As part of her summer internship with KEC through LaunchTN’s Internship Program, Riley caught up with KEC alumni and program participants to learn where their entrepreneurial journeys have taken them. In this story, she shares how Bryan turned a frustrating personal experience into VeriQual.
From Problem to Opportunity
Long before Bryan began building VeriQual, he had already spent years learning the ins and outs of entrepreneurship and financial services.
After more than a decade as an entrepreneur, Bryan understood firsthand the challenges that come with being self-employed. Earlier in his career, he worked in financial services as a licensed stockbroker and held a loan origination license, giving him experience on the lender’s side of the process as well.
When Bryan and his wife welcomed their third child, they began looking into expanding their home. That was when the difficulties of securing a loan while self-employed became especially clear.
“I spent the whole week doing paperwork,” Bryan recalled. The process was familiar, but frustrating nonetheless.
For self-employed borrowers, determining income can be much more complicated than simply providing a pay stub. Important information may be buried within hundreds of pages of tax returns, requiring lenders to spend significant time reviewing documents and verifying income.
Combining his experience as a lender with his frustration as a self-employed borrower, Bryan began forming an idea: “There had to be a better way to do this.”
Building a Better Way
What started as a personal frustration soon became an opportunity to create a solution for both borrowers and financial institutions.
Although VeriQual began as a consumer-facing application, the company shifted its focus toward serving financial institutions as development continued.
VeriQual is designed to streamline the review of self-employed income by automatically extracting information from tax returns, verifying it and integrating it into the loan systems banks already use. Instead of requiring lenders to manually sort through pages of documents, the technology aims to make income verification faster and easier.
Finding Focus Through KEC
Bryan has been part of KEC’s community for years. In 2015, he won Knoxville Startup Day with his company FunLPro Technology. More than a decade later, he remains involved in Knoxville’s entrepreneurial community while building a new company and tackling a new problem.
In March 2026, Bryan presented VeriQual during KEC’s What’s the Big Idea? competition. He also joined The Works, KEC’s summer accelerator for early-stage technology companies.
Although Bryan brought years of experience into these programs, he still found valuable opportunities to learn and refine his approach. Through KEC’s programming and network, he gained a clearer understanding of how to structure the business and become more intentional about its audience.
One of his biggest realizations was that he had been trying to “be everything for everyone.” By narrowing his focus and identifying the people and institutions that could benefit most from VeriQual, Bryan has been able to approach the company’s growth with greater clarity and purpose.
Looking Toward the Future
Bryan is now focused on refining VeriQual and expanding its reach within the lending industry. The company is conducting pilot programs, strengthening its technology and building partnerships with the goal of bringing the product to financial institutions across the country.
More than a decade after beginning his entrepreneurial journey in Knoxville, Bryan continues to demonstrate that some of the best business ideas can begin with a simple realization: There has to be a better way.
