As the co-founder of CountryWide Debt Relief, Josh Blandi targeted a specific group of consumers who were struggling financially amid the Great Recession but didn’t qualify for bankruptcy.
The Santa Ana, California-based company, which launched in 2008, helps them consolidate and eliminate their debt. It also assists those who are being sued by their creditors by connecting them to attorneys who can help with debt defense settlements.
Blandi, 45, who studied biology at Hawaii Pacific University before becoming an entrepreneur like his father and grandfather, realized these consumers finished their programs feeling most satisfied, and he hoped to find others facing lawsuits.
“We went to Westlaw, we went to Lexis, trying to see if we could get a feed of that type of data in a more real-time fashion,” says Blandi, who is still a CountryWide shareholder. “At that time, it really wasn’t possible. So we said, ‘You know what? We’ll start building our own system to collect this from the courts themselves.’”
This idea sparked the creation in 2014 of UniCourt, which gives law firms and businesses real-time access to court records and legal data for case research and tracking, business development, competitive intelligence and various other purposes.