Making Magic: The Sam Kaddah Story
I grew up in Damascus loving soccer. My position was goalie. In and of itself, that was a challenge! In Damascus, unlike in the U.S., the fields I played on were dirt and concrete. I loved swimming too. And, of all things, volleyball was a favorite (we won’t mention my height handicap). So, let’s just say I had a lot of imagination and heart! Wishing Upon a Star Once, when I was very young, I saw a picture of Disney World and the Epcot center. I remember thinking that it was a place out of this world! Something unattainable and unimaginable. Having been born to a modest family of an English teacher and an elementary school principle in a suburb of Damascus, I was grounded with modesty and thoughtfulness. But I never forgot that picture. I knew that someplace, somewhere out there, life was better. The Fairy Tale Unfolds Although I spent much of my youth on athletic fields, enjoying life, the atmosphere in Syria was changing. After my dad was detained by the regime when I was in the 10th grade for his peaceful political democratic views, my oldest brother planted a seed in us. He suggested that we leave Syria and seek better opportunities in this world. From that point on, I aspired to leave. It was only natural for me to look to England or the U.S. as options. My dad was an English literature and language teacher, after all. It is kind of funny that I grew up with the English proper composition and the British accent. Now, however, when people ask me where my accent is from, I quickly reply ARKANSAAA. So, when the time came for me to choose between my college transcripts for my electrical engineering degree or a passport to study at either MIT, the University of Maryland or Wichita State (where Boeing, Cessna, Learjet and Beach aircraft were all founded), there was no question about what I would do. I decided to travel to the U.S., the home of that picture from my youth. A place that had seemed unimaginable and unattainable. At Wichita State, I found my undergraduate studies boring, so I added computer science as a second major. I also earned an MBA with a focus on information systems, an area of study where I felt at home. I graduated with a 4.0 grade point average … the fairy tale was becoming real. It’s a Small World (After All) Out of school, I stayed in Wichita working for defense contractor Raytheon. But, due to a family member’s terminal illness, I moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where I landed a position as the director of the upper Midwest practice for e-security and e-commerce implementation at EY, formerly Ernst & Young. In 2001, I transitioned to leading the global technology and productivity group for GE Transportation/Global Signaling. During my tenure at GE, I oversaw 13 sites that spanned four continents. I was dealing with multiple cultures, waking up at 6 a.m. to communicate with India, followed by phone meetings with associates in Italy, Germany and the UK a couple of hours later. East Coast to the West Coast … I sandwiched calls throughout the day. I finished the daily globe trot by speaking with the Australian and the Chinese teams. Believing All the Way Truth be told, I never imagined moving from global operations into the financial industry, but life sometimes takes a funny turn. Because of my global experience, Microsoft recruited me to lead their internal global marketing and sales systems. I took 60 days off between jobs. During that transition period, a friend asked me to review a national lending platform that was being built and that had challenges after more than $2.5 million had been invested in it. The rest is history—or destiny—depending on your point of view. No matter what happened after that, the lending industry just kept sucking me back into it. I spent a couple of weeks at my friend’s company, discovering the issues and the challenges and implementing corrective actions. My task complete, I left to start my new job with Microsoft, thinking that working as a CTO for a lending bank was not something I could practically consider in lieu of my seven-figure executive position. A few days after joining Microsoft, the bank decided to outsource that software development to be sold back to them for a mid-eight-figure number over five years. That agreement made it worthwhile for me to start Liquid Logics (originally named bFocused for “business focused” to set us apart from techno empty slogans like fintech). I remember vividly sitting in one of my first meetings and asking what an LTV was. I’ll never forget seeing the president of that lending operation, who had just signed an agreement with me, turn red. It was obvious he was wondering if I was going to able to save this endeavor without “industry” knowledge. The proof came a few months later when we released our first version online, where 801 loan officers or the 12,000 brokers could fill in an application, run credit and get auto underwriting in less than 3.5 minutes. At the time there was no such thing as fintech or software as a service (SaaS). We simply referred to it as an online lending application, pre-approval and prequalification to accommodate niche residential lending products with complex underwriting rules. That group generated over $3 billion of loans annually. As the economy turned in 2008, we retooled and became a private-labeled lending platform for smaller organizations originating $500 million to $1.2 billion a year. In 2014, we stumbled across private funds and commercial lending. With collaboration from a Boston-based industry leader, we built the private lending platform based on the $10 million platform we had already built. Shortly after, we discovered that the industry was in dire need of a comprehensive system. The old dominant software was antiquated and built on old PC-based technology. I vividly remember their sales vice president
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