Today’s Thoughtful Entrepreneur is Levi King, co-founder and CEO of NAV.com, a venture-backed company that helps small business owners get more funding and lower their costs.

Raised on a farm in rural Idaho, King is a self-taught, serial entrepreneur who has started businesses in the manufacturing, franchising and retail financing spaces (and invested in many more).

During this time, he had to work to overcome the same issues faced by most small business owners – access to capital, financing, and marketplace credibility. After getting a handle on how business credit works, Levi was able to get business loans and financing more than 30 times.

Prior to starting Nav, he co-founded Lendio, a business financing marketplace that links commercial lenders and small business owners. While at Lendio, Levi saw too many applicants get denied for financing or only get approved for financing they couldn’t afford. He realized someone needed to help business owners become better-qualified applicants, which lead him to start Nav.

Levi’s columns appear regularly in publications such as Inc., Entrepreneur, and BizJournals, and he has been quoted in numerous news interviews.

Nav.com