Founder Feature Series: Jeremy Crane - Retrievables

Welcome to the Capital Innovators Founder Feature Series, where we will be interviewing successful startup founders and Capital Innovators Accelerator alumni. The Accelerator is a 12-week intensive program specifically designed to meet the needs of early-stage startups. It utilizes a hands-on approach to mentorship and company building. These founders have successfully built a strong foundation to scale their companies. In this series, we will explore the stories of these founders and their path to making their ventures successful.

The first founder we are highlighting is Jeremy Crane, CEO of Retrievables. Jeremy is a serial founder that has started multiple companies. His most recent venture was StadiumPark, an app for stadium, arena, and event parking payments. Jeremy spent four years working at a collections law firm, where he gained experience in legal collections, and identified the opportunity for his current company, Retrievables. Retrievables is a technology marketplace where businesses with past-due accounts are able to connect with collections attorneys. These attorneys are able to make an offer to the listing business to collect their outstanding balances in exchange for a percentage of what is collected. The process of connecting the two parties is quicker and more efficient than traditional methods.

Q: What stage was Retrievables at before the start of the accelerator program?

A: We had MVP with our technology, but were essentially pre-revenue. We had done some transactions, and we proved that our concept worked on a small scale. We had a number of attorneys on the platform, and we were starting to bring businesses in through pretty much 100% cold calling efforts, which was a lot of cold calls. And we had a small team established, two of three equity partners, myself being the founder, one being the CFO, and one working in operations and strategy.

Q: What growth did you see during the accelerator program?

A: Well, it was really interesting because we were in an incubation period, essentially, leading up to the accelerator. We got the investment from Capital Innovators, and along with that investment, we were able to raise a total of $185,000. That additional capital was from an Angel List campaign and other angel investors. So we had a really strong start coming in and the money was raised based on the initial investment by Capital Innovators and the other investors' trust in the organization.

Through Capital Innovators, we started gaining meaningful revenue and it grew every month in the accelerator and it's grown every month since then. We also had a lot of operational things to take care of, which we established in the accelerator along with building out growth strategies. We also grew our team by three while we were there.

Q: What was the most helpful aspect of the program that helped you achieve that growth?

A: I think the support was great, and that really lies in the commitment of all of the people at Capital Innovators, and that includes the full-time employees of the Accelerator and also mentors as well.

The program was a good experience for us. It was really good timing, too, that we launched the business alongside the start of the program. There was a lot going on with building the business, and it was cool to have support while we were doing that.

Q: How has Retrievables grown since the conclusion of the program?

A: We've grown our team to seven since then. We also raised a $1MM pre-seed round. As I said, each month our revenue grows alongside our legal network and number of businesses using the platform. Our technology has been significantly enhanced, and we've started a new line of business which is really starting to take off, we’ve started writing demand letters for a fee.

Q: What achievement are you the proudest of building the company?

A: The people that I'm working with, especially my partners. I'm very proud to have them on board and committed to the company.

Q: What's next for the company in 2023?

A: We're going to be adding one to three more people. We're really going to be ramping up our sales and business development efforts and putting a strong focus on partnerships and large enterprise sales and business development.

If you’d like to learn more about Retrievables visit retrievables.com. If you’d like to connect further with Jeremy you can reach him at jeremy@retrievables.com or on LinkedIn.