Kristiyan Lozanov is the COO and co-founder of REINNO – a fintech startup bringing liquidity to commercial real estate. Prior to REINNO, he worked with some of the biggest banks (like Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank) and IT companies in Western Europe. He has over 15 years of experience in the IT sector, including project management, process management, planning, and executing. His motivation comes from his dreams of innovation and change. His goal is to do something new, to be sustainable, and to reinvent everything well-known.
What is REINNO all about?
REINNO is all about disrupting commercial real estate lending. REINNO offers liquidity to property owners through a new way of borrowing against real estate. There are three major products: instant loans collateralized by tokenized properties, mortgage refinancing, and loan brokerage. The first one is the most innovative. We accept fractions of a client’s equity in a building, represented by digital tokens, and provide an instant offer through our loan calculator. It is far superior to traditional loans in many ways. While banks can take several months to review documents, we give an offer instantly with no paperwork. REINNO offers flexible collateral size while banks lock the entire equity. With us, there are no intermediary expenses. Last but certainly not least, in case of default REINNO only liquidates a part of equity while banks liquidate the whole property. This is a revolutionary approach to real estate lending.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
I spent many years in IT as a Linux engineer. Thanks to my educational background in the field of Economics, I realized that mixing IT and finance could be very interesting. Fintech is one of the strongest industries right now. Many solutions are popping up, covering everything from payments, remittances, investing, loans, and so much more. They target a wide variety of customers – from the underbanked to the most profound and frequent users of financial services. Thanks to technology (in my case, blockchain), many sectors, individuals, and businesses can benefit from major innovations that usually occur over a long period of time. This is what led me to REINNO – the ambitious task of changing the way we work in the old-fashioned real estate business. Disrupting an entire sector, such as real estate lending, is a very important and responsible task.
What was the biggest problem you encountered with your business and how did you overcome it?
I think one of the biggest challenges was creating an organization with good practices and some structure. Of course, we didn’t want to have an internal procedure for everything like some big corporations do. The freedom and flexibility are very important to us. However, having no organizational standards can be disastrous for a startup. You will lose track of conversations, forget key deadlines and miss important documents. Even if your team is early on, I highly recommend setting some internal practices. For example, agree on one communication platform (e.g. Slack or Telegram), create a common folder for file storage on Google Drive or Dropbox, sync your calendars, and start tracking your tasks on Trello or Jira. It might feel tedious at first but you’ll thank me later.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
I think in the beginning we tried to rush the products, the launch, and the team. It’s so much better to take the time, test, and make sure that everything is ready and at its best. As entrepreneurs, we cannot wait to show our products to the world. It’s absolutely normal, especially since we dedicate months or even years of our lives to our projects. Waiting another day or minute can feel excruciating. However, in reality, nothing bad is going to happen if you postpone it for 24 hours. If your engineers need more time to test – give it to them. If your marketing person needs more time to finalize a campaign – wait for it to be ready. Be patient and the results will be worth it. It’s much better to hold on and postpone than to find problems after the launch. Mistakes can be very expensive.
What is one thing that you do daily to grow as an entrepreneur?
I drink coffee. It takes me from being a sleepy entrepreneur to being an energized and productive entrepreneur. Just joking! I never stop learning and improving my skills. Every day I book an hour on my calendar for self-improvement. During that time, I read business- and tech-related books and articles, listen to podcasts, talk with some specialists, and network – anything that can make me better at what I do. Even watching a YouTube video counts if it can boost my knowledge.
What are three books or courses you recommend for new entrepreneurs?
I would recommend The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I really like these books. They are both inspirational and have some useful tips for entrepreneurs.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
I wish I knew how time-consuming it is. Don’t get me wrong, I expected to spend countless hours working on REINNO. However, no matter how much time you dedicate personally, you can’t make a successful product overnight. Depending on your resources and product complexity, it can take months or years. If I knew that it would take so much time to get to where we are now, I would have started much, much earlier. I would not have wasted my time working for others. Some people think that working in an established company can give you insights, which will be useful for starting your own business. I don’t agree. Of course, you will acquire some skills. However, the way young startups operate and the way big companies operate are very different. Their problems, capacity, and goals can be completely opposite. I know a lot from working in big corporations, like Hewlett-Packard, but it does not help me. You’ll need a lot of time growing your business so don’t waste it on getting experience you will never find useful.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
I am not that involved in the marketing efforts but I think making Natalia our CMO is the most effective marketing move Viktor and I made for the business. However, other companies cannot do the same so I’ll try to share some other marketing tactics. We mostly focus on organic marketing and do everything in-house – from video production to PR. This allows us to generate consistent traffic over time, with peaks around product launches and other big announcements. Of course, it requires time, consistency, and the right approach, but it pays off in the end. We love using LinkedIn; it works great for networking with people in the real estate and lending industries.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new startup, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
You can’t do a lot with $1,000. I would invest in a good coffee machine. Seriously, if I have a laptop and Wi-Fi, I can pretty much do everything in terms of product development, market research, networking, and even fundraising. $1,000 is not enough to do legal work or run marketing campaigns but it’s enough to buy a good coffee machine that will keep me happy and motivated every day. I will make a nice cup of coffee and start doing my research, idea validation, and so on. This investment will keep me awake and ready to disrupt!
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
If you have a great idea, just go for it and don’t give up. You will always have doubts but if you don’t try, you won’t succeed. You will hear “no” a lot. You will be ignored even more often. However, this is not a reason to stop. Everything is possible if you have enough patience and dedication. Having a good team also helps tremendously. Try to onboard people who believe in your project as much as you do but have different expertise or way of thinking – it will help you find a balance, stay reasonable, and weed out crazy ideas.
What is your favorite quote?
It’s a little geeky but I like the quote “With great power comes great responsibility”, also known as the Peter Parker principle. We used it with my Linux team at HP. When you open a Linux server as an admin, you can make any changes you want. The moment you switch from a regular user to an admin, you gain a lot of power but you also have the responsibility to keep the system running and not to break anything. I always used this quote to remind my teammates of the admin privileges.
How is running a tech company different than what you thought it would be?
You end up doing fewer tech and IT-oriented tasks and more operational ones. You’re dealing a lot with the documents, legal, accounting, and other day-to-day challenges that come up all the time. Running a business is not all roses. That’s a reason why having a few co-founders can be a good idea. One can focus more on the operations and the other one – on the tech or the vision. I know a few entrepreneurs who are building great apps but are only interested in writing code. Without a co-founder, it would be very hard for them to succeed, go beyond the product, and build an actual company.
How can readers get in touch with you?
You can visit our website reinno.io or reach out to us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
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