Lucas Scheer, Co-Founder, Purelend

Lucas Scheer, Co-Founder of Purelend, took some time to meet with me to talk his journey from AltaML to Neo to launching Purelend with co-founders Wayne Kaine and Sebastian Hiscock. We also went through his motorcycle trip from the northernmost to southernmost tip of the Americas. 

Purelend is a mortgage automation platform that handles chasing down paperwork, verifying income, down payment, fraud, and more for brokers and lenders.

Who is Lucas?

Work wise, I'm a long-time, early startup employee. My last gig was at Neo Financial, I was pretty early there, handling different parts of the business. Before that, I was at an AI consulting company and startup incubator that I helped grow in Alberta. And before that, I was at another kind of tech consulting company. I think the common thread across all of those positions was that I never really had a job title. My job has always been standing up new areas of the business, getting it running and then moving on to the next thing. As a result, starting Purelend felt like a very familiar environment to be in.

How did your time with AltaML look? 

AltaML's business model at the time was, we would go in and we would engage with well established companies in industries like oil and gas, finance or just about everything, and we would figure out what the right problems to solve or the right things to automate were for that particular industry. And not only would we do the work and implement it at the company, but we would structure it so that the problem was very generalizable across the industry, and then commercialize that solution through some form of a joint venture. We did that with a bunch of big companies in the province 

It was pre-ChatGPT too. LLMs existed, but were not what they are today - a lot of what we were doing was more fundamental ML and computer vision, it was brand new to everybody. Now, everybody has heard of AI and used it, that just wasn't the situation back then, it was a really cool space to be in. I had a ton of fun working with Cory and the team at Alta.

One of the projects I worked on - we worked with a bunch of industry partners like ATB, Suncor, Transalta, and others to create this AI talent incubator in Calgary. I think over the course of three years, like 300 interns came through the program and actually got to work with these companies. Many of them then went on to work for Google, Amazon and others. Hopefully a good portion of them stayed in Alberta.

What was the transition to Neo like? What drew you in?

I had met Chris Simair - one of the founders at Neo - and I reached out to him when I left AltaML,  just to let him know that I had moved on and I was going to be doing other things, and he basically was like “Nah, fuck all that. Come to Neo” 

I didn't know much about Neo at the time, I'd seen some of the stickers in windows around town, but I didn't really know a ton of what they were up to. Once I got in and started talking to Kris, Andrew, and Jeff, it was pretty clearly an incredible opportunity to learn a heck of a lot. 

What do you think it was about Neo that has like a lot of ex-Neo employees starting companies now? 

This is something I get on my soapbox about a lot - but when you think about a tech ecosystem, it isn't just tech events and community and making connections. Importantly, it’s the flywheel of people getting experience in these quickly growing companies, and then can go on and do it again in another space. And that's something that's not happening enough in Calgary. When it does happen, it’s really incredible to see.

Why the time off after Neo? What was the purpose, what were you thinking about? 

For me, part of it is certainly the intensity of building a company like Neo, it's intense. That was part of it, but there was more happening in my life at the time. I was in my late 30s, and I started having friends passing away - that's not something that happened to me in my 20s. My dog, Frank, got sick and I was there with him when he was put down. For me, it was the cliche that time is finite. There's all these things in life that you can put off, you can do later, or so you think anyway. But that later is very much not guaranteed. I loved my time at Neo, but I had thought my expiry date had passed there. I had something that I've been saying I was going to do for a long time but had been putting off.

Starting this business was a very similar thing. I’d talked about starting a company since I was a kid, right. I still had all these butterflies about going off and doing Purelend, but literally from day one, it just felt so familiar. It was this mental block that I had that was totally invalid. 

During the time off, you took a roadtrip, tell me about that.

I'd always wanted to travel the length of the Americas on my motorcycle. I spent the two weeks after Neo packing up my apartment, selling most of my things. Everything I owned was attached to this motorcycle. 

There's two starting points that you can make your way to. One is in the States - Prudhoe Bay at the northern tip of Alaska. The Canadian one, it's the top of the Dempster highway, a town called Tuktoyuktuk. Then you go all the way south to the southern tip of Argentina to a town called Ushuaia. 

And I just left, I had no plan. I had a few rules for the trip; say yes to every invitation, never ride at night and that kind of thing. I would meet people along the way. They'd recommend things to me they'd seen and done, I’d save them on this Google Map. Every morning I would wake up in my tent, look at this Google Map, pick the route for that day, and just keep on making my way south. 

A couple days before the end of the trip, I crashed and hurt myself really bad. I spent a month in the hospital down in Argentina and then was flown back to Canada for surgeries. Finally, this spring I went back to Argentina for a month, found the bike, and finished the trip. It was an emotional peak of my life.

Do you think there’s a similar line in starting your journey on the bike and starting Purelend? You’re at the start of a grand journey with unknown ahead. 

There is. The best advice that I ever heard about this trip is the exact same as the best advice I ever heard about starting a business. There's a guy that was one of the first to do this trip, called the Pan-American trip. He did it initially in the 60s or 70s. I was watching this documentary with him and they asked him, “If somebody's prepping for the trip what advice do you have? What do they need to plan?”.  And he's like, “Plan? Get on your bike. Start riding south. Just start ". Especially today, there's been no easier time to do that trip. You've got Google, Airbnb, you've got iOverlander, you've got gas stations every 50 kilometers. It has never been easier

I heard the exact same advice from Jeff Adamson. He was talking at Inventures this year, and that was his exact message about starting a business. He said, “Entrepreneurship has never been lower, yet it's never been easier to start a company. So what's preventing you from just starting?”

Everyone has stories they tell themself about what’s stopping them from doing the things they want most in life, and a lot of them aren’t true. There really isn't anything preventing people from just doing it. When I was starting that trip, a huge number of people said to me “Man, I wish I could do something like that.” But it’s like, they're single, they're renting an apartment, they don't have any pets, no kids. What's the barrier here? It's exactly the same for starting a business, I think. 

What about Purelend got you excited?

The last thing I worked on at Neo was with Wayne Kainu, we had built the mortgage business at Neo. I loved working with Wayne. There was a time I was in Central America somewhere - you got a lot of time to think when you're on the bike - and  I just thought “Man, I don't know what I'm going to do next, but I sure hope it's with Wayne.”

After I got back and recovered, I was prototyping different business ideas, talking around, doing some consulting part time as well. Then, Wayne and I grab lunch, and he tells me he’s leaving Neo, and we’re going back and forth on what we could maybe do together. We started talking about different aspects of the mortgage process - he has a ton of experience. I've got a bit less but a good amount of experience in it at the time. The problems to solve are pretty obvious. And from there, we just started getting a prototype together and talking to brokers. We got an early prototype in the hands of a couple people, started getting feedback. That whole process was maybe six weeks. 

We then spent a month building what is now our product, then started taking on paying customers. We just built quickly and got it in people's hands quickly. We just incorporated at the end of July because we needed a bank account.

And I love it because of who I get to work with, Wayne and Seb, I love working with Seb, he's truly exceptional. This idea that I could work with people that I love working with, that we can keep it really lean, we can move really quickly, in a space that we deeply understand and are getting traction in; It’s a no brainer.

I was talking to a good friend of mine after we’d built a super early prototype, and he's asking more about how we got started. I was telling him it's never been easier to do this, that we've spent hundreds of dollars to get to where we are, he's like, “Oh yeah, hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's not bad.” No, hundreds. I think people underestimate how powerful the tools available today are if you know how to use them.

And you’ve just officially launched recently.

Early last month. We started building a waitlist in June. We had a couple people on an early prototype that really sucked, but worked. It was a good proof of concept. We started bringing people on from the waitlist in early July, then started opening up to more people on the waitlist. Worked on getting the rest of the waitlist through August.

How’d you build out the original waitlist?

We spent about two hours building a website and spent $500 on Facebook ads and wound up with a couple hundred people on the wait list. 

I'm also very pro cold-calling. Spent a bunch of time doing that last week, and it's super effective. I've done a ton of it - It's still uncomfortable. But man, what a rush. And it works. We've got two customers that are getting onboarded in the next week that we sourced from cold calling. 

What's coming next? Just keep doing the thing?

Yeah, just keep doing it. We're already cash flow positive because we don't spend a ton on our cost of acquiring customers. So, the more we onboard, the better. We've got a core functionality that solves big problems for brokers and lenders, so there's a ton of interest. Our schedules are packed with onboardings and demos, it’s great. We're really keen to start building out more of the features. 

Brokers and lenders spend a ton of time manually going through all of the documents that you share with them to make sure you're not laundering money, to make sure you actually make the amount of money that you say that you do. For every application, they're spending two, three hours doing that. We’re already automating that today, there's already a massive business case for implementing Purelend at literally any broker or lender. 

But it gets really exciting when you realize we can take it a step further. There's all sorts of ways that this wheel starts spinning that can increase speed and lower rates, and we have a clear direction on where to go next. We already have lenders who are saying things like if a broker submits us a deal through Purelend, we’re going to pay them more for it.

What are you proud of?

Being proud of myself is not something that I've always been super good at. Not that I wasn’t proud, but just actually taking a moment to like, “Wow, I’m actually really proud of that.” wasn’t something I did.

For example when I was on that trip, at these slot canyons in Utah. I was going to this one to hike, the road down to it was deep sand, and I just had no experience with anything like that. I was terrified. I very nearly crashed like 10 minutes into this road. And it was an hour down this road to get to the canyon. I just calmed myself down and kept going. Eventually, I get to the canyon, do the hike, it was amazing.

 But I have to take the same road back. I take a second to think about it, I let a bunch of air out of the tires, remind myself to look ahead, stay relaxed, and all of a sudden it was fun. I just ripped all the way back. The road was so rough, my license plate broke off of the bike and I didn't go back to find it. I finally make it to the end of the road, and I stopped the bike, shut it off and just stood there in the desert sun and thought, “Oh my God, I am so proud of myself for being able to do that.” It was probably the first time in my life I thought that so literally. 

I think that's what the whole motorcycle trip taught me. That ability to recognize in the moment how incredible an experience is, to take it all in, but at the same time to not stop pushing the goal post. 

And now, I'm so proud about what we're building at Purelend. I will never, as long as I live, forget what it felt like for the first person to see a demo of the full working product, say they want it, and get on board that day.

I had a call with a massive broker that was using our product. They had been trialing the product for a couple weeks, but weren’t responding to any of my emails, total silence, and I’m thinking the worst. We get on a call together, and the first thing they say -  before even saying hello - is “I fucking love Purelend”. There's so many moments like that. I'm so proud of what we're building here. It's such an incredible experience, and to be able to do it with Seb and Wayne is like. It's unbelievable. 

We're never gonna catch the goal post at Purelend, it's always three months out or a year out, but I’m recognizing how incredible the experience is.

Thank you, Lucas