Our Story
In 1997, future iBank founder Entreprenuer and 13 time small business owner Thomas Markel dreamed of creating a portal to allow small business owners to find information a small business owner may need, connect with other small business owners, and allow access to centers of influence such as: lenders, consultants, insurance agents, and investors. www.iBank.com is the result of that vision.
In July of 2004 iBank v1.0 was released. The portal allowed small business owners to become members and create an on-line digital loan application that could be shopped to lenders. By December of 2004 it was clear that the model was good but needed to mature. Over the course of the next 5 years, Tom reinvested all of the iBank earnings back into the technology and created a state of the art matching and data delivery system, a virtual chamber of ceommerce for the small business owner, a search engine rivaling google, bing, and yahoo, and the remaining centers of influence: consultants, insurance agents, and investors.
