November 28, 2023
New Podcast Episode: When RBF Rears Its Beautiful Head with Nick Mathews, CEO of Mainvest
Happy Tuesday, friends, and I hope you had a great Thanksgiving holiday! I’m excited to share a new podcast episode with you today, this one with Nick Mathews, CEO and founder of Mainvest. Mainvest funds SMBs across the U.S. using a unique underwriting approach that involves the community, and that allows the community to invest in those businesses. Nick was introduced to me as a result of a question I asked a few months ago about who is funding Main Street businesses around the US using unique approaches. Nick is one of those capital entrepreneurs doing exactly that.
In the episode we cover Nick’s background, which is really unique. He helped Uber launch the Boston market, and was there as the company scaled from 30 to 15K employees. He learned lessons on that journey that he brought to Mainvest, and that informed the way he thinks about funding small businesses that I think is different from what I’ve heard before.
We also cover:
How the concept of locality evolved from Nick’s experience at Uber to the founding of Mainvest as a way to fund local businesses.
How Mainvest utilizes the community to augment its underwriting, and brings together customers and entrepreneurs in a virtuous cycle.
How Nick approached the problem of funding SMBs using design principles, and the ethos he’s built as he grows Mainvest into a funding powerhouse.
Lessons learned building a technology platform from scratch.
The future of alternative financing for SMBs.
I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with Nick, and as always, came away with lessons I can apply to my own business.
Please listen here and subscribe, and share feedback with me about the episode – I take your feedback seriously and look forward to hearing from you!