Women Of Influence

The startup he co-founded based on his original idea was running out of money, and he'd long since left day-to-day operations, but Chris Sauerzopf couldn't let go of the growing wire fraud problem it was trying to solve.

SafeWire is back in business and growing, after investor and adviser Pete Kight – the CheckFree Corp. founder – took the assets of the former business as collateral for paying off its debts and brought back Sauerzopf as CEO. They incorporated SCSV Holdings LLC at the end of 2019 and registered SafeWire as its trade name in early 2020, targeting more than $220 million and growing annual real estate scams.

"This problem scares the crap out of me," said Sauerzopf, who also owns a title company in Westerville. "Where this problem was first on my radar was in 2016, where someone had sent me an email who had just lost his entire life savings in a wire fraud loss. A title company had sent his proceeds to the wrong place."

Sauerzopf had started the former SafeChain Financial with original CEO Tony Franco and Rob Zwink, who was CEO from Franco's departure until the startup shut down. SafeChain had won the Columbus pitch event for Steve Case's Rise of the Rest seed funding tour, and later raised $3 million. But in late 2019 expenses still outstripped growing revenue, and Kight said other investors did not want to put in more capital.

Zwink insisted that Kight and Sauerzopf start talking, the two said in an interview for Columbus Business First's Newsmakers podcast.

"(Sauerzopf) met my criteria for an entrepreneur that you want to back," Kight said via videoconference from his ranch in Colorado. "He knows this industry, I mean, to the point where you got to be careful if you’re going to go out for a beer with Chris, because you’re going to talk about real estate."

The investment also is attractive because the entire mortgage process is "messy," Kight said. SafeWire is focused on the problem of wire fraud during the mortgage closing, but eventually can take on more aspects of a burdensome paper-piling process. The startup has more than 100 customers including title companies and real estate brokerages.

Zwink is now a CTO with a Minneapolis tech company. Franco declined an interview request but said via email: “Wire fraud is a complicated problem and opportunity. I’m happy Chris and the team are pursuing the vision for a solution.”

The interview tells the story of the revival, why Kight doesn't lose sleep over being the only investor willing to give the company another shot, and how SafeWire is similar to the early days of CheckFree, which launched digital banking.