Every screen, every workflow, every AI decision was designed by someone who has funded a deal at 11pm and lost paperwork before breakfast.
Leo Kanell started brokering business capital in 2013. Twelve years, thousands of deals, and one recurring frustration: the tools were built by people who had never funded a deal. Every "CRM" was a spreadsheet with a login. Every "AI underwriter" was a rules engine that flagged the wrong risks. Every lender integration was a PDF over email.
By 2023 Leo was losing $12,000 a month to lost paperwork alone. Not to bad deals, not to declined applications — to bank statements that never made it to the lender inbox. To offers that expired in someone's spam folder. To commissions calculated wrong because a spreadsheet cell got overwritten.
"I stopped trying to fix the tools. I started building the one I needed."
Funding Machine is that tool. The Broker Operating System. Every applicant, every credit pull, every bank statement, every AI recommendation, every lender submission, every offer, every contract, every funded deal, every commission — in one place, in the order a broker actually works.
Today, 500+ independent brokers run their operations on Funding Machine. Solos, small teams, and multi-office brokerages. The product ships weekly. Every feature ships because a broker asked for it. That's the only rule.
How we build, how we sell, how we support. If we can't honor these, we don't ship the feature.
Every design decision serves the broker's revenue. If a feature helps FM but slows the broker's deal, we cut it.
We don't ship black-box recommendations. Every AI decision shows inputs, calculations, and confidence.
Export any deal, any applicant, any document at any time. No vendor lock-in. Your relationships are yours.
Every Friday. New features, real bug fixes, no theater. Public changelog. Broker Slack channel for input.
Twelve people. Half of us have brokered. All of us ship weekly.
Brokered $80M+ before he built the OS. Still funds one deal a month to stay sharp.
6 years brokering. Runs FM as a real broker + drives roadmap from her own deals.
Ex-Stripe. Built the AI underwriting stack. Believes 60s is still too slow.
10yr in credit modeling. The reason the AI shows its work.
Weekly changelog. Public roadmap. Broker Slack.