Brock Blake has started over more times than most entrepreneurs ever will.
He launched his first company after winning $50,000 in a BYU entrepreneurship competition. That business grew to $10 million in revenue before he made one of the biggest mistakes of his career by choosing not to sell it. Instead, he used what he learned to launch Lendio, a company that has now helped more than 600,000 small businesses secure over $16 billion in funding.
Then COVID hit.
Overnight, lending stopped. Lendio's business disappeared. Instead of shutting down, Brock and his team reinvented the company to help hundreds of thousands of small businesses access PPP loans. When that opportunity ended, they had to reinvent the business all over again.
In this Start School conversation, Lendio CEO Brock Blake joins Silicon Slopes CEO Clint Betts to share the lessons he's learned from nearly two decades of building, failing, pivoting, fundraising, and leading through uncertainty.
They discuss:
• How Brock turned one failed business into Lendio
• The biggest mistakes he made raising venture capital
• Why founders should bootstrap for as long as possible
• How Lendio survived COVID by completely reinventing itself
• The "fetal position moments" every entrepreneur eventually faces
• Why AI is changing the value of every business
• How established companies can compete in the AI era
• Building great teams through every stage of company growth
• The importance of mentors, support systems, and resilience
• Practical advice for first-time founders getting started today
Whether you're launching your first startup, scaling an existing business, or navigating one of entrepreneurship's inevitable difficult seasons, Brock shares practical lessons from building a company through multiple reinventions and coming out stronger each time.
00:00 Introduction
02:15 How Brock Blake got his entrepreneurial start
07:40 Why Funding Universe failed and how Lendio was born
13:00 Growing Lendio and surviving COVID
19:20 Reinventing the company after PPP ended
24:10 How AI is transforming Lendio and fintech
31:20 Why your network becomes your biggest competitive advantage
35:10 Lessons from fundraising and managing your cap table
41:00 Building great teams through every stage of growth
46:15 The "fetal position moments" of entrepreneurship
50:00 Advice for first-time founders
53:00 Closing remarks
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