Despite the outsized role they play in the economy, it’s damned hard to run a small business in America. Nearly half of all startups are forced to close shop within five years. These are people who work their tails off, sacrificing for their employees and families, often pouring personal savings into their business. In many cases, they simply run out of money. Nav is on a mission to help more of them succeed.
It’s one of the reasons we were named to the CB Insights Fintech 250 list, which recognizes some of the most promising FinTech companies in the world. (Our team celebrated for two minutes and then got back to work). Nav’s President, Greg Ott, chatted with CB Insights to explain how we’re using data to make it easier for small business owners to manage their financial health and access capital, like business credit cards and loans.
Check out the video below.
Transcript:
Q: What is the big problem Nav solves?
A: We’re focused on small businesses and we’re really trying to bridge the gap between small businesses and their financial institutions. We are about transparency — transparency when it comes to the data that small businesses are judged on. We give small businesses their credit scores for free and other data about their business that they can use to make better decisions especially to streamline their access to capital and credit.
Q: Who is your ideal client?
A: We really serve the gamut of small business owners today. The deck is kind of stacked against them right now. And, so we’re really squarely focused on how do you make the life of the small business owner more simple.
Q: How big is your team?
A: We’re about 90 Navericks strong. Our team is really passionate about helping small businesses. It’s the community we live in and we really think about our end customer every day.
Q: What motivates your team?
A: We’re focused on reducing the death rate of small businesses in America. That’s our company mission. We feel that we can help small businesses by making it easier for them to get the money they need to run their business and to have better data about how they’re judged by other people.
Q: Why do customers care about your services?
A: We make their lives simpler. We make it easier for them to make a decision on to where to go for financing or get a credit card. And then we make the process really smooth and easy because we’re already sitting on the data that they need that is needed by the people who are going to give them a loan or extend credit. We streamline the entire process. Taking one thing off of a small business owner’s plate is a big help.
This article was originally written on July 20, 2017.
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