1West is rapidly becoming the ideal option for helping small businesses secure funding. It went from being a representative-heavy model, to one where the customer drives most interactions … But how did it make that transition?
Up from the basement level
As all good origin stories go, 1West began with some good friends drinking in a basement. The way Cheyne Pierce (1West CTO) tells it, he and Kunal Bhasin (1West’s founder and CEO) go way back before 2017, when they formed an idea around facilitating small business loans.
Knowing what you need
In the beginning, 1West focused heavily on representatives making phone calls. The path for new customers was to find 1West’s website and use ABLE (also known as the Automated Business Lending Engine) to request a call from a representative. At that point, the customer waited until they received a call to start the loan process. For Cheyne, this experience wasn’t good enough.
First, the process was slow and unsophisticated, sometimes taking more than a day from start to finish. Furthermore, it had too many elements that felt insecure and inefficient, such as emailing sensitive documents back and forth to the reps’ inboxes. They needed to streamline the intake process while improving security through a trusted and secure framework, and there was one clear option to make it happen: Heroku.
I’d done a lot of Heroku projects, I was just very familiar with the platform, I’d been using it before Salesforce even bought it, and I like the platform so much. … I just knew it was going to be everything we needed.
Cheyne Pierce, 1West CTO
Working with Funders
If customers are the first pillar and 1West is the second, then the third pillar is the funders. With a network of so many possible funders, 1West had the connections, but they also knew that every funder does things their own way, using different tools and frameworks and requesting different pieces of information before accepting a request.
Because each funder had its own system, this meant that whatever solution Cheyne went with would require working within dozens of different APIs and frameworks. The solution would also involve needing to crawl their funders’ sites and make use of loan data, regardless of the API or functions they found. The 1West method would need to combine these various functions in a single app to provide their customers with the flexibility they were looking for in a loan.
Push the Button
In the beginning, the team consisted of Cheyne. Working alone, he needed to build the CRM, the app, and integrate all the funders. Considering his experience with Salesforce, Heroku seemed like the obvious choice. He wouldn’t have to develop and manage all of the underlying infrastructure, and could instead focus on building the app itself.
Using Heroku, 1West developed multiple apps, including an app to manage the APIs from funders, an app for managing the customer portal, and an app that manages the email services. With Heroku’s one-push method, they were able to quickly implement updates across the entire platform, reducing any downtime needed during a fix.
When I found Heroku it felt like magic, ‘Oh, you literally just push that to your GitHub branch and it just is there.’ It really was that simple … it’s just so easy to just hit push and you have your app and it exists on the internet.
Cheyne Pierce, 1West CTO
Rapid Improvements
With a representative-heavy model, 1West had a hard limit on growth. Reps could only process so many new customers at a time, and for customers, that meant long waits. In fact, Cheyne estimates that of new customers entering the portal and submitting their initial request for a representative phone call, about half would never return.
Once Heroku was integrated into 1West and the ABLE portal was in effect, it was a night-and-day difference. Now, new customers can submit their information, get processed, and see if they were approved for funding within minutes. This didn’t cut out representatives but rather shifted their focus, allowing them to be the closing follow-up phone call to walk customers through offers rather than micromanaging every detail from the beginning.
Even better, Heroku offered a far more secure method for transferring documents while also increasing the speed at which everything can be shared. Reps didn’t have to ask for documents to be pushed to their emails. Instead, all that documentation now goes through a secure network. This shortened the process from hours to minutes, while also improving data security.
I don’t want to build infrastructure on AWS, I don’t have time. That’s the main reason we use Heroku—you don’t have to worry about all the infrastructure stuff.
Cheyne Pierce, 1West CTO
Automating to Save More Time
Prior to using the Heroku framework, zero percent of loans funded could be accomplished without a representative. However, roughly 30% of loans are now issued without needing a rep involved. This means the representatives have shifted to a position where they can focus on customers who need more support.
This change from the representative’s tasks being focused around generating leads, to them being the closers helped immensely. In the previous model, reps were responsible for speaking with anyone who submitted an application, including those who may not be approved or who abandoned the process. Now, reps were speaking with approved loan applicants who were engaged and committed to finishing the process. The reps were working far more efficiently than before, and seeing better outcomes for their customers.
We put out a trust pilot review widget at the end of the application process. We’ve seen quite a few people writing 5-star reviews saying, ‘Hey, this is a super easy application process.’ It’s easy for them, and I think people like that.
Cheyne Pierce, 1West CTO
Growing with AI
Taking a step back, 1West used machine learning (ML) to make the approval process faster and more efficient. Previously, the customer applied and then waited as their application was sent off to a funder for approval. When the approval came back, 1West would need to call or text the customer to bring them back to the platform. With these wait times, there was a dramatically lower chance that the customer would return. In many cases, the customer would either lose interest or seek another avenue for funding.
With ML, 1West automated many parts of the process. Using vast data sets, the ABLE platform could assess which offers were most likely to get funded and by which funder, accurately predicting approvals to then pass directly to customers. This meant a far shorter wait between submitting an application and getting invited to take the next steps, keeping more customers on the platform.
Once we figured out how to automate the loan process with ML, it changed everything. We were able to show customers a draft offer once they completed the application, which really got them to stick. They stayed on the platform because they could see what their deal was then, instead of having to come back. That was probably the biggest inflection point. Instead of half of our approvals leaving and never coming back, they were engaged right then.
Cheyne Pierce, 1West CTO
Low Friction
Another huge benefit to working with Heroku was the simplicity of the entire process. Cheyne was already familiar with the platform, but didn’t feel overly pressured to seek any new guidance when starting out. Everything just made sense. There is a community that was well-versed in assisting with any questions that could come up.
The power of Salesforce and Heroku is that there’s such a good community around it. When you have a problem, someone else has probably already had it and written about it online. I always look for this in a platform, if there’s no community around it, you know it’s going to be hard to solve problems. There’s a huge community around Heroku and Salesforce, it’s really easy to look things up.
Cheyne Pierce, 1West CTO
What’s Next for 1West?
Looking ahead, a multilingual version of ABLE is in the works to connect 1West’s resources to more people. Furthermore, using the Heroku framework, 1West is looking for ways to bring its other ventures under the same umbrella. Currently, they have a company called LoanGeek that helps with investment real estate financing, EquipLoan for equipment financing, and a company called Flash that funds small business loans like those in the ABLE platform. Being able to combine all these together into a single hub will allow 1West to scale even faster. Heroku’s simple frameworks are at the core of making that happen.
And lastly, a new customer chat widget using Agentforce is in the works for ABLE. Currently, their chat feature requires a dedicated person to handle all questions. With an Agentforce agent drawing on this person’s internal knowledge and assisting, it will make it far easier to automate responses to simple customer questions, improving efficiencies even further.
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