Founder's Story with Andrew Spira on Building SkyCap to Support SMEs

0:05Welcome to the Founder Story. I am Vanessa Antonio. Today we have Andrew Spara who is a Sydney based FinTech Mogul currently spearheading Skycap, our evolutionary SME funding company, boasting the latest technological and operational advancements. Andrew, tell us about Skycap. So Skycap is my latest venture in the fintech space. It was founded in October 2023 now, so it's already been a year and two months. And what we're doing is we're using AI to fund unsecured business loans in Australia. So we fund companies anywhere from$2 ,000 up to$100 ,000 Australian dollars. Wow, that's a lot. How have you managed to overcome adversity and succeed in the competitive field of SME financing?

0:54Look, I've been through a lot of adversity in my life. I ended up on the streets between the ages of 15 and 17. But I think this gave me my entrepreneurial edge because I had to do certain things to survive through this period. And then recently, I went through a challenging period of addiction. At the age of 23, I relapsed into drug use and I ended up losing all my money to the point where I was broke. And now I've rebuilt my net worth today to back up to about 40 million Australian dollars. So it's been a good journey. And it's been a very interesting journey. Having said that, what do you think sets Skycap in its founder apart from others in the field talking about technologically culturally and operationally look skycaps a private business skycaps me uh we're completely self-funded so we've got no investors that sets us apart in the fact that we're able to make decisions faster we're able to be more flexible we're able to be more open-minded and uh what gives us our edge i think we've got staff that care i've got a fantastic team around me and i think i've basically emulated all the processes I've seen in the eight years I've been in this space into my own business.

2:06So I've seen all the mistakes being made and I'm trying not to emulate them. With access to funds being among the most difficult aspects of running an SME, what inspired the creation of Skycap? Look, we want to help people. I think that's what Skycap does, where our motto is to help people. The sky's the limit, let's help people. Obviously, around the world right now, there's a crisis with small businesses being unable to get funding through traditional banks. And that's why I've launched my business. So we're an outside option to the bank. We're an option that approves 9 out of 10 of our customers.

2:39And we're an option that's open-minded and flexible. Andrew, with your unique experience that you've mentioned a while ago, how do you think that helped skyrocket your company? I believe in the universe. I think the good energy output out there has given me a lot of good opportunity. I think the planning, it took me three years of planning to get this business up and running. And I think the execution was done very well as well. So I think that's why we're at this position we're at today. I think the business just got valued at$130 million. So it's pretty good. Congratulations. Are there any exciting future plans?

3:15Repetition, repetition, repetition until we become a billion dollar company. So let's keep pushing. Is there anything that you'd like our audience to know about Skycap? And if they're interested, where can they find you? We're available at skycap.com.au. So if you want to get in touch, if you need a business line, reach out. Alternatively, if you want to become a referral partner, feel free to go to our broker section, skycap.com.au slash broker. And we could get you on board as an affiliate partner or a broker if that's the pathway you want to go down. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us at The Founder's Story.

3:49Thank you.

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