This might sound like a callout. But it’s really a call inward—to our team, and to any founder who’s ever needed to remind themselves what they’re fighting for.
For founders reading this, you know how important it is to align your team around a shared purpose. It’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when caught in daily challenges. Regular reminders about our core mission and why we started in the first place keep us aligned, resilient, and motivated.
Because when the road gets rough—and it will—what gets us through won’t just be funding or features. It’ll be our reason for fighting on.
“The most important thing a man can take into combat is a reason why,” 12 Strong, starring Chris Hemsworth.
That’s why I often try to bring the mission closer to home. Just last month, I asked a colleague: ‘Have you ever been scammed or misled? If you had a chance to do something about it, would you?’ He shared a story from his college days—he was young, in a foreign country, and had rented a small room. When he left, he returned it spotless, but the landlord refused to return his deposit. There was nothing he could do. No recourse, no fairness.
That feeling—that kind of helplessness isn’t unique to young renters—it’s baked into many broken systems. I couldn’t go back in time and help him, nor do I know enough about real estate to start (yet) a real estate platform, but I used that moment to bring him into the mission—because while we’re not solving housing, we are tackling the same kind of imbalance.
We’ve seen the hype cycles—blockchain, AI, and before that, growth hacking. It’s tempting to follow momentum. But hype fades. When the noise dies down and pressure sets in, only teams grounded in purpose keep showing up. Only teams that remember why they started keep going.
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Purpose is your mental armour. It’s what stays when metrics disappoint, when the team is stretched, when you’re debugging something at two am asking yourself, “Why am I doing this?”
And for us, that answer has always been clear: rebuild trust in a space broken by many brokers and ‘comparison’ platforms.
These players often present themselves as helpful guides, but what they really do is muddy the waters. We’ve heard stories of people leaving thousands of dollars on the table, thinking they had actually compared and found the best offer.
A 2021 report by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority highlighted concerns about certain price comparison websites showing sponsored listings more prominently than better-suited products—creating the illusion of impartiality while nudging users toward providers who paid for placement. In one case, Compare the Market was fined over £17 million for using contract clauses that prevented insurers from offering lower prices on rival platform.
Brokers selectively push lenders that give them higher commissions—even if those options are objectively worse for borrowers. In fact, a 2024 class-action lawsuit against United Wholesale Mortgage alleges this exact practice: borrowers were steered into higher-cost loans, allegedly to benefit brokers and lenders at the borrower’s expense. The case involves hundreds of thousands of mortgages—UWM issued over US$39 billion in loans over three years, almost entirely through brokers who referred nearly all their business to them.
The issue isn’t unique to loans. In real estate, agents who represent both the buyer and seller—known as dual agency—have long faced criticism for conflicts of interest. In Singapore, the regulators had the foresight to ban it to prevent abuse since 2010, even though decades of loan brokering regulation exist in the US and UK, the loan brokering industry remains unregulated here.
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In insurance, some brokers push policies that pay them better commissions rather than what fits the client.
Meanwhile, in the UK, the Supreme Court is weighing whether car buyers were misled by brokers who steered people into loans that paid them better, not ones that served the borrower best.
These are not just industry problems—they’re why we felt something needed to change.
When COVID-19 happened. Businesses rushed to seek financing. Homeowners looked to refinance. I saw peers cherry-picking clients, raising fees, prioritising those with bigger loan sizes. And I thought: Do I want to be deprioritised just because my loan is smaller? Should I pay a broker fee on top of all that—just to be seen?
That was the moment it became personal.
We started FindTheLoan because we saw too many SMEs and consumers misled, confused, or overwhelmed when they could least afford it. Our goal wasn’t just to digitise the process—it was to make it fairer.
This isn’t just about code or clean UI. It’s about restoring dignity in a system that forgot who it’s supposed to serve.
Every time we write a line of copy, push a product update, or debate a feature—we’re not just building a tool. We’re standing up for something.
That’s why this article exists. As a reminder to us and to other founders.
Because when you go into battle—features help, capital helps, but only your reason keeps you standing. And that reason, for us, is clear. If you’re building something today, ask yourself: do your team know why?
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