In early 2020, Michael Obay and Frank Malandro were restaurant partners. Their location of Stewart's 1924 — a beloved American dining brand with roots stretching back a century — sat inside a thriving shopping mall. Then COVID hit. The mall shut down. Revenue went to zero overnight.
Like every small business owner scrambling for options, they turned to the people they trusted most: their CPA and financial advisors. The answer they got back was a gut punch. "You don't qualify for the Employee Retention Credit." Take the loan. Cut your losses.
"We almost listened. Had we, we would have walked away from tens of thousands of dollars that were ours by law — money that kept the doors open."
They pushed back. They dug in. And they qualified — recovering tens of thousands in ERC relief that their own trusted advisors said didn't exist. What they realized next was the real turning point: this wasn't happening just to them. Millions of business owners across the country were receiving the same bad advice from the same uninformed CPAs, leaving billions in government relief on the table.
In 2022, Michael and Frank founded Build&Fund with a singular mission: close the gap between what Fortune 500 companies know and what small business owners are actually told. Over the following two years, they secured over $200 million in ERC refunds for thousands of business owners nationwide.
The ERC program has since closed — but the problem never went away. Business owners are still overpaying, underutilizing, and under-advised. Build&Fund was built to change that, one business at a time.
