Entrepreneur of the Year finalist: Krista Morgan

Last spring, Krista Morgan’s struggling financial technology company appeared to have hit its final wall.

“We hadn’t actually sold any product, we were almost out of money, and we were discussing when to shut down the company,” Morgan says. “In that moment, I decided I would succeed no matter what.”

Two weeks later, the company closed its first deal; hit its first $1 million in loans by the end of that month. And therein lies what Morgan considers her greatest accomplishment: surviving.

“There have been so many make-or-break moments over the years, and every time I persevered,” she says.

Morgan left a lucrative job in London to move to Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood and open P2Binvestor in 2012 with her father, Bruce Morgan. They raised a Series A funding round in late 2013 and started “crowdlending” commercial lines of credit to growing businesses in January 2014. In little more than a year, the company racked up more than $14 million in client contracts, $50 million in invoices funded and 26 served clients.

Morgan gives lots of the credit to her 18 employees.

“I learned that there is a lot I don’t know, and the best entrepreneurs are always listening before they make decisions,” she says. “I’ve surrounded myself with a team who knows a heck of a lot more than I do, and I trust them, listen to them, and together we make better decisions.”

When things get tough, Morgan still questions her own decision to forgo the path of least resistance.

“But in the end, I’m so happy being an entrepreneur, I can no longer imagine doing anything else,” she says. “This is the best job I’ve ever had. It’s definitely not always easy, but it’s been worth it for me.”

The one mistake I’ll never make again: “I will never underestimate the importance of sales. We raised our first $1 million on a beta technology platform and thought we had made it. And it took eight months to get our messaging right and close our first deals. Next time I will put all my energy into getting to revenue as quickly as possible and focus on getting customers.”