Janover Ventures, a FinTech (financial technology) company focused on reducing frictions in commercial real estate financ...
Problem
A $3.6 Trillion Dollar Industry… Broken
The multifamily and commercial real estate financing industry is deeply fractured.
Commercial real estate owners (even the largest and most sophisticated) rarely know of nor are presented with all available property financing options.
Lenders have not actively embraced digital client engagement or technology to improve efficiencies. Their old-school approach ultimately leads to lack of incentivization to seek and make “small” loans under $15 million.
Neither borrowers nor lenders have a way to access each other at scale. With hundreds of thousands of borrowers, and lenders, all with their specific “deal” components; how can everyone possibly connect with their best counterpart?
Solution
Technology + Education = Democratized Access to Commercial Real Estate Debt Capital
We are in a unique position to play matchmaker between commercial real estate investors and lenders alike.
Through our growing network of digital media assets, we are educating commercial real estate borrowers on loan options they may not have known existed.
By leveraging a combination of industry-leading, proprietary technology, we are helping borrowers gain access to superior loan options, and at the same time, helping lenders acquire more clients that fit their ideal credit profile.
Thanks to our expertise in growth engineering, capital markets and agile web development, we are able to unlock access to multifamily and commercial real estate debt capital for all.
Product
We Are the Connection Between Commercial Real Estate Investors and Lenders
Our Digital Media Network
We own some of the most valuable, highly trafficked, multifamily and commercial real estate finance websites on the Internet. We appear on the first page of google for more than a thousand commercial real estate finance terms.
Our Proprietary Technology
Our websites are responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars a month in online loan applications ('leads'). We capture, aggregate, parse and process these loan opportunities based on a complex scoring and distribution algorithm.
By leveraging an intuitive, algorithmically-focused UI and a thoughtful and engaging experience, our IQ technology meaningfully reduces frictions in the loan application process.
This is our top-secret commercial real estate closed ecosystem in Q4 2020.
Traction
Driving Growth Through Innovation
Maintaining established relationships with external lender-partners allows us to focus on what we’re the best at; commercial real estate borrower acquisition and placement. We have created strategic lending partnerships with some of the nation’s leading public and private commercial real estate financing institutions.
We have created a network of very successful brands (such as multifamily.loans and cmbs.loans), through which we’ve arranged more than $100 million in commercial real estate debt as of March 2019, with our smallest loans being around $200,000 and our biggest being over $20,000,000.
Customers
Creating New Opportunities for Commercial Real Estate Borrowers and Lenders
We provide valuable education and advisory services to borrowers. To connect them to the best loan options for them, we selectively work with large and small commercial real estate lenders alike. For our partner-lenders, we provide digital client acquisition and nurturing strategies to help them close more loans.
We have and continue to establish strategic partnerships with lenders that are aligned with our values and can close loans with competitive terms across various credit boxes and geographic locations.
And here is some feedback we’ve received from clients we’ve worked with:
Business model
We Succeed When Our Customers and Partners Succeed
Our team arranges financing and generally earns a revenue split with lender-partners; paid to us by the lender, not borrower. In some cases, for complex, high-touch, advisory work, borrowers pay us directly.
When an opportunity doesn't fit our internal parameters, the system identifies a perfect external lender-partner match and automatically matches them in exchange for a referral fee or revenue share when the loan closes.
We don’t close loans in our name, and therefore do not carry large liabilities on our books and we don't sell leads. We only earn income when a loan closes, and everyone succeeds.
Market
A $3.6 Trillion Market
The market for multifamily and commercial real estate financing is huge. Multifamily continues to be a highly-attractive asset class with long-term stable demand through economic cycles.
The opportunity to reposition bank borrowers to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA products is by far the largest opportunity; although there remains tremendous growth potential in opening the door to more options for all commercial borrowers across the country. Put simply, a small credit union down the street that you’ve never heard of may be able to provide higher leverage, lower cost, better cash flowing financing than a bank just a couple of doors down. There’s no way for everyone to know all their options.
Competition
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em
We like to think of our competitors as business partnership opportunities. Many of them, such as large lenders, struggle with digital client acquisition. Others have tried to build digital marketplaces, but never see the type of traction that we've attained. Our client acquisition costs are a fraction of those of incumbents because of the data-driven nature of our digital growth strategies and our ability to monetize a larger swath of our opportunities. Our unique software allows us to sift, parse and distribute loan opportunities more efficiently, with a lower-touch and higher-converting engagement than any of our peers. We can close more loans, at a lower cost per loan, with lower risk, at a faster clip than anyone, period.
Vision and strategy
We Aim To Be The First Digital Touch Point for Commercial Real Estate Borrowers
First and foremost, we are tasked with getting much needed financial education into the hands of multifamily and commercial real estate investors.
Our 2020 vision is as clear as 20/20 vision: to be the first digital touch point for as many multifamily and commercial real estate borrowers as possible on the Internet… and to provide them with education, advice and loan options that they never had before.
Our 10 year goal is to become the highest volume multifamily, commercial real estate, and business finance intermediary in America. We will create a closed ecosystem for the best and most diverse group of lenders in the business to provide high-quality financing to the business owners of America; starting with apartment buildings, commercial real estate, and ultimately all business financing. The “Lending Tree” of commercial real estate finance, without selling leads to the highest bidder.
Funding
Janover Ventures has grown organically and has been 100% bootstrapped. We’ve been approached by investors (both institutional and private) and have turned down all investment and sale offers… until now!
Founders
Blake Janover
Founder and CEO
Blake Janover has over 15 years of entrepreneurial and real estate capital markets experience. He has built and sold companies transcending various industries and countries. Some of Mr. Janover’s track record includes: building global logistical infrastructure as the CEO of a large direct to consumer company, overseeing the analysis and processing of billions of dollars in commercial real estate mortgages, building more than 100 class-A apartment units in Miami, owning a commercial real estate licensed direct lender, and many more. He has been published by Forbes, Housing Wire and other industry journals and is a member of the 2020 Forbes Real Estate Council.