Recently, Sharestates CEO Allen Shayanfekr was interviewed by Peter Renton on the Lend Academy Podcast. The conversation covered topics ranging from Sharestates origin story, the company’s response to COVID-19, and the company’s plans moving forward.
To read the entire transcript click here.
Sharestates Origin Story
Peter Renton: It’s been four years since we last chatted on the show and I know a lot has happened, but maybe before we get started, for those listeners who don’t know Sharestates, why don’t you just share how you describe the company today.
Allen Shayanfekr: Sure. Sharestates is a business purpose mortgage loan marketplace platform so we, essentially, have created a marketplace for borrowers and real estate speculators. They fill online, submit loan applications, handle their loan application, and loan sourcing needs digitally. Once that loan is actually underwritten and closed by our system, we then make that loan available via our investor marketplace to both whole loans institutional investors as well as individual retail investors and smaller institutions for syndicated investments.
Sharestates’ Response to COVID-19
Peter Renton: There is a lot of unknowns and we don’t know about stimulus and all that sort of thing. So, I’m curious about, you know, what you did internally staffing-wise because obviously you went down pretty dramatically in originations and maybe just tell us how you managed the staff and like what sort of furloughing you did. I was listening to this interview where that said you really…..you shifted a whole bunch of people and you said you didn’t have to lay off that many so tell us about that.
Allen Shayanfekr: We had pre-COVID 135 people on staff. We ended up letting go of approximately 25 people, it’s not an easy decision at all and it’s something that we really tried to hold off on doing for several months. We didn’t do it as quickly as some other companies did, meaning generally not lending companies, but eventually, we had to make that difficult decision. As far as the rest of the staff, what we tried to do is to save as many jobs as possible and just transitioned them to different departments.
Sharestates’ Plans for the Future
Peter Renton: As you look to 2021, I’m sure most of us are looking forward to a new year, to have 2020 behind us, what are you excited about, what are your goals for the business towards the next year.
Allen Shayanfekr: We have a couple of exciting initiatives. Aside from continuing to grow our core business, we have plans to launch an NPL, non-performing loan marketplace, recognizing that there will be defaults that will happen as a result of the COVID pandemic, there will be a need for certain lenders and aggregators to have to offer those. We’re targeting November or December for the launch of our NPL marketplace, it’s really built as a full end-to-end automated service for buyers and sellers to interact through an organized platform, streamline the process for selling the non-performing loan and hopefully get better execution for the seller and then separately from that, we’re also starting a business purpose loan servicing platform.
