Lendoe: 2019 Recap
2019 will forever go down as a year to remember for Lendoe. We finally re-branded, introducing our new self to the world by scrapping our old brand ‘AH Partners’ and releasing the ‘Lendoe’ logo, brand and mission — to serve the underserved.
We hit 50 loans to under-served entrepreneurs, who as a collective have now created 152 jobs and contributed £9.2 million in GDP to the UK economy whilst utilising our capital.
We funded more amazing businesses: whilst seeing our alumni go on to accomplish great achievements such as larger fundraises, book deals, TV screenings and more.
We began collaborating with Russel group universities due to the support of globally recognised institutions such as JP Morgan. All in a bid to further develop our understanding and further our quest to bring fairer finance to under-served small business owners.
Lastly we followed our curiosity and in Q4 decided to use some of our findings from our projects with the Russell group universities. Enabling us to forge new relationships with new partners which resulted in us putting together our second partner loan. Securing celebrity barber Slider Cuts a £70,000 loan for 10 years at 4.5%. Stay tuned we aim to do a lot more of these in 2020.
For our full year in bullet points and pictures keep reading below…..
January — March.
- We launched our new brand and announced we’ll be building a new website.
- I personally featured on the 56 black men campaign and later the Victoria Derbyshire’s show on BBC which helped us foster loads of relationships such as our new relationship with Queen Mary University’s Q-Consult.
April — June
- We began website testing — released the first iteration of what is now our official website.
- We launched a research campaign with three universities, two of which were Russell group universities: Queen Mary & City University.
- We moved into our new office and began working with the London School of Economics’s mathematics department in a bid to change the way lenders consider and judge underserved small business owners: You’ll be hearing a lot more about this in 2020 .
- We started our #WhyLendoe campaign and informed the masses why companies like Slider Cuts & Mixtape Madness chose us when they was seeking funding.
July — September
- We finally launched our website
- We finished our project with the three Russell group universities and got invited to JP Morgan to celebrate!
- We also received invites to speak on panels at OneTech’s 1 year anniversary and The UK Black Business Show. Two great opportunities to speak about the Lendoe brand our why and how we differ.
October — December
- We were invited to the Finance Innovation lab’s ‘People of colour in financial innovation’ event to facilitate a focus group and tell the Lendoe Story.
- We began supporting under-served entrepreneurs who require loans between £25,000 & £120,000 with the help of our partner network — Check out how we raised SliderCuts £70,000 with click here.
That raps up our 2019! In 2020 we plan to serve even more entrepreneurs from underserved communities with the support of our new partners.
We are currently on the look out for entrepreneurs & intrapreneurial professionals with expertise in:
- Data science,
- Marketing,
- UI & UX design,
- Accounting
- Business development
We are looking for individuals who are keen to invest and provide advice to entrepreneurs within the communities we serve. If that’s you contact me directly for more information. Thanks for your time.
Don’t forget to hit the like button if you’d like me to share more content like this. P.S. For pics of our christmas outing keep scrolling down.
#whylendoe #servingtheunderserved
