The story starts in the early 2000s — our CEO and Founder, Matt, had a small landscaping business in high school, and they did a lot of work for house flippers, like tidying up the yard and gardens, and some demolition. Matt thought it was cool to see the run-down houses transformed into some of the nicest houses in the neighborhoods — plus, the house flippers were pretty open about how much money they made after the sale.

After high school, Matt went to John Carroll University and earned a degree in finance, with the ultimate goal of working in real estate. After college, he landed a job with a large insurance company, where he learned the ins and outs of operating and growing a business — he also learned he did not want to be an insurance executive.

So with money saved, Matt decided to flip houses — finally realizing the real estate dream. And he quickly realized the challenge so many real estate entrepreneurs are still dealing with: How to get reliable, sustainable capital–quickly? Private lenders can decide to invest their money elsewhere or charge unsustainable interest rates, and banks take 45 to 60 days to close, which means lost revenue. Additionally, they generally aren’t positioned to finance a distressed property.

When the JOBS Act passed in 2012, Matt saw an opportunity. He combined his finance and corporate knowledge to start developing the business plan and platform that would give borrowers reliable access to fast capital — and allow investors to invest in shares of those loans to passively earn income.

Fund That Flip launched in 2014, and since then, we’ve grown into an end-to-end financial technology platform that helps real estate entrepreneurs and investors transform their neighborhoods and communities. We’ve managed more than $1 billion in investments with 99.1% of principal returned to investors, and 93% of our borrowers come back to fund their flips!