you can’t, you’re never going to be able to say that the idea is to say, get somebody off the ground and start to grow.

 

[20:32 – 21:12] You know, you have your personal credit and that kind of is your home, your house, your life, whatever you’re doing on your personal credit cards for your own life. But then if you have a business entity that, and if you bring on partners and if you bring on those people, you can really start to send those into different directions because they are two different entities. So we’re trying to, kind of, create that foundation for that education. But at the same time, you know, we, the bigger value profit that Tillful brings is we actually pull in alternative data. So alternative data means like bank transaction data. And so currently the way that a lot of these, like, you know, credit scoring models work on the business credit side is that they just look at like static points, like certain like five, you know, a handful of points.

 

[21:12 – 21:47] Like how long have you been in business? You know, X, Y, and Z, but we actually like pull in your, your bank cash flow, kind of like, how are you actually spending your money on the regular and looking at AIML models to say like, okay, actually this person is more creditworthy than they’re probably getting credit for it because they’re paying their bills on time. They’re, they have a regular flow of cash there. Their bank accounts are jumping up and down. There’s revenue coming in, you know, they’re, they’re pretty, they have, they’re good for it if you will. And so that’s, that’s the difference between the Tillful score and a lot of what, you know, the stuff like the DNB and, Experian does as well.

 

[21:48 – 22:09] I think that’s really helpful to know, because so often also for us, small business owners, everything is about that bottom line. What is the profit or loss? What is, you know, is how much equity is in the business and what’s the cashflow, what does the cashflow actually look like, but, but it sounds like you all are actually looking at… (inaudible)

 

[22:10 – 22:12] There’s actually what happens in between, you know.

 

[22:12 – 22:34] Absolutely. There’s so much that happens. So I’m really glad to hear that. I’m also curious to find out more about how Tillful actually gets access to that alternative data that you were just describing. But again, let’s wait until we talk about how Tillful actually works. For now, let’s go ahead and take a quick break to hear a word from one of our sponsors.

 

 

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[23:49 – 25:09] Before the break, Amber, you were starting to tell us about Tillful and what it actually is and how you all aim to become the gold standard for business credit scores. I’d like to now shift the discussion from what it actually is to how it actually works, because as you know, having access to capital is absolutely necessary to grow and scale any business regardless of industry or sector. So I’m hoping we can also talk about this as in the process of describing how it works. I’m hoping we can talk about it from a business infrastructure perspective. And so for those of you who are listening to the show for the first time, business infrastructure is a system for linking the people, the processes and the tools and technologies that you have in your company to ensure that growth can happen not only in a profitable way, but in a sustainable way as well. So we know what tilt is now at this point. Amber, can you explain to us from the moment someone goes to the website and signs up to create a free account? What happens next?

 

[25:10 – 25:55] Yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, whenever you, you can just visit Tillful.com T I L L F U L dot com. And you can just click on the button in the top, right corner, sign it for free. You know, there’s, there’s this, prompts, you know, kind of throughout the website, as you kind of want to read more, if you’re not quite ready and just want to learn a little bit more there’s, you know, resources in and more, you know, educational information on how it works and what it is all throughout the website. We’re constantly looking to update that, you know, as we grow and as we get more feedback from our own users, which is, or, you know, pretty significant or growth. So we’ve only been around for a little bit over a year at this point. And every day we’re adding thousands of more users. Wow. And so that’s really great to see.

Source: Tillful.com

[25:55 – 26:47] Yeah, and a lot of it’s just driven, you know, a great deal of it’s being driven by, you know, word of mouth, which is a great testament to our product. And we’re, we’re very focused, product development engineering teams, marketing is very focused on, you know, providing value to users. So you can see that reflected all throughout, you know, the website and in our app suite as well. So you can go onto the website, you can also download it on the app store if you want to, but typically the users it’s usually kind of signing up online and then they’re, you know, probably downloading that later. That’s typically how I would do it is kind of what we’re seeing as well. And then you essentially, you, you’re getting prompt right away to search for your business. So, you know, this is for, this is really for someone who has already established and registered, you know, their, their business, whether that’s a corp or LLC, and then you can find it in our directory.

 

[26:47 – 27:39] So right away essentially helps get you connected directly into that. And we kind of feed your business info into your account by going about it that way. So you can search for your business and then sign it for free there, signing it for free has no impact on your credit score, whether that’s personal or, or, or a business credit. So you just kind of put in your information, it’s a pretty short, short form there, and then you’re basically signed up. So, you know, we definitely don’t share any of your information where you take data privacy and security extremely, extremely seriously. We definitely don’t sell any of it. That’s something that is really one of our core values. As a company, we have a very esteemed set of post-doctorate data scientists that are much, much smarter than I am. And so that is one thing that we’re really cognizant of.

 

[27:40 – 28:31] And so really the value is though, is that actually, the best way that you can get the value out of Tillful is when you connect your accounts via Plaid. So, Plaid is an even hyper-secure and of standard for connecting different bank accounts to see if you log into, you know, like make America, Capital One, you know, all the major large banking institutions that if you’re ever looking to kind of send money, you know, it’s kind of that, backend standard, that’s kind of trying to connect a lot of these like closed banking environments. And so we’re using Plaid, to connect that data. And then essentially what happens then is that we can start to generate (you) a Tillful score. And so the Tillful score is really the value prop of that, it runs on a zero to a hundred spectrum the same as, like, a Paydex as well.

 

[28:31 – 29:16] So you can kind of compare notes and the difference in the value that’s there is having alternative data like we talked about earlier that can feed into that score. So it’s looking at cash flow again, it’s looking at not only payments made on time but trends in different patterns that would really give you that leverage. And so we really see credit as leverage, not something that should be a gatekeeper to opportunity when it comes to like growth capital into credit access. We really see it as something that if we always kind of say, you know, you should be getting the credit that you deserve. And there, you know, there’s kind of a duopoly there, marketing things, but, it really rings true because we think that there’s, there’s so many other things that, you know, business owners are out there doing, they’re making payments on time.

 

[29:16 – 30:06] They’re also ensuring that their cash flow is positive. They’re, you know, raking in income and, you know, maybe they do have access to, to capital and credit products, but because somebody typically is only being able to access their credit report and score and financial health kind of on a point by point basis, cause they’re going to like check it or it’s whenever they think that they want funding, they might be eligible for more, for more credit products and opportunity to that capital. Well, before they kind of think they need it, or maybe oftentimes when it’s too late, you know, they kind of get in a crunch, things like that. And also, you know, even if you don’t really need, you know, a specific amount of set capital at any given point to, to kind of grow or operate, by opening up lines of business credit, you actually are able to build your score that way.

 

[30:06 – 31:00] And so by building your score, you know, just in the same way that consumer and personal credit works, the higher your score, the better terms, the better rates, the more aggressive essentially it puts the, it puts things in your favor and it comes to like going into an agreement with a lender, because if you’ve got a 750 to 800 credit score, if you’re going to go get a mortgage, you’re going to get a better rate. And that’s the same thing with business credit. So whenever we talk about business infrastructure, I mean, there’s, there’s really that whenever you’re, you know, kind of just recapping kind of what that means, you know, this Tillful is kind of like your, your portal to business infrastructure. It’s, it’s actually the nexus of that because it is, it’s your financial, it’s your business financial health. And, you know, it’d be the day businesses operate to generate profit and they’re there to, you know, create income and to create monetary opportunity and to make a profit.

 

[31:00 – 31:46] And so really the Tillful product is to ensure that your financial, your business, financial health is, is always top-notch, it’s always what it could be. And it, it really, you know, it’s kinda that underdog story, it helps empower business owners to know what’s going on with their business. Let us know if your score changes, you know, really, if you’re a business credit score and your business credit report, anything happens on it. You really don’t have a great way at the moment to really know that, now with personal it’s, it’s much different. There’s a lot of people that have conquered that. And so, yeah, we’re really just trying to bring that to the business credit space, because I feel like it’s, it’s a bit of a black box when it comes to business credit and we want to bring transparency and inclusion to, to that entire landscape so that, so the more people can enter it and there’s, it’s a more fair and equal playing field.

 

[31:47 – 32:19] That was great. Again, this is a theme now with our interview, I have so many questions listening to you. So I’d like to go back to the point in the process. You were just describing Amber, when you mentioned connecting your accounts via Plaid, is that ultimately how Tillful is getting access to what you’ve been describing as that alternative data? So for example, so many of us, small business owners, we use QuickBooks, would we somehow be able to connect our online QuickBooks account with Plaid?

Source: 345.technology

[32:19 – 33:36] Yeah. So at the moment, it’s just Plaid, but we are actively pursuing further integrations that can help take into account your creditworthiness and how we can tweak and adjust our modeling, on the data science side too, to see how that can impact. But do you want to be a bit cautious about adding things in, even though, you know, that would be great. We, you know, when it comes to like modeling scores and, and, and it comes to like people’s financial futures, you know, we want to make sure that we’re, we’re doing a lot of that, that back in due diligence to make sure that that’s something that, that would actually determine creditworthiness. So always identifying patterns, the data science team has got a lot in development right now in R and D. And so we’re looking to push out more and more as we can, you know, right now the model is based on a very core set that kind of came from infancy, but it’s always evolving. So we look forward to adding in more things that score that can, that can take into account because we know that there’s tons more, you know, different things that business owners are using all the time that would really contribute to that. What, what does credit, what does creditworthiness mean? What does borrower risk mean? And is person, you know, less of a risk or more of a risk than, than we actually think by, by looking at, you know, things like you said, like QuickBooks.

 

[33:37 – 33:44] And I’m just trying to envision not having seen the form yet, but I’m definitely going to be signing up as soon as this interview ends, but also…

 

[33:46 – 33:48] I’d love to get your feedback and we’d love for you to join.

 

[33:49 – 34:29] Absolutely, absolutely. I’m so fascinated by this for obvious reasons, because again, you know, I, I have, an access to capital need right now, but I’ve always traditionally me personally, I’ve always traditionally gone through the SBA and especially because of the pandemic, that’s when so many of us who had been cut off from capital in the past, we found that we all of a sudden had, were able to get access that we could not get access to before. So that’s been one good thing that’s come out of the pandemic, but I’m also imagining that you would connect things like your, you know, information about your different credit cards, maybe existing loans that you have in progress.

 

[34:29 – 35:19] So, whenever the Plaid connection really is connecting to your business bank accounts. And so that’s, that’s kind of the, the hub of where anything would come in or out of, right. So basically home base, you know, for a business. And so whenever you kind of connect your Tillful account to your, your big account, that kind of creates that connection between in and out, if you will, and then kind of monitors that. So you can really look at, you know, Tillful as a financial, you know, business financial management platform as well. I mean, that’s, it’s a lot of how people are using it. It’s an ongoing monitoring system for your businesses, financial health, whereas like your bank account, your business bank account just kind of tells you, like, what’s coming in and out. It doesn’t tell you, you know, kind of, oh, wow, your spending is, is a bit you’re kind of spending seems to be a bit up or down.

 

[35:19 – 36:07] And so we were really looking at patterns and trends and, and trying to kind of be that watchdog on your behalf because business owners are busy. You know, they’re running around all the time. A lot of, you know, some of their employees have access to their accounts on their behalf. And so there might be things coming out, you know, vendors, it’s input and output all the time, you know, with cash flow. And so it keeps an eye on that. And the other big development that we made with Tillful earlier this summer was that we introduced a Tillful funding. And so we’re, we’re integrating, you know, as we collect more data just, you know, on our own and looking at how we can burn more value to business owners beyond the score, and also improving the score and that modeling as we go, we’re also looking to add more products.

 

 

[36:08 – 36:55] And so, you know, obviously business funding is a big area, you know. And so we are actually taking a look at those scores, kind of seeing, like, where they are in their business, how much income they generate. And then based on that information, you know, serving up recommendations for, you know, credit cards, business credit cards from our partners. So we have a network of like over 40 really well-vetted, lending partners and FinTechs and, and different, you know, small business, players of knew well that, that we very much take a hard look at before we making a sort of partnership with them to introduce to our typical users, because, you know, that’s the big responsibility that we definitely take seriously and making sure that we’re always adding value to any of our users, you know, just day-to-day lives when it comes to business finance.

 

[36:55 – 38:01] And so we do have our first, you know, certain credit card offers that you wouldn’t really necessarily see if maybe you were just like on the internet kind of browsing and it’s, it’s based on your Tillful score, but we introduced… Okay. …more in-house, it’s not, we’re not actually providing the business funding, so it’s not something that we’re writing, but we have a dedicated, you know, team that is, got tons of experience on the, on the business funding side of things as is as at either previous lenders for small businesses or they even small business owners themselves that actually guide you through, you know, the funding options for you, if you are looking to take out some business funding. And so the benefit of, of going through a, till, you know, going through Tillful funding. So if you’re just like in your, in your account, there’s prompts if you want to, if you’re ready to apply for funding, or maybe we’ll, we’ll kind of take a look and we’ll prompt you through, you know, application or through an email, essentially kind of letting you know, Hey, it looks like this might be a good time to apply for funding is actually, we are pulling from our marketplace of funding partners.

 

[38:01 – 38:47] And so you’re not getting a hard credit pull again, it’s a soft pull, so it’s not gonna affect, you know, any of your scores, you know, on, on any of the other platforms or, you know, for, any of the major reporting credit agents, credit bureaus. And so, where you have a funding advisor, so they’re walking you through that the entire time they’re trying to go out and basically scout the best possible funding options for whatever your needs are. And so, you know, we have access to a number of different funding products too, not just like, you know, just loans or just, MCA or things like that. So I think that’s really, you know, another cool, exciting thing is that, you know, if right now, if you kind of go to there’s regional bank, their underwriting isn’t great.

 

 

[38:47 – 39:31] They don’t have that. They’re just a bit, you know, dated in terms of kind of like what they’re willing to take on there. They’re really kind of looking at very, you know, old school type of factors that, again, aren’t super accurate when it comes to accessing credit worthiness and they, they, you might not get approved. And then you’re kind of hit with this credit hard credit inquiry on your business and, and things like that. And then you’re kind of just like, oh, wow, like what do I do now? And then you might go online and look and apply for some of the, you know, the online lenders. And then if, if you’re going and doing that, you’re just going to one place or, thus, if you go to Tillful, we’ll, we’ll shop the market for you figuring out what the best possible opportunity is for you in terms of credit products and, and funding opportunities.

 

[39:31 – 40:18] And we’ll recommend that, and guide you through that process the entire way. And then the last thing I wanted to mention is, a very, very new development is the Tillful card, which is a credit building card. And we actually are wanting that, before the end of the year. And we have a waitlist open right now, and we’re really excited about that because we’ve essentially designed a card again, that ties back to our entire mission of basically just helping people get credit and build credit. And so the Tillful card essentially is a secured card. And so every single transaction, especially if you’re just starting out and you’re trying to establish business products, you just haven’t done that yet. You know, we really wanted to figure out a way that we can, how, how can we help people invest in themselves and in their business, even if they’re just starting out as opposed to taking on the risks.

 

[40:18 – 41:08] So we’re trying to curtail the risks very much on, just getting started, kind of side, when they’re trying to build up, because it’s credit because you can’t get credit if you don’t have credit. Right. And so that card is, is going to be reporting to all of the major agencies that kind of are the, you know, the well-known, if you will, centrally 0% APR, it is, the payment terms are much better than a lot of the similar, there’s only a handful of credit builder cards out there, but they’re a bit misleading in my opinion, because they are, you basically have to pay them daily, which is like the same thing to me. And so that the payment terms are much more favorable. They’re monthly. They’re not, you know, daily or weekly, and it starts out as this credit card. So very similar to some of the things that the secured card, credit building products that you see on the, on the consumer side.

Source: Tillful.com/card

[41:09 – 41:54] And it also has big rewards, you know, cashback. We also have, like, our best feature: pick the rewards that we think small business owners are most inclined to, to want. So it’s not, a lot of credit cards offer, like, rewards, but it’s like I have, you know, a handful of them as well. And I’m a bit of a point tucker for (inaudible). Like, I don’t even, like, want that, like if it’s not a reward to me, if it’s not actually valuable. So we’re looking at like, you know, gift cards to Staples and Office Depot and Amazon and BestBuy, places that small business owners are going for their needs and Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, a lot of different ones too. So, yeah. So that’s kind of a quick Roundup. I know that’s a lot of information. There’s a lot, there’s a lot going on over here.

 

[41:54 – 42:13] I’m over here trying to keep up with you. So something else that’s come to mind as something that I would be remiss if I didn’t ask. Now we have listeners in several different countries. Does Tillful only work for companies in America or businesses that do business in America?

 

[42:14 – 43:15] If you are registered in the U.S. as a business at the moment, but we definitely are not looking to exclusively stay, you know, in the US only, you know, to kind of like long-term and looking at the long game, we definitely talked about, you know, going well beyond the US and so, you know, navigating those different, financial economies can kind of, kind of be tricky, but at the same time, you know, we’re very well positioned to do it just considering, you know, our, our background and our context. We have a lot of experience in the APAC region and also in Europe as well. And so, our entire team is located, our small team is located over, like, I think it’s like something like 15 different countries right now. So we’ve got, yeah, we’re super diverse, you know, highly inclusive, and a very geographically diverse team. And so we have, we’re not just like a US-based team. And I think that positions us to, to actually take on that challenge more so.

 

 

[43:16 – 44:30] Absolutely. And I’m also thinking, you know, our, our theme for this particular season is all about game-changing technology, right. And I’m thinking as a, as I’ve been listening to you, Amber, to me, in my opinion, not only is the technology that Tillful offers a game-changer in and of itself, but I think also just getting those small business owners who might be listening to this right now to start adding a credit score, the business’s credit score as yet another metric to start actively monitoring. So we’re so used to always looking at, okay, what is the bottom line? And we can become so focused on that, that to your point, we lose sight of some of the other things, like what is, what’s our actual credit worthiness. So it’s yet another important factor, that in my opinion, needs to be monitored just as religiously as some of these other factors, like, you know, cash flow, equity in the company, you know, did we operate at a profit or loss? What was our EBITDA, all of those financial metrics, right? We need to start adding this as yet another one of those crucial metrics, because as my mother would always say, or always told me growing up, you never need it until you need it.

 

[44:31 – 46:29] Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that’s kind of what we’re, we’re looking to just help business owners get out in front, you know, cause now they’re kind of trying to run to keep up with the system that, you know, especially a small businesses, you know, the margins are thin and the competition is, is more than ever, especially with more online shopping and these big-box retailers they’re of course, they’re, they’re going to be able to, to compete more aggressively because they have the resources. And so we’re really trying to empower small businesses with resources and, and, when it comes to your business, your financial, your business financial health is, is the lifeblood, right? And so if you need to, you know, whether it’s supply chain things, especially with a lot of stuff that’s going on right now, you know, just getting difficult. And so it’s tough because you know, these small businesses are getting squeezed and they shouldn’t be, you know, and, and it’s a tough, it’s hard to, to kind of seek for a pandemic and kind of be put in these impossible situations.

 

And, and the SBA, you know, they really did come through the great thank God for the PPP funding, you know, and that, that helps a lot, but a lot of that stuff is, is running out. And, you know a lot of, you know, buying behaviors changed during the pandemic, you know, just kind of what people decided, movies, kind of thing. Not that exciting more is certain things that get people out and going around into their local communities, where they live and reside, which are so critical to the business infrastructure of the national economy. They, if they can’t compete because rents are driving up and things like that. And, you know, we, we just want to help them to stay, not only survive, but thrive because when you’ve got a small business, that’s thriving, you know, everything is thriving. And so we’re really looking to help, you know, this post-pandemic world we’ll have, I don’t even know for post yet, but like post early pandemic world, really trying to help, you know, business, stay afloat, provide that financial literacy and get more people to, to stop, you know, kind of join in that great resignation.

 

[46:29 – 46:37] It’s like, you don’t have to work a nine to five. You can do whatever you want. And a lot of times people don’t end up doing that because they don’t know how, and they don’t have the means to do it. And it’s out there. There’s tons of it. People are getting on all the time. We think everyone should have access to that.

 

[46:37 – 47:36] Well, I applaud everything that you all are doing. It’s so needed. And especially with, you know, speaking of the great resignation, that’s a huge factor in the labor shortages that we’re seeing. And I just had this conversation with a friend yesterday because so many people are quick to say, well, people are just being lazy and they don’t want to work. And so we’ll know a lot of people started well, you know, that’s part of it, but there are a lot of people who started home-based businesses. And to your point, Amber, they realize, okay, I can do this. As long as I have a good laptop, I have access to high-speed internet. I can, I can do this business remotely. And then for those companies that are losing employees, they need access to more capital so that they can invest in certain technologies to maybe automate certain tasks that before people, actual people were needed to do. But maybe now robots can do that work. I don’t know. The point is…

 

[47:36 – 47:44] There’s definitely a shift happening for sure.

 

[47:44 – 48:31] Yes. And we, I think we were all just being challenged to figure out how to be more creative in how we get things done, but you have to have the capital to make a lot of that happen. You can have all of the ideas in the world, but if you don’t have access to that capital in order to actually execute on those ideas, then you know, it’s, it’s kind of in vain. I know we have to start wrapping up here, but I must ask you, because one of the, as you described the process, you mentioned the importance of, you know, once you finally figure out what your score is, let’s say, if someone looks up their business credit score through Tillful and they find that it’s a 65 and they want to, maybe their goal is to get to an 85 over the next four to six months.

 

[48:31 – 49:03] Are there people at Tillful that, you know, certain, that your users can actually connect with or do you suggest that people reach out to, you know, whoever their local banker might be their CPA? I’m just trying to get a sense of who are the people that you would need as a business owner, that a business owner would need to surround him or herself with to keep an eye number one, on monitoring the score. And then secondly, to make sure that you can improve it and have, be as creditworthy as the business can possibly be.

 

 

[49:03 – 50:09] Yeah, absolutely. You know, usually, you know, so what Tillful is, is doing is, is going to be doing more and more of, you know, in a much bigger way as we, you know, grow, grow, the platform is serving up those actionable tips. And so, you know, whether that’s through Tillful products or other, you know, just other things that you can be doing, you know, similar to what you see kind of on the, on the personal credit side of things, whenever you’ve bought these free platforms that are offering really, really awesome tips that are just based on your account and your unique kind of credentials in that account for how you can improve it, you know, big thing and that’s another reason why we’re looking to introduce the Tillful card. And we’re super, super excited about that, is because there’s lots of things that you can do, but this is actually more of an expressway to do that because it’s a thing that right away directly correlates to building credit. Whereas, but also beyond, you know, Tillful, you know, plugging Tillful, you know, we, we do have, well (inaudible) Tillful again, but we definitely do have, you know, tons of free resources on our website, on our blog.

 

[50:09 – 50:58] You don’t have to be a user to read them, obviously, but we take our editorial, our editorial standards for anything that we put on our website and anything we put on our blog are extremely high. I do have a chase school, a journalism degree. So I think that that is kind of playing into it. And, you know, a lot of our editorial team comes from, you know, FinTechs, former FinTechs as well, too. So what we know is that we can’t grow and really do this and be impactful if we don’t earn and provide or earn our users’ trust and, you know, keep that trust and also provide value. And so we definitely want to be the guiding light that helps kind of break down a lot of things and stuff is confusing, you know, and a lot of the stuff that we’re kind of finding out there where like, I don’t understand this, like, this is, this is confusing.

 

[50:58 – 51:54] And so we’ll look into that. And like, you know, we’re always looking at, like, what are people searching for? What are related questions to those questions? And we’re seeing something that we could actually be writing about that could be helpful. And so we’re doing super long form guides, how-to, you know, breaking down the difference between like, you know, good loans for bad credit, you know, best year business credit cards, you know, different things about trade lines, really trying to dig into it, you know, and our, our founder or CEO is obviously also a business owner and he’s got an exceptional amount of, you know, finance background as well on the corporate side and the lending side. And, you know, our CFO has got, like the CPA, CFA, and a lot of other different, you know, C, acronyms that I’m unfamiliar with. And also we have a highly rigorous editorial process, but beyond Tillful, you know, SBA obviously is everything that the SBA puts out is obviously great.

 

[51:54 – 52:41] You know, I think what SBA has trouble with is visibility. A lot of, a lot of people just, don’t some, you know, their Twitter, I highly recommend following their Twitter, and setting up notifications. If you’re a business owner, I have them turned on and, and this stuff that you can miss, if you don’t have that, like, there’s all these opportunities, grants, the IDL things, things that are a little bit more obscure, but could be very well be things that you could apply for and qualify for, but you just might miss it. And, you know, I think local, the local SBA is, it kind of depends on what, where you are and who you are. Some more smaller communities. You know, I live in a pretty decent size, you know, American US City, if you will, you know, we’ve got like over, you know, 200 something thousand people there it’s a bit SBA here.

 

[52:41 – 53:35] It’s kind of kinda like, where is it? So I think it really depends. And a lot of it depends on the people that are, that are heading up those as well. So, you know, always checking on their website. They’re, they’re getting, I wouldn’t say that they’re, they’re definitely trying to be, you know, more innovative as well. You think you can kind of see that with the new administration coming in. I know that was a big thing. When the Obama administration put in place that they really wanted to like, reach more people and they did, they really invested a great deal into digital platforms, into digital communication. And I think that there’s a lot of great things that you could see, you know, sending it for their email alerts as well. It’s fantastic. And there’s a lot of, you know, again, kind of looking back on like, you know, or who are other great resources kind of beyond those, like, you know, obvious, the more obvious ones like the SBA, you know, I, there’s two, two influencers I would recommend highly following.

 

[53:35 – 54:21] And, by influencers, I mean they’re really just, you know, kind of business credit kind of gurus. They’ve been in the space for a really long time. You know, they, they both come from, you know, eh, they’re definitely more on the minority-owned business owner side of things. And one is Sierra Nicole Official. She is one of our partners and she’s been one of them for a long time. And I would only recommend them. I’m definitely not, there’s definitely no kickbacks going on, but I monitor her content all the time ‘cause we’re partners with her. We work together really closely and everything she puts out. It’s fantastic. And there’s also Irv, it’s Irv official so if you just Google Irv Official, I R V, he’ll come up and then Sierra Nicole Official. Those are both and that’s S I E R R A. So those are really good.

 

[54:22 – 54:23] Is that on Twitter or Instagram?

 

[54:23 – 55:08] They’re kind of everywhere. They’re mostly, Instagram is a good one. They also both have YouTube and then Tiktok as well. So if you kind of Google either one of those they’ll come up pretty easily. And so, yeah, and I can, I can send those and share those with you as well, too, if that’s helpful, but, you know, there’s, there’s different. Those would be great resources. Those are the ones, you know, right up the gate, SBA ourselves, our, our channels as well, are always going to be in, we’re every day trying more and more to put out content and social media. That’s, that’s informative and not just like fun and, like, cool looking. And so that’s, that’s always, one of our goals is always just to inform and to provide value when it comes to like our outward-facing content.

 

[55:09 – 55:25] This is all fantastic information. And I really appreciate you sharing all of these resources. We’ll definitely make sure we have links to everything in the show notes for this episode, but before we officially wrap up Amber, what’s the best way for people to connect with you?

 

[55:26 – 55:51] Twitter, is probably a good way, the same way you did it your way. I mean, you can always, I implore people, you know, to email me at [email protected]. I, no problem being, putting my email out there totally fine with me and I can help answer questions and, you know, we’re, we’re always looking to help. And so, yeah, anyway, I’m pretty, findable on the internet. If you, if you just kind of looked me up.

 

[55:53 – 56:38] Yeah. And we’re going to definitely do our part to make sure that we have, you know, if people just, again, click on the show notes for this episode, they’ll be able to quickly find where they can find you on Twitter, LinkedIn, all of these other social platforms. And I noticed you also have a profile on Product Hunt. Was it Product Hunt? No, I’m sorry, Crunchbase. Yeah. Crunchbase. Oh, yeah. Tillful has, Tillful itself has a profile on Product Hunt. So we’ll make sure we have links to all of that information. Listen, everyone, you know, normally I would try to recap some of the key things that you’ve shared. It’s been such great information. I don’t want to keep you any longer. I know I’ve kept you long enough than we both originally planned anyway, but it just means Amber that we probably need to have a part two of this conversation.

 

[56:39 – 56:55] I’d be happy to do it. (inaudible) I so appreciate you having me on, Alicia. It’s been wonderful to chat with you. I know there’s, there’s a lot, you know, everyday we’re, we’re pushing out, we’re really just getting started. So we can’t wait to bring you guys more.

[56:56 – 57:49] It’s awesome. And please, you know, feel free to reach out. You are welcome to come back anytime, seriously, because this is so, it’s so big. It’s such a, you know, I knew it would be impossible to try to fit everything right into an hour or less, but I think you’ve done a fantastic job of telling us, explaining to us first, what Tilfull is and how it’s giving, it’s kind of leveling the playing field, giving people access. And that’s what this podcast is all about. You know, I always talk about things from an operations standpoint, but you’re so right, Amber, that so many people, they just don’t know. And unfortunately the SBA with the government, they’re lacking. So a lot of times the private sector we will find will almost always outperform the public sector when it comes to doing certain things, this being one of them advertising the money that’s actually out there.

 

[57:49 – 58:29] It’s always interesting to me whenever I read these articles and they mention things like, oh, there are millions of dollars that go unclaimed every year because people don’t apply. And it’s like, well, because people don’t know about it. So that’s why Tillful is so needed. It’s so timely. And I’m just so happy that we were able to make this interview happen. We are going to have, again, access to all of the resources that Amber shared on our website at Businessinfrastructure.TV. You can also click the link in the description box, wherever you are listening to this episode right now. Amber, it has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming.

 

[58:29 – 58:35] Thank you so so much. This has been wonderful. I really appreciate it. So great to connect with you. And I look forward to just staying in touch.

 

[58:36 – 59:16] Indeed. Again, everyone. One more time, check out Businessinfrastructure.TV. Sign up for your free Tillful account, hey, it’s free. I mean, what’s, what’s the harm in that and start figuring out your business’s creditworthiness. You’ll also find more information about our sponsors, when you support them, it helps us keep this show free for you. Thank you so much for tuning in. And of course, for being a loyal subscriber. Remember, stay focused. Be encouraged. This entrepreneurial journey is a marathon and not a sprint. And make sure you keep operating as good on the inside as you look on the outside. Until the next time.