 Hi and welcome to School of Hustle. I'm Sarah and you can find me on Instagram at Sarah Funke. And I'm Maxim and you can find me online at Maxim McKay. Going through my news feed this morning and I learned that one in every seven Americans are unemployed and that brings a total number of unemployed at 22 million. 22 million. Can you believe it? That's that's insane. I don't even know. I just I can't even comprehend the number like that. And I feel very fortunate you know that I'm still able to to continue to work and be here and I I would just my heart goes out to everyone. Yeah I mean it's really stressful as a company owner. I own a tour company in New York and we can't run tours at all you know because we can't go outside. And so it's been very it's been very stressful. It's very like a lot of anxiety. Like these are things that I've never experienced. I don't even think like my parents haven't experienced it. My grandparents haven't experienced it. It's like the level of the Great Depression. The unemployment. Yeah well it's certainly worse than the 2008 recession. Yeah like that. We're facing some challenging times and there are so many people out there who are really affected by this. Yeah and as a business owner getting trying to apply to these loans and these grants and all this. I have to say you know I have a master's degree and it's confusing. So it's it's really alarming to me like how are they even going to make this work again. I've always wondered that like why do these processes or documents have to be so complicated like is there someone out there who's simplifying this whole process. Yeah it's so complicated. The way they make these forms I mean the amount of times you have to enter the same information in it's oh my god someone needs to simplify it and that's why I'm really excited for today's guest Rohan Palvalari is the founder of Upsolve a nonprofit that helps low income families file for bankruptcy for free via an online app. Spun out of Harvard Law School their team includes lawyers engineers and judges and they've been named one of the top 10 most innovative nonprofits of 2020 by Fast Company received the 2019 Heroes Award from the Robin Hood Foundation and we're awarded one of the 2018 Good Tech Awards from the New York Times. Today they've relieved 200 million in debt for family suffering from layoffs medical bills and predatory loans. That is really impressive Rohan. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me Sarah. So in your own words tell me a little bit about your company. Upsolve is a nonprofit that helps low income families file for bankruptcy for free using an online web app. We've relieved over 200 million dollars in debt so far and we're the largest nonprofit in America helping families file for bankruptcy on their own for free. That's so incredible. Thank you so much for creating something that was so necessary there was a huge need in the market for it and I'd love to just talk about how you dreamt up such a brilliant idea. When you first started this business out did you ever think that it would grow into what it is today? I didn't I mean when I was starting Upsolve was just a brick and mortar legally clinic people were coming into our office one at a time and I really just started it as a project a school project my sophomore summer when I was at Harvard I moved to Brooklyn and started going to the bankruptcy court and going to legal aid offices and going and meeting other attorneys and just trying to understand as much as possible about this huge problem in America which is that if you're poor you have a civil legal problem you have absolutely no right to a free lawyer. It's shocking that people that have been accused of crimes can get a lawyer but then all of these people that can't actually afford one for non-criminal crimes can't get access to a lawyer. Totally and it's a civil rights injustice that we don't really talk about in this country and it deserves to be at the forefront of our national dialogue that if you are low income and you have a civil legal problem you have absolutely no right to a free lawyer and we've written the laws and made the forms in the courts to be so complicated that people can't access their rights on their own. Why do you think that is that it's so complicated? I mean it's terrible and it's in in my mind the same as literacy tests that people used to have to take in order to vote and that was used to actually stop people from voting. Legal complexity is a civil rights injustice and one of the reasons it's the way it is is that there's a culture in the American legal profession around if you have a legal problem you need to go and see a lawyer. In the healthcare profession we have so many over-the-counter options if you have a headache you can go and buy Advil but in the legal profession we don't have that Advil equivalent. What was the first thing you did once you came up with the idea of Upsolve? You knew you there was a need in the market and so how do you fill this need? Yeah so for an entire year my co-founder and I operated brick-and-mortar legal aid clinic in Brooklyn on Court Street and people were coming to our office one at a time and we would sit next to them as they used like the first version of our software and then we saw how people were interacting with the product that we built and then we went on opposite sides of the office and we tried to figure out could somebody use this on their own but come to us if they had any problems and then we gave people our product from their homes and told them to use it at home and when people could use our software to answer questions about their personal finances and then generate their own forms from their own home we knew we were on to something and we turned from a brick-and-mortar legal aid clinic into a technology company. That is like such a brilliant idea and kind of now correct me if I'm wrong Upsolve is like really unique in that it is a non-profit but you also like offer a service and generate revenue. Did you always plan to structure it that way? How did that come to fruition? Yeah I mean I've always felt very strongly about being self-sustainable as an organization and covering our expenses with revenue that we generate so that we don't have to go out and spend all of our time fundraising but we didn't always know how to generate our own revenue and only recently about 18 months ago did we figure out that there were a lot of people coming to our website who actually preferred attorneys and there were a lot of attorneys who were willing to provide free evaluations to people who wanted them but were willing to pay to provide these free evaluations because some percentage would turn to clients of the attorney. So let's talk about the day let's go back in time a little bit to the day that you started creating this. What were your feelings? I know as an entrepreneur myself it can be really scary but it also is a bit exciting so can you talk about that day? Yeah totally so I made myself more summer when I was in college and the great thing about starting something in college is if it doesn't work out you just go back to school so it really felt like there was that much pressure at the beginning of starting Upsolve and that was a really great productive feeling and I always use the word project rather than company to start because there's this thing as a project failing you just do a project and then it's over or it keeps going but the real rush to me came when we helped our first user her name was Esha. So entrepreneurship has a certain level of fluidity to it but I'm curious is there anything that was non-negotiable for you such as your name for example could you talk about why you called it Upsolve? Yeah so I love the name Upsolve because I thought it was a very positive name and we wanted to really empower people with our product so that's sort of the solve in it. We wanted to bring people up and improve their credit scores increase their chance of employment so I like the idea of up there. We thought there was a nice play on words with absolve your debt and Upsolve as well and we also wanted something simple easy to spell where we could afford the domain name and there wasn't very much competition on Google search. You mentioned SEO previously when we were chatting about it and you guys own almost all of the search results in Google for bankruptcy, bankruptcy related terminology how important is that have you noticed as a business owner? Yeah I mean over 80% of people find us because of Google search. Is there anything that you learned along the way that you wish you knew when you first started out you know as business owners were constantly adapting so what was that like for you? Yeah I think for us it was the importance of content rather than just focusing on our product. If we had started from day one I would have started writing more content from the beginning or hiring great people to help us produce content. There's absolute truth to the phrase content is king you know I used to work in content marketing and the amount of good it can do for your business video content blog posts like SEO generated writing like it's incredible so I know that you had mentioned finding someone or it was something that you would wish you had done sooner which kind of got me thinking about your team as a whole right like you have an incredible team at Upsol you know from lawyers to engineers to judges can you tell us a little bit how you ended up you know building your team and then the importance of having the right people? Yeah and for us we've always focused number one on people who have a background in social justice and who are activists oriented or who in general just have a track record of caring about social causes and that's been non-negotiable for us from the beginning but then sort of trying to find people passionate but also deep skill sets always been really important. You did a really good job getting some highly qualified people that are also really relatable and fun and I think that's something you don't really expect when you think of bankruptcy. I mean we've always thought that we should take risks in our product and this should do things that other people don't do and one of my favorite things in our product is we have stories of famous people who have filed for bankruptcy while you're answering questions about your personal finances. We also have motivational quotes for people who are going through to make the process seem less lonely and more relatable. Can you please do this for the government grant and loan process because that would be great right? I love this little inspirational walk through. Yeah I need like inspirational quotes like every moment of my life just incorporate the upsell model into every part of the legal system. Right the different goal is to inspire change in our legal system. So do you have any advice on pitching organizations for funding a nonprofit? Totally I mean for us we were unique for a couple of reasons and now traditional for a couple of reasons and we really focused on finding people for whom our unique qualities would be attractive. So how do you craft your pitch? Right so I mean I think that the number one thing I learned is it depends on the funder. Do you have any tips for someone that's going to pitch a funder? Is it just do your research and see what they funded before and kind of tailor your pitch to what you think they're interested in and their style? Yes I mean I think that's always a good idea. There's also a few questions that you should generally ask funders and I learned these during Y Combinator so if you can ask them they can tell you information that will help you craft your pitch. One of them is how do you make decisions about who you are? One is what's your average check size? One is what's your timeline for making a decision? And those are three questions that if you ask an investor or a funder they can give you a lot of information that will be helpful in making your pitch. I think a lot of funders are looking to make profit out of ideas that they fund so how do you go about that? I think it's very hard to convince people who weren't going to give money to give money what is easier is to convince people who have already allocated the beginning of the year that I'm going to give out a million dollars or I'm going to give out 20 million dollars or my foundation is going to give out 100 million dollars this year and then go to the people who've already decided they're going to give but then they're just trying to figure out which places to give and then sort of you are competing against the other interventions and nonprofits out there and you have to convince the funder that you have the more effective idea or the more bang for your buck idea and one of our pitches is Upsolve is now relieved over 100 million dollars in debt and or 200 million dollars in debt and we've spent less than two million dollars or about two million dollars so far so we have for every dollar that we've spent we've relieved about 100 dollars in debt more than 100 dollars in debt how do you find those people that you know are looking to giving away funds some foundations have just open websites where you can just apply so then some some of our grants some of them have been through warm introductions so you sort of try to figure out who you can get a warm introduction to from your existing funders those are usually the best at making warm introductions but what about that very first year when you didn't have that capital or those numbers to like get them to donate to you yeah I mean donating or getting you to your first like 100k raised like so hard what was it like when you got your first first check from a funder yeah I mean such great validation for what you're doing and there are about three or four times where if we didn't get a certain grant we probably thought we'd need to shut down what is next for your business are you looking to expand into other products and services or yeah right now we're pretty hyper focused on bankruptcy we want to get to one billion dollars in debt relief so that's our next goal and while I know it's probably really difficult to pick one instance I'd love to know what has been your biggest accomplishment to date I think I being able to relieve 200 million dollars in debt for a lot of families like a really amazing feeling to be able to have done that I mean we want to keep helping more and more people what is one piece of advice that you could give to everyday entrepreneurs like yourself I think the only way something really dies or company fails is to stop working on it so there's like really people are afraid of failing but in reality it's like not a big deal before we wrap up this interview I want to ask you a few questions about COVID-19 it's affecting so many small businesses right now people are filing for unemployment bankruptcy businesses are closing all together and as the head of a non-profit that's outfitted to help people during these challenging times what types of help and resources and insights would you offer to other entrepreneurs out there that are struggling during this hard time yeah well I think that for one bankruptcy is a great lifeline for people if they're in debt and they are not able to pay it back and they need a fresh start have you seen an increase in applications for bankruptcy so we haven't seen an increase in filings yet and actually bankruptcy is a great tool to use when you're at your financial trough and you think that your debt I mean that it was sort of you're the point where things are maybe potentially going to get better because if you're going to file bankruptcy you can only file once for chapter 7 and 8 year period and filing and falling into more debt after bankruptcy might just make you worse off so it oftentimes makes sense to file not when you're just going to fall into more debt but rather when things potentially are going to pick up with so many affected by COVID-19 are you expecting these numbers to increase and how do you plan to handle the influx definitely we're expecting an increase based on where unemployment has been over the last month we think that will increase by two to three times at least what it was for the last 12 month period and we're preparing by investing heavily in our product by directing engineering resources towards increasing the capacity that we have to serve more people improving the amount of self-service features that we have available so that we're able to help everybody who needs it at a critical moment in their lives thank you for all your incredible insights Rowan what you're doing today truly helps others and it's so inspiring to meet someone like you I really want there to be more people like you in this world that would be phenomenal thank you to everyone who's tuned in today and if you want to learn more about Rowan and Upsolve visit Upsolve.org that's all for this edition of school puzzle keep up with all our episodes on youtube apple podcast google podcast or wherever you stream and download podcasts and if you'd like what you heard please leave a review share with your friends and subscribe to our show we'll see you next time