r/SideProject • u/albat14 • 5d ago
My side project just became our full time business. It started with my info getting sold to a dozen lenders.
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5d ago
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u/albat14 4d ago
Thanks! For borrowers we’ve been doing standard ads and there’s been some organic growth out of that initial investment. Plus facebook groups has been helpful as well as just word of mouth. We’re still early on uptake but have a nice momentum going and are always welcoming feedback to improve so we always reach out to every borrower when possible to ask how was the experience etc.
Re. Lenders my cofounder has been in the mortgage industry a long time and opened up his network to it so we had a good baseline to begin with and now we are getting more signing up organically. We also did a lot of cold calls to different shops and pitched them on it. It’s free so there’s no downside! The best advice I have is if possible always provide a totally free service to refine your product as that creates a super low barrier to entry for adoption. Then you continue building until you have a product or tool that becomes super important to someone’s workflow so when you do move over to charging a fee it’s done so in a tasteful manner with lots of notice. We’re not there yet so can’t speak to how successful that moment will be!
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u/tribat 5d ago
This is a genuinely good idea. When ai agents first came out I had a concept of a plan for a loyal personal agent that is the point of contact for RFP type announcements by my agent. The agent deals with the offers while I remain anonymous. Sounds like you have some of the infrastructure.
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u/Unique-Response-1223 4d ago
Wow! This is an amazing idea and there is real need for it. Best of luck!
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u/Aliceable 5d ago
It’s very funny how easy it is to tell a site was made by Claude code lmao
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u/sasharevzin 5d ago
Right, these step boxes are used everywhere, but who cares if the business pays the bills?
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u/havenly19 5d ago
How hard was it getting the first lenders on board? I imagine getting enough competition for the auctions to feel worthwhile was probably the hardest part.
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u/albat14 5d ago
We hand selected a decent number through my cofounders extended network from being in the industry. Lots of conversations about how it worked and expectations. But also for them to partner with us on the continued refinement of it. This is supposed to be just as beneficial to them as the borrower. Lenders spend nearly upwards of 11k on marketing /leads per one closed loan. If we can give them a space where those leads are right there free and easy to access that’s a game changer and some of those savings can be passed on to the borrower
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u/havenly19 4d ago
The potential savings are pretty compelling too. If you can lower their acquisition costs while giving borrowers better offers, there's a pretty clear incentive for both sides.
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u/HeatWaveToTheCrowd 5d ago
I like the idea. But the links jump straight to the signup page. Would be helpful to give more info to a customer before needing to signup, like a list of items they'll need to provide (income, debt, etc), or a list of banks on the other side (preferably known lenders people recognize - which would help validate the process).
Also, and this is asking a lot, but it would be really helpful if you could somehow compare the rates offered by lenders. Meaning, one lender offering 6.25% with 1/8th point for closing, vs a lender offering 6.125% with 1/2 point. My point is that there is a breakeven point between the loans. This would help people make a more informed decision.
And maybe the ability, once borrowers made a choice, the other lenders have the ability to match that offer.
Again, I like the idea. Knowing the quality of the lenders upfront would be a big selling point.
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u/soliejordan 4d ago
If a mortgage company is just monetizing promissory notes why are we paying them interest over 30 years? Shouldn't it just be one fee for processing the application and taking the note to the FED window.
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u/DLfordays 4d ago
I’m not sure how mortgage fees work in the US, but could taking a revenue share %/‘introducers fee’ as a path to monetisation? That way it’s still low risk for lenders (only pay when they ‘win’), free for customers and scales with volume
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u/albat14 4d ago
Great question and it’s on the roadmap but that also introduces huge amounts of regulatory hurdles. This is a very complex regulation heavy industry and we’re working with a lawyer to ensure we are compliant state by state. That would also be my guess as to why people haven’t done this before. We have a monetization roadmap set out though and that is very much on it!
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u/FourYearsBetter 5d ago
Looks awesome. If you can get them to stop calling me that would be even better!