A dentist’s chair, a pest control truck, and the slow road to something better
Most people don’t go from pest control to fintech. Then again, most people aren’t Javier Jorge.
Years before launching fintech startups or leading SBA lending at Locality Bank, Javier was driving the backroads of Florida in a pest control truck, spraying supermarket floors by day, grinding through finance classes at night.
The lesson? As the Stoics might say, the obstacle became the path. Sometimes the long way around is the only way through.
The hard path doesn’t block the way. It is the way.
Javier was born in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents, but he credits the Tampa Bay area with shaping his work ethic and worldview. He started college aiming to be a dentist, dropped out to chase real estate riches, then found himself, post-2008 crash, in pest control just trying to make ends meet. That’s where he decided to re-enroll at the University of South Florida, this time with a clearer vision: to understand how money moves and how systems fail.
After earning his finance degree and MBA while working full-time, he found community banking and quickly discovered the unique power of relationships. “I had never met a CEO until my first banking job,” he recalls. “And then I met three in one interview.”
That access, and what it represented, stuck with him. It showed him what banking could be: close-knit, personal, built on trust.
It wasn’t long before Javier saw a different kind of problem worth solving: the time-sucking, manual slog of underwriting SBA loans. So he built a solution: FlashSread, a fintech startup that automated tax return extraction for loan processing. He launched it while still meeting his lending goals.
Javier didn’t do it for a payday. He did it because he hated tax returns. And because the pain was real, not just for him, but for bankers everywhere.
Years later, his new venture, ChatBiz, is a natural evolution. It’s a platform designed to connect small businesses with the ecosystem of grants, technical assistance, and capital they’re often unaware of. All through one simple intake.
Why? Because too many great businesses miss out on support simply because they don’t know where to look, or don’t have time to.
Javier believes entrepreneurship is about solving real problems. That success looks like “failing more than other people try.” And that wasted potential is the true enemy.
His story reminds us: every supermarket floor, every night class, every setback… we carry those with us. As Marcus Aurelius wrote, “The impediment to action advances action.” The hard path doesn’t block the way. It is the way.
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