The Sharpei Lending Edge: Maria Azofra with Anna Barber

In episode 120 of Venture Everywhere, Anna Barber, a General Partner at Everywhere Ventures, talks with Maria Azofra, co-founder and CEO of Sharpei — an AI-native operating system for embedded equipment financing that helps lenders automate and accelerate the loan origination process. Maria shares how building Yakk, a B2B equipment rental marketplace in Spain, exposed a frustrating industry-wide bottleneck: lenders taking 20 to 30 days to approve transactions, losing deals before they could ever close. Sharpei’s vision is to become the origination infrastructure for every lender in the US — modernizing a $1.3 trillion industry that still runs on emails, PDFs, and phone calls.In this episode, you will hear:Iterating through multiple business models to find true market pull.Targeting pre-qualification as lending’s most overlooked bottleneck.Automating credit file creation from days to hours with AI.Using lenders as the distribution channel to reach merchants at scale.Building leasing infrastructure that captures residual asset value.Learn more about Maria Azofra | SharpeiLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariaazofra/enWebsite: https://www.gosharpei.com/Learn more about Anna Barber | Everywhere VCLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annawbarberWebsite: https://everywhere.vc/