Adam Torres and Ashley Bete Interviewed at The Korea Conference 2024
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Show Notes:
Listen to coverage of The Korea Conference in Marina Del Rey, California. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Ashley Bete, Founder of Leap Analytics, Inc., explore the Korea Conference and Leap Analytics, Inc.
About Ashley Bete
Ashley is a 20-year veteran of the financial technology industry. He began his career in Credit Suisse’s Technology Group, and has held technology leadership roles in financial firms such as Cantor Fitzgerald and Nasdaq OMX. Ashley has spent most of his career harnessing the power of technology to improve business processes that impact the lives of everyday working people. In founding Leap, Ashley set out to level the playing field for all homeowners, especially those in underserved communities. Leap’s intent is to help people of color achieve financial wellness and close America’s wealth gap.
About Leap Analytics, Inc
Leap is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. a real estate investment company providing education and purpose-built Home Equity Agreements (HEAs). they believe in teamwork and having fun when we’re not grinding on your behalf.their mission is to close the wealth gap by empowering historically underserved homeowners. To achieve their mission, they combine advanced financial technology with institutional real estate expertise to improve homeowners’ financial literacy; remove bias from the mortgage and HEA application process; speed up applications; and improve homeowners’ financial wellness by using HEA cash payments to decrease homeowners’ debt, and increase their financial power.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and today I am in Marina del Rey, California, and I am at the Korea Conference 2024, catching up with Ashley. First off, Ashley, I just want to say welcome to the show. Adam, thank you. Good to see you. All right, man. So for everybody at home, the conference is just starting.
The boat hasn’t even pushed off yet. I snagged Ashley. He was with Jim Wong. I’m like, man, come on, let’s come be, come be my first victim. So what are you looking forward to today at the conference? Oh, this is my second time at this conference. First time on the one on the boat. So really looking forward to mingling with a lot of people.
This format today seems to be a lot more to allow for more interactive conversation, which is great. So really looking forward to meeting people. And there’s a really diverse group of investors, founders, you name it. So really looking forward to that. So talk a little bit about your company. You’re a founder.
Yeah. I am a founder. I’m a founder of Leap Analytics. We are a real estate FinTech platform. We are enabling homeowners to access the wealth that is trapped in their homes. American homeowners have about 20 trillion in assets. Of what is known as chap with the T is in Tom with a T go for it. So it’s a, this, this is home equity that they’ve accrued over the years by diligently paying down their mortgages, most responsible homeowners in this country do, but because of our restrictions that banks have placed on the typical ways of accessing one’s wealth that’s tied to their home, it’s become incredibly difficult for homeowners to access any wealth that’s in their homes.
And I’ll give you some examples. Okay. Right now, in order to access the wealth in your home via the traditional means, which would be either a HELOC or by refinancing, traditional banks require you to have a credit score of 760 or higher. Well, what that does is that precludes and disqualifies almost 50%, almost one in two homeowners cannot access the wealth that’s in their homes at a relative, at a good cost.
So there’s a new innovation in real estate called home equity investments or home equity agreements. And these are shared agreements between a homeowner and investor, where the investor will give the homeowner a lump sum of cash. And in return, they get to own a sliver of the equity in that home and also participate in the upside appreciation of that home.
It’s a very welcome solution for most homeowners, because it comes with no monthly payments whatsoever. It’s not debt, so therefore it does not appear on your credit report and doesn’t stop you from being able to go out and borrow if you have to. Yeah. Is the platform live or is it going live or can people Yeah.
So we will be going live in Q3 by the end of Q3 of this year. So we’re several weeks away. Man, how’d you get the idea originally? Like how’d this, how’d this come about? I’m, I’m a big fan of a founder story. Where’d this come from? You know, a lot of it has to do with my origin story. I moved to this country from Zimbabwe.
And when I moved here at the age of 16, lived with my elderly aunt and uncle, who at the time owned a beautiful home in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. A few months after I got here, my uncle passed away. And that left my aunt on her own too. To kind of shoulder, you know, the, the burden of managing all the expenses related to the household.
Over time, my aunt couldn’t keep up with these expenses. And I remember as a teenager being on the phone with the banks and trying to negotiate slightly easier terms. And even though her house was almost fully paid for. I remember repeatedly being told that there was nothing the bank could do. My aunt ultimately lost that house and that’s an experience that stuck with me.
And fast forward many years, I learned about this new innovation in real estate called home equity agreements. Immediately a light bulb went off. Did I hawk him back to those days in Atlanta, Georgia? And it dawned on me that the only way to make this available to underserved homeowners, like my aunt and I’ll define underserved shortly is to do it in a tech enabled way.
So I set out to build a tech platform, which ideally will help Americans all over the country to be able to access their wealth in their homes. What were you, were you into tech originally or real estate? Like what side of it was it you? More so, actually a bit of both. I spent the majority of my early years of my career working in FinTech before the term was even coined.
I worked on Wall Street, but within technology groups, and then I decided to do something entrepreneurial and do something completely different the way I founded. A real estate cap intro firm. What we did is we raised debt and equity capital for real estate sponsors So I do kind of have a hybrid Yeah.
So this was kind of like the best of both worlds for you. Yeah. Yeah. It turned out that way. Yeah. Talk, talk to me about your like vision for scaling and like how you’re going to bring this to market. Yeah. So we have, there are about a dozen companies in our space right now. And the, all we, collectively, we’re just not even putting a dent on, on the size.
Of course. Yeah. You said trillions. Yeah. Yeah. So what we hope to do is to be able to scale in a really quick way, but in also a very responsible way that kind of Keeps in mind all the constituents and three constituents in, in this home equity space are number one, the consumers need access to, to the wealth in their homes, but also investors, plenty of investors out there, institutional investors are looking for access.
To to home, to residential, residential real estate here in the U S this is a great alternative to them because when you look at it from a risk adjusted viewpoint, owning the equity of a home where a homeowner has a ton of equity on it, a lot of cushion is actually a better, the shop ratio from that is it’s a much better proposition for, for those investors.
And then the third constituent is, What we’re doing is we’re enabling real realtors and mortgage brokers, real estate professionals to come in and participate in this huge asset class and this huge opportunity. So what we do is we enable them to be a kind of our sales force around the country. There are evangelists.
We train them and in turn, they can train other people. Their customers, because when you really think about it, realtors and mortgage brokers, they are the trusted advisors of any, any homeowner for sure. And I have an issue with my home. One of the first phone calls I make is either to the realtor or my mortgage broker, and that should not change.
I get it. And so looking at like the next phase of this, so let’s say it’s going to be online. Q3, you said, right? Yeah, I got that right. It’ll be on Q3. You’re going to be training a lot of individuals in the space already to be advocates. We’re entrepreneurs, a lot of entrepreneurs watch this show. Let’s dream for a minute in five years.
Where are we at? Let’s dream for a minute. Come on, man. Just I want, I want to look back and be like, man, we were at the Korea conference, 2024. What’s going on, man? Well, we last year, our industry. So the dozen companies that are in space collectively originated over a billion dollars of equity investments.
And that may sound like a big number, but it’s actually. Not even a drop in the water. And just to give you an example, in 2002, there were about a billion dollars of Helix originated by 2006. That number was up to a hundred billion. We think our, our industry is poised to do the same. What that means for leap is I think we’re in a position to be able to scale between now and say five years from now to generating revenue of close to a hundred million.
Man, that’s what I’m talking about. A lot like these big numbers, they make me feel good inside. Obviously there’s a lot of caveats come with that. And of course I said, this is the dream part. I was, I was, I prefaced that in the question. This is the dream part. Well, Ashley, I know we got to get back to the conference or you got to get back to Converse.
I got it. And that being said, last thing I want you to do, look into the camera, tell people how they can follow you, how they can learn more about the business and everything else. Absolutely. So they can visit us on our website. That’s leap H E a. com. And I’ll spell that out. L E A P H E A dot com. Once you visit our website, you will find links to all of our other social media platforms.
We’re pretty active on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, you name it. Awesome. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll put the website link in the show notes so that you can just click on it and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t hit that subscribe or follow button yet, Hey, I’m telling you.
Hit that button. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re putting out new content. We’re bringing on new guests and hopefully helping with new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and we’ll see you tomorrow.