Brock Blake – Founder of Lendio

Brock Blake believes so deeply in the American Dream that he made it his life’s mission to help small businesses across the country fuel their own aspirations. As Founder and CEO of Lendio, the largest online marketplace of small business loans in America, he has helped thousands of business owners access more than $1 billion in funding.

Shortly after graduating from Brigham Young University, Brock won $50,000 to start a business through an entrepreneurship competition. He turned that money into FundingUniverse, a company that connected entrepreneurs with angel investors and VCs. But the company hit a wall when Brock realized that nearly 99 percent of businesses in the U.S. belong to Main Street rather than Wall Street. So he hit the reset button. Brock shut down FundingUniverse and launched Lendio, a decision he calls painful but necessary, as practically overnight his monthly revenue went from nearly $1 million to $0.

Since then, Lendio’s free-to-use marketplace has become a hub of small business lending, with a network of over 75 lenders offering a variety of loan products to thousands of American entrepreneurs. Brock has likewise seen his star rise. He has been named an Inc. 500 CEO, Utah’s Emerging Executive of the Year, and one of Utah’s top entrepreneurs. But he is most proud of his less public accomplishments, like building a fun-loving, results-hungry company culture while successfully juggling his roles as full-time CEO and full-time father.