David Silverstein Podcast Transcript
David Silverstein joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is David Silverstein. David Silverstein currently serves as CEO of NED, a white label infrastructure solution that makes it easy for lenders to innovate and scale capital deployment. Lenders across the country use NED’s end to end system to power a range of cash flow lending strategies that streamline qualification, disbursement, and repayments.
Prior to NED, Dave worked across public and private sectors, first in Washington, D. C., where he served as press secretary to former U. S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. For the last decade, David has operated at the bleeding edge of innovation across tech, media, and digital sectors. Most recently, as Chief of Staff to Michael Kasson, Chairman and CEO of MediaLink, a leading global strategic advisory firm.
Well, good afternoon, Dave. Welcome to the show!
David Silverstein: It’s great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I appreciate you making the time love doing these every day, jumping now on a podcast, uh, you’re in New York today, and I’m in Kansas City, but appreciate again, making that time difference
David Silverstein: Always!
No, it’s fantastic to be here and love Kansas City. I feel like for another conversation, we could talk barbecue spots. All right.
Brian Thomas: Oh yeah. Oh, for sure. We, we, we hold the records here. Appreciate that. So Dave, let’s jump into your first question. Your career spans both public service and the private sector, including roles such as press secretary to former U. S. Senate majority leader, Harry Reid and chief of staff at MediaLink. How have these diverse experiences influenced your leadership approach at NED?
David Silverstein: Yeah, you know, I think when I look back on a set of both public and private sector experiences, it comes down to skill building. I think when, when I was in my mid twenties or mid to late twenties, and I was working in the U S Senate, I was surrounded by really talented individuals and in any Senate office, you know, bipartisan altogether, you know, there’s always an agenda of the day and you’re only as good. at executing on, on that agenda based on how aggressive and vigilant and an experience like the team is.
And I think it was the first time that I was able to be on an optimized team that really stood for something that moved quick, that knew how to execute as one and work together. And I think I learned a lot from that experience about what Being a team player was and also standing for something.
I think, you know, in that type of office and working for Senator Harry Reed, there was a particular coda of philosophy where folks in that office would say that we were in a good fight, that we stood for others that couldn’t typically stand up or speak out for themselves. And I think that that was something that was ingrained in me at an early age or an early part of my career. And in many ways drives the way I approach leadership at Ned, the way I approach innovation at Ned, in many ways, it’s core to the product value propositions that we bring to market. At net, we believe very much, and it’s codified in our own company principles that we’re in a good fight.
And so I’ve tried to carry that forward. I think for the last decade, as an operator of businesses, you know, different types of digital businesses across unique sectors, and most specifically working at MediaLink for the former CEO, Michael Kassin, that was a unique skill building experience. I almost call it a second MBA in selling.
You know, I think for any CEO, for any, for any executive, especially a CEO of a startup or somebody that’s really bringing, you know, a company from zero to one or, or beyond being able to build relationships and dot connect and find first customers is the make or break. And I learned that. From Michael flat out.
And so, you know, all together bringing a particular philosophy to what we do and, you know, bringing a driven approach to building that remaining customer centric is exactly kind of the foundation of how I’m building the company today and moving forward. Amazing.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And I, and I appreciate you going back to the various stages in your career, where you learned a lot and things were certainly influenced you and how you manage the stuff that you do today in your business and your line of work really do appreciate that.
I know there’s a lot that goes into that, both public and private sector. And we both had some experience in both those areas. Dave Ned recently secured a 4. 2 million in seed financing to revolutionize cashflow lending technology. Can you discuss how this funding will enhance Ned’s platform and the impact you anticipate on the lending industry?
David Silverstein: Yeah, absolutely. And I think for us, we’re grateful to be able to come out of the last two years of a difficult economy, a difficult time in VC to be able to move into 2025 with unique resources to really light it up. We realize that it’s a rarity today. And so I think You know, altogether, we are making plans to be more aggressive, you know, across pretty much every aspect of our business.
When we started in it, I started netting the pandemic really right as, you know, we were coming out of those really difficult first years and so. We’ve never had wind at our backs. We’ve built the early version of our platform. We secured our earliest customers in difficult times. And wind was always facing us.
And I think for the first time, you know, we’ve been able to reposition with accelerant, with fuel to throw on the fire. And altogether, you know, we’ve been really scrappy up until now. Very measured in how we’ve operated and resourced certain things. In many respects, been very thoughtful about not resourcing.
certain things to make sure that we could out survive competitors and stay in the game. And so, you know, when we look at where we’re going to be, you know, accelerating our growth, it really comes down to building out our product. Like that is number one, top of mind. We’ve been able to bring a robust early version of our platform.
I would call it not quite. Ned 1. 0, it’s probably 1. 5 or 2. 0 at this point, but altogether, it’s been a product that, you know, has delivered incredible value to our customers. But altogether, we’ve never been able to resource innovation. Instead of now competing on unique kind of differentiated feature capabilities or strategic positioning, we now need to invest in our innovation.
And so, you know, for instance, Ned, you know, really provides lenders An end to end platform, certainly, but really, which brings cash flow visibility to every stage of the lending process. And so that is unique in the lending tech space. It’s kind of a zig where others have zagged, you know, we focus on cash flow, whereas others have typically focused on credit or collateral to build their systems around.
And so for us, we want to be able to take these new resources and really plow them into our underwriting capabilities. We have scoring. On Ned, we really want to be able to provide our customers more sophisticated tools and products for underwriting so they could size loans so they could reduce their time to capital deployment.
And on the fund management side, we’ve created a unique servicing technology with automated repayments, but we want to be able to go deeper. We want to be able to give our customers. That capability to really manage at the fund level and to mitigate risk to mitigate late repayments and default with unique business intelligence.
And so these are kind of those secondary layers that we want to bring to Ned ASAP in 2025. And of course that means we need to bring on great talent. Uh, we’ve started to hire and build out our product and engineering team really for the first time it’s been. Really a team of four people for the last year and a half plus.
And so, you know, altogether, I think we’re really accelerating on innovation and for the first time, building out our growth function in a startup. I will always say that sales are CEO led, right? To find those first early customers is the job of the founder. And. You know, we just made our first hire to build out our growth team.
And so I think going to market, you know, with a level of aggression and, and to be able to appear next to our competitors for the first time and wedge ourselves and into the market and start building awareness for our brand is really a first. And so, you know, I think as we look ahead to 2025, that seed round is going to not only provide us a meaningful runway, but also a level of like force acceleration.
So we could really build velocity and start moving quickly in ways that we just haven’t been able to up until this point.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And congrats on the funding, obviously you’ve done quite a bit and you just shared that with me and my audience on your vision and all the great things you’re going to be doing with your platform.
So I really appreciate that update. Dave, Ned’s White Label Platform offers end to end solutions for lenders from application through servicing. How does this comprehensive approach streamline the lending process for small and medium sized businesses?
David Silverstein: Yeah, so I think altogether there’s two sides of Ned.
We are certainly providing the infrastructure to our customers, which are the lenders, but the business owners, you know, those that are receiving funding are absolutely stakeholders on Ned. And when you look at the lending technology sector over the last 40 years, it’s actually, you know, been really marked by point solutions.
And so it is a fragmented space. There is a ton of archaic tech out there that has been really built around a lending process driven by credit or collateral. And so I think, you know, for, for the business owner, uh, that’s applying for a loan or securing financing, it’s not uncommon for that experience to be high friction.
It is, you know, an experience that was not digital in many ways. It was highly relationship driven. You know, a lot of the underwriting or qualification process was defined by manual workflows. It was very cumbersome for the borrower to go from point a to financing, if you will. And I think what we’ve tried to do is build out a digitally connected.
Platform, which brings together all of the major activities across the lending value chain into a connected rail, not just so the lender can move more quickly and deploy more capital at speed and efficiently, but also to give the borrower an empowered foundation to kind of present themselves as creditworthy and to also manage the life of the loan more successfully.
And so, you know, I think what we’ve tried to do is remain Empathetic to the business owner that is looking to secure financing. And in order for them to succeed, they need great product. They need great technology to move forward and to manage the loan to completion. And so, you know, altogether, I think, you know, when we look at what makes Ned different, what differentiates our product, certainly end to end is unique.
Right. And I think end to end has been redefined in lending tech. Uh, if you look at other competitors that define themselves as such, it typically is from. Kind of application through legal closing. Rarely does it include repayments technology or fund management capabilities, which we do. So we’ve gone not just one step, but maybe like four steps further than other competitors in the space.
The other thing that we’ve done is we’ve really built around cashflow visibility. And so, you know, along the way, there’s a level of transparency around business performance, not just so the lenders can have ongoing line of sight into how the borrowers are performing, but also so the borrowers, the business owners can present themselves not just as credit worthy up front, but to remain and provide a level of transparency to the lenders throughout the life of the loan.
And so it creates a deeper relationship altogether between lenders and borrowers. It takes that relationship from, you know, where’s my money to how can we provide Added resources or how can we provide ongoing support or how can we provide a second loan in success? And so I think all together we’re seeing connectivity and transparency Not just as a driver of efficiency and scale for lenders and borrowers, but really as an accelerant of relationship For us we see net as a relationship management platform You know, all together along the way.
So I think, you know, we really want to be able to invest in that and make sure both lenders and borrowers have what they need, not just to, not just to do the jobs well, and to do the jobs quickly, but to make sure they’re doing them thoughtfully and they’re able to collaborate. And so I think that’s been kind of core to how we’ve positioned ourselves in market and how we think about our innovation roadmap for the coming year.
Brian Thomas: Awesome. Thank you so much. And your platform is so comprehensive, you know, you stepped through quite a bit there, but this is obviously going to help a lot of small and medium sized businesses, of course, streamline their process as well. So thank you for sharing that. And Dave, last question of the day, the financial technology landscape is evolving, right?
What emerging trends do you foresee having the most significant impact on cashflow lending? And how is NED positioning itself to stay ahead of these trends?
David Silverstein: I think that there are a couple of indicators of what’s to come like writ large in the lending, the small business lending sector. I think the most important thing that we keep our eye on is, is the strength of open banking in the United States.
Cashflow lending requires a level of visibility and transparency. And so the borrower to present their cashflow history is kind of the bedrock of. The process altogether. And so, you know, I think as we’ve seen, you know, open banking is slower to evolve here in the United States than other parts of the world, but nonetheless it is evolving.
And so, you know, we have built our technology around core open banking platforms. I think another area that we are seeing significant innovation around is payment. I think, you know, when we take a step back and look at. Some of the challenges across, you know, financial services altogether, it’s actually quite hard to move money.
It takes a long time. It’s very cumbersome, is oftentimes a high friction experience, not only for capital providers, but for borrowers altogether. It lacks automation. It lacks connectivity and integration with, with other particular types of technologies. And so I do think, That there is a significant amount of innovation occurring, not just with digital payments, but also with more core payment systems around ACH and otherwise, which we think will improve processes altogether when it comes to moving money from point A to point B to C and maybe back again.
And so just the speed of money movement, the efficacy, the transparency around money movement is something that we. Think is kind of certainly improving, but, you know, has room for improvement in the coming years. And so, you know, altogether, you know, between transparency and the speed of payments, we see a ton of opportunity in this space, and we want to make sure that we’re providing best in class solutions around those core capabilities for our customers.
And, you know, altogether, you know, even beyond the lending technology space. These are kind of the two elements that are going to define financial technology altogether, whether it’s B2B or, or B2C, when we think about FinTech writ large, you’re either moving money, you’re managing money, or you’re growing money.
And so, you know, however fast you can take on those challenges or, or reduce friction around those challenges, that is going to define, you know, the future winners in our sector. And we want to be there and, and, you know, be at the forefront.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And I appreciate your perspective on that. There’s a lot of technology changing and we are leapfrogging across industries, but especially in the lending space.
Now we just need to make sure we can have the regulators get out of the way a little bit and let us innovate and let us do some really cool things for sure. So thank you, Dave. And Dave, it was such a pleasure having you on today. And I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
David Silverstein: Thanks so much. It was a pleasure to be here. Really enjoyed it.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
David Silverstein Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
