There has been a flurry of activity in the last couple of weeks (come to think of it, I can’t recall a week without a “flurry of activity”). We’ve written about these events on the company specific sites, so I’ll just summarize them here:

RateSpeed

RateSpeed quickly filled up their available slots for Beta, and then some. There is a waiting list for those that want the application. Jeff has been busy with interviews for both online, print and radio pieces. We are very pleased with the attention it is garnering. The Inman Real Estate Technology conference is in San Franscisco this week. Jeff will be participating in panel discussions and meeting with key decision-makers with potential partners/channels. If you want to get a flavor of the reception RateSpeed is getting, I suggest you take a look at the following articles and the comment threads that follow: AgentGenius, Active Rain, Inman News. You’ll notice the range of reactions - agents love it, consumers love it, progressive mortgage brokers love it, brokers that love to pack on hidden fees absolutely hate it. Who knows, maybe we are on to something here.

In other RateSpeed news, Henry Davidson has been hired as President of REtech. He’ll work with Jeff (CEO) on making RateSpeed a huge success. Henry has worked in the financial services and real estate industries for over 15 years and brings his high-intensity leadership and a track record of entrepreneurial success to REtech.

XBanker

The XBanker just announced a great addition to their team. Chad & Trent Lee, founders of Corporate Credit Concepts, have joined the mix. You can find out more about them on the XBanker announcement of the alliance. The Lee’s bring a successful track record of securing financing for their clients. They will be an asset to enhance the XBanker’s offering and to prepare clients for what is coming through Shared Success.

Shared Success

As it relates to our core initiative, there has been a lot going on under the hood. Much of it we shouldn’t talk about here - at least not yet. I can say that things are progressing very well and that you can anticipate some visible action in the near future.

In days long past, the brimming of smokestacks and smelting furnaces set fire to the sky above the city; a testament to the glory and marvel of man’s industrial achievements. We are now in a technological age. Smokestacks have been replaced by search engines. Complex algorithms that instantaneously merge digital data now serve to fuel the furnaces of a new era. At its forefront, RateSpeed, the world’s first Transparent Mortgage Search Engine, plows through the muck and mire of non disclosure and predatory practices. Ratespeed, the bullet train of transparency cannot be stopped.

Not more than 24 hours ago, Ratespeed left the station. Jeff Corbett, its visionary conductor has been advocating transparency in the mortgage industry for the last 2 1/2 years, building a name for himself that he’s now ready to bet his reputation on. The calls and emails are coming in faster than than our dispatchers can book seats. From New York to California the enthusiasm from media, consumers and industry pros, has been nothing less than remarkable. Give the people a roadmap to truth and the efficiency tool to access it, and you become the world’s digital railroad.

RateSpeed beta period has begun, where mortgage professionals (insiders and early adopters) will be able to host the RateSpeed application on their personal website or blog. RateSpeed is a powerful tool for mortgage brokers, in that it enables them to price loans for their clients in a matter of seconds - saving them from burning time with rate voyeurs and shoppers. RateSpeed will be met with awestruck contempt by many mortgage professionals, because it demands the highest level of transparency possible. Those who adopt RateSpeed are the ethical and progressive mortgage brokers, willing to offer a flat-fee mortgage and unmanipulated, transparent rates.

So while RateSpeed marks the dawn of a new era for the truth-bearers, it also chimes the death toll for the crooked mortgage brokers who have raped and pillaged consumers for the last 30 years. The beta application that launched today demonstrates to consumers the rates they actually qualify for! Do you think you have a friend in the mortgage business? Compare your latest loan with the rates and pricing offered on RateSpeed. You will not find lower rates. You will never have to search around town for rates again. RateSpeed utilizes a proprietary technology to pull mortgage pricing and rate data directly from the banks - and delivers them transparently to you. If that wasn’t enough, you can do all this anonymously. No need to provide your social security number and contact information.

Get on the Rate Train and give RateSpeed a whirl. Be prepare to be amazed and shocked. Please don’t be shy with your feedback. This is a beta launch; so we will be refining and enhancing continually.

If you haven’t noticed, The XBanker website has received a major face-lift in the last couple of weeks. We’ve moved the site to a WordPress platform, which gives us tremendous flexibility with the website.

We had three major goals with the site redesign:

1. More prominently feature the XBanker’s experts: Gerri & Garrett
2. Optimize the website for search engines
3. Increase the number of “call to actions” (where we capture leads)

Thus far, the site has been a great success. Leads are up, costs are down and we are climbing up the search rankings - and it appears to be a trend.

I’d like to thank all the team members who contributed to making the new website a success; and to Gerri & Garrett for their contribution of world-class content.

Give the site a visit and let me know what you think.

www.theXBanker.com

In my last report from the battlefront, I described the development of several core initiatives: RateSpeed, Napkin, XBanker, and of course, Shared Success. As each initiative builds, we must meet our growing resource demands, and align talent where appropriate. To that end, I’m pleased to announce the promotion of Cameron Verdi, our new Chief Operating Officer.

Cameron has been an informal member of our team from inception, where he began by calling the infamous “stack of old leads” with Adam, that ultimately gave birth to the inspiration and creation of Shared Success. Consequently, we chose Cameron to head up the XBanker project launch, where his outstanding achievements and service have resulted in a 60-day break even for the XBanker asset. His efforts now culminate in a series of soon to be announced mergers and acquisitions of key competitors within the sector - stay tuned.

Cameron joins our executive team in advance of the launch of RateSpeed and in preparation for additional battles. Cameron is an operational savant, and although he’d never admit it, will provide Shared Success a considerable advantage, in relation to his aptly required and timely expertise in call center operations and management. Talents and skills aside, Cameron is a fantastic person - definitely the sort you want in your foxhole laying cover fire

Silence is deadly, it is said - but what of Silence being golden? For Shared Success, the latter perspective does indeed supplant its less enduring counterpart.

As with most “black ops” initiatives, the need for deep cover is mission critical. Why? Primarily to avoid tipping off the enemy (competition), but also to ensure no compromise of our strategic and tactical position. Shared Success, over the last few months, has ordered a number of strikes and sorties, waging war in some instances, conquering territory (new technologies and the acquisition of key market assets), and best of all…more Gold (strengthening our war chest).

With respect to “key assets,” Shared Success has successfully executed a tactical extraction of Jeff Corbett, The Xbroker (www.thexbroker.com), from behind enemy lines - resulting in the creation of RE Tech Group LLC, a joint venture between Jeff and Shared Success. RETECH will lead the transparency revolution within the current mortgage marketplace, disrupting all that we know, and all that we don’t, forcing a paradigm shift, and giving way to a new reality: RateSpeed. The RateSpeed transparent rate widget will begin Beta testing in three weeks. For all the juicy details, please read about this transparent mortgage solution on Jeff’s blog. Regrettably, we can’t disclose all the details at this time - but I assure you the wait will be worth the worry. Currently, we’re in negotiations with the industry’s leading 800 lb. Gorilla’s, to negotiate their stated interest, in both exclusive and semi-exclusive distribution and cross marketing opportunities. Immediately following, RETECH intends to unveil a number of follow-on, equally disruptive sector technologies. We promise to make a mess of this industry needless to say, We are very excited about this merger, and proud to have Jeff and his 50 caliber cannon on-board our ship.

As if that wasn’t enough for a battle cry, we have successfully completed our Alpha test of Napkin 2.0. The response has been overwhelming, where over 76% of test users stated that they would recommend the product to a friend, and in fact, have done so already. We’re seeing new users pop up every day, and have ordered a vigil to ferret out the most impressive features. Stay tuned for that bombshell.

Finally, for now, with the flurry of activity and excitement surrounding RateSpeed and Napkin 2.0, our Executive command has wisely determined that regiments are in order, and to break off into focused battalions. That said, Michael Cavotta will take post as Napkin 2.0’s Four Star General, in addition to having creative influence over RateSpeed. As for me, well - all hail the Chief. As of April 1, 2008, I am honored to accept the post as CEO.

Keep your radio’s tuned…

A couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with an aspiring entrepreneur that wanted to start a business with two partners, but she wasn’t sure how to structure the deal.

“Let me guess, since there are 3 of you - you’re thinking that 33% each would be a fair split, right?”

I was dead on. After about 5 minutes of conversation, it was apparent that this partner would be the one driving every key component of the business - a recipe for disaster. She would have ended up owning 33% of her dream, doing all the work and bearing all the risk.

Unfortunately, these types of deals are done everyday. This is what we call Napkin 1.0 - innocent partners crafting their splits without much thought or guidance.

The premise is simple: Most partners have issues with the way they structure their ownership percentages, because they don’t have a robust methodology or framework for thinking about their partnership. We set out to create a tool that will help partners during these critical conversations.

Just about a year ago, we conducted an exercise regarding deal structuring that was lovingly dubbed “Napkin 2.0.” It all started out with an Excel Spreadsheet and now it is my pleasure to announce our Alpha testing of Napkin 2.0.

Feel free to check it out and give us your feedback. You can take a test drive by clicking the following link: Napkin Alpha Test.

Disclaimer: This product is still in its early development stages. We still need to create the website, provide educational information, etc. At this stage, we are testing the functionality and the overall usefulness of the tool. We welcome your feedback - as it will help us prepare a product for our full market launch.

As Michael alluded to in his last post, there has been a bustle of activity in the last two months. Immediately following the Founder’s banquet, we made the determination that we would focus our efforts on building the “core DNA” components of Shared Success—the objective being to make sure that we have established revenue streams before we dive into the capital-hungry development phase of the Shared Success website.

With that said, I’m pleased to announce that on Monday, February 4, 2008, at 8am PST, the first Shared Success company made its debut at theXBanker.com.

The core of Shared Success is helping business owners access capital for their business. Fundamental to our philosophy is the proper use of bank financing to fuel early stage growth and to preserve owner equity. XBanker draws upon first-hand experience with the matrix that drives lending decisions, highlighting shortest path to capital through bank financing and trade credit.

A tribute to our team’s ability to execute, XBanker went from concept to market in 6 weeks: Branding, website, internet and voice marketing, product design, office space, hiring and training of key personnel, and everything else it takes to get a business off the ground.

Needless to say, there hasn’t been a dull moment. We’re also on the verge of another major announcement , so stay tuned.

While I’m truly embarrassed to say it’s been a month since the last post to this blog, I can honestly say it’s not been for a lack of activity.

There are some major announcements we’ll be making in the next week that will, in part, explain why things have gone so quiet on blog front. You won’t be disappointed.

I’m going to stop writing now, before I leak some juicy information about our first acquisition best left for a formal announcement.

There. I said too much already.

In case you weren’t blessed at birth with eagle eyes, I thought I’d call your attention to the new logo and tagline that now grace our home page.

That’s right, we’re now SHARED SUCCESS: The Small Business Society™.

I think it speaks more directly to the membership aspect of what we’re doing and, for those who attended our recent “event” in Kansas City, no doubt makes perfect sense. For those who were unable to attend (or uninvited :-), I’d like to take a moment here to bring Shared Success™ into better focus for you.

Shared Success™ is a society for small business owners created by a group of ex-VCs and banking industry insiders who came up with a better way to start, fund, grow and connect small businesses.

Shared Success™ will provide its members with:

1. INSPIRATION: Turning Ideas into Action
2. CAPITAL: The Fuel of Opportunity
3. RESOURCES: The Tools of the Trade
   
4. COMMUNITY: Help and be Helped

If you want specifics, you’ll have to wait for the public launch or email me directly.

West Bottoms, Kansas City

On Tuesday, December 18, Shared Success™ investors gathered for our official Founders’ Banquet at the InterContinental Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri. Upon arrival, they were directed to what amounted to an empty function room. No tables. No chairs. No management team.

Adding to the confusion, an unnamed Shared Success™ agent handed each investor a lapel pin bearing a mysterious mark and announcing, “The location for the meeting has changed. Please follow me.” Read More »