Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I'm Zack Miller.

Back in the day, everyone — well, not everyone but certainly the vocal majority — thought it made sense to start non-bank lenders and go head-to-head with banks. OnDeck and Lending Club were headed to IPO. Somehow, what was overlooked was how hard and expensive it is to compete with banks' low cost of capital. While working at Intuit, Trevor Dryer had a different idea. He was running the firm's mobile payments and point of sale businesses and kept hearing from main street businesses that they lacked access to affordable business loans.

Trevor started Mirador to fill this void of bank-originated small business lending. We talk about why he started Mirador with a lending as a service model and what painpoints he was addressing. He shares how venture capitalists eventually caught up with this idea of tech firms as enablers or partners of banks and what it takes to get a deal done in this industry. We also talk about Mirador's recent acquisition by CUNA Mutual Group.

Trevor Dryer is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.