HonestDeed, Inc.

University of Michigan, Ross School of Business

Industry: Financial Technology (FinTech)

MBA Founding Student Name(s):
Raphael Bennett (Co-Founder & CEO, Michigan Ross MBA)
Luis Souza (Co-Founder & CFO, Michigan Ross MBA)

Brief Description of Solution: HonestDeed is a FinTech private banking platform that modernizes and digitizes the complex process of seller financing and installment agreements for a broad range of high-value business-to-business (B2B) assets, including corporate real estate, intellectual property (IP), business transactions, and heavy equipment. By providing a secure, end-to-end digital platform, HonestDeed facilitates flexible, personalized, and safe private transactions, enabling business owners to sell assets at top-of-market prices while retaining significant financial upside through tax advantages and accrued interest.

Funding Dollars: $1.25 Million (combination of debt and equity)

What led you to launch this venture? The launch was inspired by the founders’ eye-opening journey through the inefficiencies and frustrations of traditional asset financing, recognizing that private buyers and sellers often had the most to lose from third-party intermediaries. Co-Founder Raphael Bennett, after observing financial pain points and reverse-engineering traditional industry practices, dedicated himself to creating a new set of financing mechanics that prioritized the buyer and seller— a safer, simpler, and more personalized approach to buying and selling high-value assets.

What has been your biggest accomplishment so far with the venture? Our greatest accomplishment has been driving market education and conversion by revealing to regular people and business owners the significant financial value they surrender when trading equity or assets for a lump sum payment. This educational push, centered on the advantageous tax and cash flow treatment of installment sale agreements and seller-financed transactions, has resulted in HonestDeed successfully onboarding and managing over $200 Million in total financed contract volume across corporate real estate, IP, and equipment. This success is compounded by enabling our B2B customers to sell assets at a premium by dramatically reducing transaction friction.

What has been the most significant challenge you’ve faced in creating your company and how did you solve it? The most significant challenge was two-fold: initial market acceptance of our novel installment sale structure and the complex compliance associated with consumer finance regulations. Our initial product, featuring a structure unfamiliar to consumers, was met with resistance because only the financially savvy could grasp the benefits. We solved this by making a critical strategic pivot: focusing exclusively on the B2B segment, and pivoting back to using traditional amortization methods that were well-known, which streamlined our compliance and allowed us to build immediate trust. This shift enabled us to facilitate and support over $200M in contract volume across assets governed by business and corporate law.

How has your MBA program helped you further this startup venture? The Michigan Ross MBA program provided a crucial platform for ideation, validation, and professional connections. The Ross Executive Ventures (REV) Club, which has since evolved into the diligence and private equity firm REV Global, offered its Ideathon platform for sketching and commercially modeling the idea. This direct engagement culminated in an investment from REV Global, providing crucial seed capital and validation. Furthermore, the Multidisciplinary Action Project (MAP), while working on a global expansion strategy for a travel company, allowed me to connect with General Partners at an L.A.-based Venture Capital firm, whose valuable feedback helped me rigorously vet and sharpen the core business model for HonestDeed. The Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies (ZLI) was also a strong source of mentorship and overall program support.

Which MBA class has been most valuable in building your startup and what was the biggest lesson you gained from it? The Strategic Finance course taught by Professor MP Narayanan was the most valuable, as the deep dive into capital structuring, valuation, and leverage directly informed our B2B model and our ability to clearly articulate the value of retained equity vs. lump sum payment to business owners. Additionally, the Business Psychology and Influence course with Professor Sue Ashford provided critical insights into organizational trust and communication, which helped us navigate the challenge of building user confidence and trust in a non-bank financing platform.

What professor made a significant contribution to your plans and why? Professor MP Narayanan (Finance) made the most significant contribution. He provided the deep foundational financial knowledge needed to reverse-engineer traditional financing products and structure our solution to maximize the tax and cash flow benefits for our clients. His teachings were instrumental in building the financial core of HonestDeed, which enabled us to manage our first $200M in volume.

How has your local startup ecosystem contributed to your venture’s development and success?
The Michigan Ross/Alumni Network is the core of our local ecosystem support. We benefit immensely from the proactive and supportive community, with several classmates jumping in as early advisors and investors. The culture of the Michigan Alumni network is uniquely helpful; regardless of how successful they are, alumni consistently offer their time and expertise via LinkedIn and other channels, providing a readily available and high-quality resource base that is truly essential to an early-stage FinTech venture like ours.

What is your long-term goal with your startup? Our long-term goal is to fully integrate the financing of hard goods—corporate real estate, equipment, and IP—into the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem. We aim to become the primary gateway for asset tokenization, utilizing services like staking, factoring, and crypto-based infrastructure to further reduce transaction friction, build immutable trust, and create smarter agreements between buyers and sellers. Ultimately, HonestDeed will fundamentally shift the massive B2B private asset financing market toward a future-proof, digitally-native financial system that continually gains traction and value.

Looking back, what is the biggest lesson you wished you’d known before launching and scaling your venture? The biggest lesson we wished we’d known was the importance of starting with a known framework for mass market adoption. We initially prioritized the financially superior but unfamiliar installment sale structure, which hindered consumer understanding. In hindsight, we should have started with a traditional amortization method to ease adoption, using the more complex structure only for businesses that could immediately understand the tax and capital benefits. This reinforced the principle that even a disruptive product must meet the user where they are in their existing mental model.

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