Welcome to our Featured Founder series, where you’ll meet startup founders from Tampa-St. Petersburg who are building and scaling their ventures to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges. We interviewed William Mingione of DirectLend.AI, a platform that matches business owners with their top financing options in minutes, eliminating the need for brokers and helping them find the best rates and terms available.

Please provide a brief one-liner about your company.

Directlend AI matches business owners with their top financing options in minutes, eliminating the need for brokers and helping them find the best rates and terms available.

What were you doing previously, and what inspired you to launch your company?

In college, I was working at a small digital marketing agency where I was in charge of building and managing Wix websites. After graduating, I started my own web design agency with an attempt to focus on automation – integrating my customers’ websites with powerful automated workflows for lead nurturing, data movement, and processing.

While building Slaterock Automation, we were contracted by a few business loan lenders to help with this exact type of work. Although the idea for Directlend had been in the back of my mind for a while, it wasn’t until recently, when I was under contract for a new home, that the idea really became clear. While trying to secure financing for my townhome, we were passed to multiple lenders who ultimately couldn’t get it done because of some ongoing construction at the property.

After almost losing the property a second time, I realized that the business owners, who use our systems every day, are likely going through the same thing, losing out on financing at the last minute because a broker purposely overlooked something to try to push a deal through (and get their commission). That’s when Directlend AI became a priority for me, and I got to work building the platform.

What pain point is your company solving? What gets you excited to go to work every day?

Businesses throughout the U.S., especially small businesses, often go through cycles requiring them to seek capital to continue fueling their business. The issue is that big banks are challenging and time-consuming to work with. Instead, many business owners turn to the private markets, which are unregulated and often not as professional.

Directlend AI is designed to cut out the middle man, giving business owners a clear direct match to their top private lenders based on their business profile, an account they set up as they go through our process.

By doing this, we’re helping business owners find the best rates and terms available for their business financing needs, without sacrificing their data, time, and energy being turned down by dozens of lenders who are only looking out for their commission check.

Name the biggest challenge you faced in the process of launching the company. How did you overcome it?

One of the biggest challenges we faced so far is building the actual matching logic when it comes to routing the business owner to the correct lender.

To overcome this, we have rebuilt the matching system roughly 4 times but now its the most dynamic its ever been, with enough flexibility to even identify potential options like HELOCs for business owners and place that file with the correct lender – something that many real brokers can’t even do.

Where do you see your company headed next?

Next, we need to build our network of lenders on a deeper level. Currently, we have 32 active lenders in our matchmaking algorithm, but only 2 of them are actually purchasing data from us. To continue scaling, we need more lenders on board to fuel our outreach – helping us get in front of more business owners.

For our lending partners, we send them the exact data they are looking for in an applicant, and they pay us for that data – it’s a simple process, and our current lending partners love it, but getting in front of these rather large “banks” can be a challenge, especially as a small startup.

Give us a tactical piece of advice that you’d share with another founder just starting out.

One thing I have learned through building automated workflows and now Directlend AI is not to overcomplicate things. A lot of my friends constantly jump from one thing to another, changing policies, procedures, and always trying to do more in their business.

Sometimes, on the path of trying to make something perfect, you actually make it less ideal because of the level of complexity involved. I went through this many times on the first matchmaking system I built for Directlend, and after the 4th iteration, the feedback I received was this is so much better, because it’s easier.

This concept makes me think about Apple; they often aren’t the first to market with a new feature, but when they do come to the market, it’s usually a simpler yet better version of that original feature. Or maybe they scrap it completely, like the foldable phone!

Why Florida?

I grew up in New York and lived in the same house in Long Island until I was 24. Long Island is a great place, but I wanted to try something new, be in a warmer, more welcoming climate, and have the ability to comfortably go outside after a long workday. I also felt the urge to be part of something, although Long Island offers a lot, to me, it felt like a giant suburb that was almost always an hour away from NYC, and even when I did make it to the city, it was a place I felt lost – too big and disconnected.

Moving to Florida, specifically Tampa, checked all of those boxes. Easy access to the city, the beaches, as well as the ability to go outside and recharge after a long workday – any day of the year. Being a smaller, more connected city, I felt way more inclined to get involved, meet people, and try to make a difference. This is a big reason why I’m so excited to be part of Embarc Collective and to meet others like me!