Listen on Apple, Google, Spotify, and other platforms. 

Shayne Skaff is co-founder and CEO of Blooma, the leading digital underwriting platform powered by artificial intelligence for commercial real estate. The startup’s AI platform helps lenders reduce loan origination time and cost, and perform a more comprehensive analysis of their transactions. In this week’s interview, Neal and Shayne chat about the creation of Blooma and how the company originates new loans and handles portfolio management.

Shayne grew up in Los Angeles, and went to University of San Diego for a degree in business administration. He found his way into tech by looking in the San Diego Reader job postings, and found himself a sales job selling hard drives for a distributor in Carlsbad. He transitioned into selling big enterprise computer systems for Avnet, where he gained inspiration for his first startup, MaintenanceNet. With technology rapidly advancing, he transitioned from the hardware industry to selling services and software. MaintenanceNet became the leading SaaS provider for automating maintenance contract revenue before being acquired by Cisco.

After the acquisition, Shayne spent his time looking for companies in SaaS and B2B enterprises where he could help them with productization and their go-to-market strategy. He set up The Sandbox incubator for technical founders to build their ideas, and would occasionally invest in startups he saw potential in. Blooma was built from there, and he was so passionate about the idea he decided to run it himself and become CEO in 2019. 

Listen to Shayne Skaff share his entrepreneurial experience in the SaaS industry and how he pivoted directions during the pandemic to make Blooma successful.  

His favorite local tacos:

The Taco Stand in Encinitas

 

Connect with Shayne:

LinkedIn

 

Learn more about Blooma:

Website: https://blooma.ai/ 

Facebook: Blooma.ai

Twitter: @blooma_ai

LinkedIn

Thanks to our partners at Cox Business & Cox Edge for their support in enabling us to grow the San Diego ecosystem.