Investor Deal Room

In September 2018 we launched our MVP to our first paying customer, who had been heavily involved in the feedback process since early on.

The big feature set we launched was the ability to streamline all of his capital raises through the portal.

It wasn't an easy launch but we made it through!

It took about 4 months for me to build what I thought was my MVP and to get a commitment from our first customer.

At that point, one of the people we had stayed in touch with from our early interviews offered to be an angel investor in our company so I could work on it full time.

Investor Deal Room was born in a legal sense and the project went from side hustle to full time gig.

After interviewing dozens of potential clients, I chose to focus on a product that I thought would be happy building and that I saw the strongest need for in my interviews.

Though there weren't a lot of interviews that discussed the problem (something that worried me a bit), those that did have the problem were really suffering a lot, and they also happened to be the most successful ones...

An Investor Management Portal it was...

Starting customer interviews was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my business.

I didn't know what to build.

I wanted with all of my heart to start a project, but I didn't want to waste years of my life on something that wouldn't be successful.

A quote from one of my favorite books, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, spurred me on...

"Seek first to understand..."

Rather than starting with an idea of my own that might or might not work, I needed to call my potential audience and just freaking ask...

In January 2016, I was out of money and hadn't been able to do the real estate deal I had expected, so I was forced to take a web development job in Kansas City to pay the bills.

I was devastated to be back at a 9-5 after really trying to "make it" as an entrepreneur, but little did I know that the skills I would learn over the next year are exactly what I needed to build my software company.

By October, my thoughts had turned to wealth building through real estate, and from there I learned about investing in multifamily real estate.

I read everything I could get my hands on, payed $20k to join a real estate education program, then sold my house and bought an RV to live in, and moved to a larger town a few hours away to star my real estate investing career.

I spent the next year traveling to seminars and doing various types of work in commercial real estate while maintaining my income by coding part time on the side.

Eventually, I decided to put the real estate ambitions on hold after a friend gave me some great advice... "You should be building technology for real estate guys"... he said.

After losing my uncle in September 2015, a mentor, I spend a good amount of time in meditation to determine what I really wanted my future to look like.

I felt it was time for me to turn a page in my life.

For many years, I had tried to achieve success using some type of a get rich quick solution, but I had never really had enough passion to stick out the hard times with any of the product ideas I'd had before.

During my meditation it became clear to me that I had been looking for a "Savior" - for success to happen to me.

But the only way I could reach my goals was if I was willing to pay the cost. The second that understanding came it light a fire inside me that hasn't been quenched since.

People always talk about finding your why... and I had finally found mine.