Tech In Chicago Episode: Revolutionizing Small Business Lending with Data & Technology

George Souri is the Founder and CEO of LQD Business Finance, a startup providing quick, convenient, and affordable financing to small and medium-sized businesses that are traditionally underbanked. LQD is leveraging data to offer business loans in the $250,000 to $3 million range to help businesses scale faster. 

George is a serial entrepreneur, self-taught mathematician, and musician. He got his entrepreneurial start with a string of dance clubs at 18 years old before founding his own investment bank.

In This Episode You Will Learn:

• What is alternative business lending
• Why you should try to disprove your idea
• How George got his start in entrepreneurship
• The importance of viewing failure as opportunity
• The power of small efficient actions
• Why banks turn down good companies
• How LQD made its first loans
• The differences between consumer and business lending
• The value of doing an autopsy on a business
• The biggest red flags LQD sees when examining a business
• Why you should be trying to find people that make you feel dumb

Selected Links From The Episode:

• Richard Feynman, theoretical physicist
• Principles by Ray Dalio
• Nash equilibrium
• Al Goldstein, Founder and CEO of Avant

Books Mentioned:

• A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram 
• The Economics of Life: From Baseball to Affirmative Action to Immigration, How Real-World Issues Affect Our Everyday Life by Gary Becker
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb