All businesses have competitors? Do you know who your competitors are and what they are offering customers? Many businesses are offering customers credit terms such as net 45. Although, it would be nice to make all sales on a cash basis it is not always possible. We meet with Jared Shulman of Lendica an enabled embedded finance company who lends to small businesses, both in cannabis and outside of cannabis through technology vendors.
Video Transcription
Harry Brelsford 0:06
I’m with Jared Shulman from Lendica, Jared, thank you for joining me, I’m happy to report that you’ve been named a leading candidate cannabis technology or candidate tech influencers. So congratulations.
Jared Shulman 0:19
Oh, well, thank you so much, Harry. It’s an honor.
Harry Brelsford 0:21
So what’s your story? What’s your business model? What do you do? And finally, what conferences may people find you at, but we’ll end on that.
Jared Shulman 0:29
We’ll have to find out on the conference front. We’re at conference capacity here. But you know, instead of diving into the business model, this sort of thing, I want to share a brief story, how can I be salient for you and kind of your your audience, and it was part of the reason why we started Lendica. So we’re an enabled embedded finance company. So what that means is we lend to small businesses, both in cannabis and outside of cannabis, we lend through technology vendors. So let’s say maybe you’re a point of sale company, you know, we talked about TreeZ, or you do advertising technology, Springboard is one of our big partners, or maybe you do order management or wholesale trading, you know, Apex for us, there’s many of these, we help these technology companies lend directly to their customers, instantly. So we’re able to do instant qualification. And so yeah, the the story and a little bit of the background, the CFA charter holder, and I do, it’s hard to get
Harry Brelsford 1:34
Yeah, yeah, that’s a respected designation, congratulations.
Jared Shulman 1:38
I appreciate that. I’m glad you’re familiar with it, you know, familiar anymore. But you know, as part of that, I teach financial literacy to these high school students. And so Wow, this this funny story that, um, came from, you know, these teachings and started to, you know, kind of signals, something needs to change here in terms of digital finance, digital banking, so, and, you know, there’s a six course seminar that I’ll teach in it, it’s a little bit aged material, we’ve spiced it up since, but there’s always a section on banking. Okay. And the course goes, there’s big banks and small banks, we talk about the benefits of each, right. So the benefits the big bank, at least the material that’s listed, they always state Well, a big bank is great, because we have a branch on every street corner. Okay. And so we’ll share that to the students. And every class and this is, I’ve done this 20-30 times, every class a student, the back will raise his hand his or her hand, and they’ll say, Excuse me, sir, what the heck is a bank branch? Right? What is the bank branch? And it’s funny, but it’s also just such a really profound statement when you peel it back. Um, you know, kids today, you know, small business today, businesses that are at their names, nascent, it would never occur to them to walk in to step into a bank branch. They don’t even know what it is. Yeah. And so now we think, okay, we’re in this unique digital lending space on location is everything right? As a financial services as any business, location, location, location. Now, what is the most valuable location? Right? Where are all these small business customers spending their time if it’s not in a bank on and so it turns out, they’re spending it digitally, right? Yeah. Yeah, digitally?
Harry Brelsford 3:27
Absolutely. I do it. What’s that? I do it myself,
Jared Shulman 3:32
digital bank, you’ll spend time you’ll I’m sure you’re familiar with mobile banking, mobile payments, but as a small business, and you can really appreciate this area, you know, being your background in small business nation, right, and you talk to millions of small businesses, you know, where they’re spending their time right now is on their technology vendor. Right? If I’m a small business, let’s say I’m even a small business in the cannabis space, maybe I’m selling vape cartridges or I’m selling marijuana gummies I’m going to spend my time on a florist or an APEC system. I’m going through the orders. I’m trying to figure out when my customers are going to pay me right so we help them factor those invoices, or we even help them extend seller terms. For example, you know, I’m sure you’re familiar with this craze, buy now pay later. We help brands we help suppliers in any industry you can think about in cannabis. Like a want a gummy, for example, we help them or Chiba chooses another great example. sell their invoices to their customers so they can pay on weekly installments. Okay, maybe you’re a dispensary or a retailer, maybe you’re a tire shop or a bike shop, and you’re constantly spending your time on your point of sale system here the skews that are really selling here or this staff that are doing a great job at the point of sale versus not. We help you unlock revenue based lending directly from your point of sale right?Maybe you’re focused on your advertising campaign you I really need to hit my next month’s on revenue targets and so I want to spend some money on marketing maybe I’m on spring big and I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to do these you know, MMS is unique MMS campaigns we help you finance those campaigns directly from spring big. And so that’s really what it means to be an embedded FinTech and most importantly that that’s really where the real estate is that’s where these small business customers are spending their time staying up at night. So we help it make it really easy for them to lend
Harry Brelsford 5:33
wow well we certainly got the right guy is a leading influencer and Amina for two reasons obviously your domain expertise in the field but also you’re a go giver in helping with teaching kids and stuff so that to me, is what makes an influencer right so I congratulate you. Well, let’s stay in touch and continued success to
Jared Shulman 5:54
Okay, thank you so much, Harry. Yeah, appreciate
