Chief Executive Officer

Lee Kaplan

Lee entered the residential construction industry through firsthand experience. After personally funding and managing a residential spec build, he quickly saw where the system broke down: fragmented workflows, limited visibility into progress and spend, slow decision-making, and capital processes that created risk instead of control. What should have been a straightforward project exposed deeper structural weaknesses in how residential construction and lending were being managed.

Convinced there was a better way, Lee joined Snap.Build as an outside investor in 2016, when the company was still operating as a traditional hard-money lender. Having previously built and sold a sports-related agency business and having earned his Series 7 and Series 66 financial licenses, Lee brought both operating and capital markets discipline to construction finance. He recognized the same need for structure, data, and accountability and pushed for technology, not manual processes, to become the foundation of Snap.Build. He personally funded the company’s transition in that direction.

After selling his prior business, Lee committed to Snap.Build full-time, leading technology strategy, external sales, and operational modernization. Since 2018, Snap.Build has originated more than $515 million across 1,350+ loans, operating as a high-performance boutique platform rather than a commodity lender. Lee became CEO in 2021, oversaw key institutional partnerships, briefly stepped back in 2024, and returned to the role in late 2025 to lead the company’s next phase: leveraging AI to bring greater transparency, control, and intelligence to residential construction finance.