Entrepreneur Interview: Jed Simon, FastPay

Business Name:
FastPay

Website URL:
www.gofastpay.com

Year Founded:
2009

Business Partners:
Jed Simon,
Victor Coleman (CEO Hudson Pacific Properties) and Jon Glaser (JMG Capital Management)

Number of Employees:
12

What does your company do?
We provide accounts receivable financing to digital media businesses giving them growth capital without needing to sacrifice equity.

Was there a specific turning point when you realized your business was moving to the next level?

We posted an article about the benefits of utilizing our service and it was retweeted 2,000 times within an hour.

What processes or procedures have you implemented that have helped grow your company?
When we first started issuing these lines of credit, our underwriting and documentation processes were overly extensive out of excessive caution.  We’ve since refined our entire underwriting procedure to make funding faster and business has exploded.

What is most rewarding about running your business?

It’s a wonderful feeling to build such a talented team and to see our revenue grow month over month.

What challenges have you faced and how have you overcome them?
Finding and recruiting smart and motivated staff members has been the greatest challenge and also a wonderful reward.  Also, convincing investors, clients and banks that what we’re doing makes sense is an ongoing challenge.  We know what were doing has great value and is a game changer so we just keep pushing forward and proving our detractors wrong.

If you were starting over today, what would you do differently?
I would probably want to focus on channel partnerships more heavily versus direct client marketing.

What advice do you have for other business owners?
If you have a great idea, leverage it and try to make it explode.  Don’t let capital problems stand in the way of your goals.  If you have a good business model, there is always a way to fund it, especially if you think outside the box.

Please list any favorite books, tools or resources (software, website, etc.) you would recommend for others:
We all love techcrunch but also blogs by Mark Suster (www.bothsidesofthetable.com) and Fred Wilson (http://www.avc.com).  For tools, you can’t beat the Ruby Stack.

What is something that people might be surprised to learn about you?
I taught myself fluent Portuguese.