#114 Ray Smith: From Dairy Farm Grit to Business Credit Funding for Entrepreneurs

Ray Smith: Ray grew up on a 3500 acre dairy farm in South Dakota, where hard work, community, and resilience were daily lessons. That early exposure to uncertainty, like storms wiping out crops after months of effort, shaped his drive for a more predictable path and pushed him toward entrepreneurship. He started young, selling long distance phone service at 18, then moved into subprime credit card processing in Las Vegas, building a call center operation that reached about 65 employees.A turning point came suddenly in December 2004, when the bank partner shut down the subprime division and Ray had to tell his team the business was over overnight. Instead of stopping, he pivoted. With a database of consumers who needed support, he moved into credit repair, helping people remove negative items and rebuild the ability to function financially again. Later, he identified a bigger gap: most everyday payments like rent and utilities were not reported to credit bureaus, even though they represent the majority of how people pay.That insight led him to design a process to add positive payment data and pursue patent protection, using prepaid debit card rails to track and report payments. In February 2009, Trycera Financial appointed him President and CEO, and he has led the company since then. Over time, Ray built deep expertise in how bureaus, lenders, and underwriting systems work.When COVID hit in 2020, Ray saw business owners face the same kind of uncontrollable shock he remembered from the farm. He shifted Trycera’s focus toward helping entrepreneurs build business credit using their EIN, not their personal credit. He explains why the business credit world feels broken: many vendors pull bureau data to judge a business, but most do not report to the bureaus, leaving owners with thin files and forcing personal guarantees. Trycera’s answer is a fundability foundation platform that aligns business identity data across public records and bureaus and matches founders to lenders based on real requirements, increasingly enforced by AI driven underwriting.Throughout the conversation, Ray and Federico discuss courage, integrity, and the reality of entrepreneurship beyond the hype. Ray emphasizes that founders are not “failing” but testing, and that progress requires mentors and a dream team. He closes with a call to be fearless, respect money and responsibility, and keep moving forward through uncertainty.About Ray Smith:- https://www.linkedin.com/in/ray-smith-95130516/- https://trycera.com/fundabilityAbout Federico Ramallo ✨👨‍💻🌎🚀 Software Engineering Manager | 🛠 Founder of DensityLabs.io & PreVetted.ai | 🤝 Connecting 🇺🇸 U.S. teams with top nearshore 🌎 LATAM engineers- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io- ✅ https://prevetted.ai🎙 PreVetted Podcast 🎧📡- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast00:00 Introduction to Ray Smith and Tricera Financial05:08 The Journey from Dairy Farm to Financial Services09:26 Resilience and Grit in Business15:14 Building Business Credit and Supporting Entrepreneurs20:33 Navigating the Challenges of Business Funding25:44 The Reality of Entrepreneurship31:19 Lessons from Past Experiences36:08 Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs40:42 The Role of Technology in Business Credit