Q&A with Mike Sweeney, Founder & President, LionSaves.com

LionSaves.com seeks to help homeowners more accurately and effectively navigate the debt refinancing waters. Founded by loan-industry veteran Mike Sweeney, the web site made its public debut late last year.
SUB: When was the company founded, and how did the idea come about?
Sweeney: I’ve been a loan officer for 15 years now and I first had the idea in the spring of 2006. I realized there are so many homeowners who have no idea how much they can save by refinancing their debt into a mortgage. I also kept hearing people say they were fed up with well known mortgage sites taking their contact info and then being hounded by calls. One morning I woke up and the idea just kind of hit me. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it could be huge. After programming and reprogramming for over a year, we finally beta launched in the fall of 2007.
SUB: What is the site’s primary value proposition?
Sweeney: It's a tool, a mortgage calculator for refinancing debt. It runs thousands of calculations based on live interest rates to give accurate and personal answers. Yet, it's very easy to use. And, it lets the user remain anonymous. We don't ask for any contact info. It empowers the user with answers instead of hassling them with calls.
SUB: Who do you see as your competition?
Sweeney: No one. There’s no other site attempting this. There are plenty of sites with mickey mouse calculators and there are plenty of sites who will take your name and number to sell you off as a lead. But no site gives complete and personal answers while letting you remain anonymous. It’s web 2.0 at its finest.
The well known mortgage sites have run their course. Zillow has taken a step in the right direction with its mortgage marketplace but is still lagging. This is three steps ahead of anything out there.
Trust is probably the main hurdle in the mortgage industry right now—especially online. The brand that builds trust with the consumer will beat all competitors. You build trust by giving accurate information while treating the user with respect.
SUB: Can you describe the underlying technology behind the site, and how the site works for users?
Sweeney: I sure can. We took a somewhat novel approach to the technical architecture. The site balances the need to execute so many complex formulas and the need to be immediate. The key was to rethink how to use the database. Instead of only storing traditional data such as user information and loan scenarios, it also stores programming commands, which can then be pulled and run “on the fly.”
This greatly improves the user experience. The end result is an application that allows users to get answers in seconds by having the pages draw commands from the database and execute them as needed in the browser. Essentially the pages can program themselves, which is pretty cool. We’ve blurred the line between server-side and client-side programming. Otherwise, you’d have to constantly wait for pages to reload which would drive the user bonkers.
One of the interesting challenges we faced were the circular references. That was tricky. As one example, in order to calculate the new loan amount it needs to determine the interest rate, but in order to determine the interest rate it needs to know the loan amount. We were finally able to come up with a creative targeting approach that essentially makes it think, so to speak.
It takes into account everything from determining if a borrower can drop PMI, to pulling live interest rates, to calculating the escrow account and to the FHA loan limits in the borrower’s county. When somebody wants to see what happens when they take out more or less cash, they can see the payment and interest rate update instantly. Since this is first and foremost an educational tool, I wanted to let the customer ‘play’ as much as they wanted. In order to do that, it had to be extremely liquid.
A side benefit of this approach is that none of this type of ‘playing around’ within a scenario places any demand on the server, it's all client side. This makes the site very scalable.
SUB: Have you raised any outside funding to this point?
Sweeney: No, 100 percent bootstrapped. Sold my Harley, my ‘66 GTO and my rental properties to make it happen. We’re in seven states right now and have a patent pending. To really ignite this, I want to take it nationwide and that will require funding.
SUB: Are you actively looking for financing? Do you have a timeline for raising outside funding?
Sweeney: I don’t have a timeline, per se, I’m more concerned about having the right fit that’ll be a good long term solution rather than rushing into it.
LionSaves - www.lionsaves.com


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