Lehigh Valley investment firm specializes in housing

A Conversation With: Don Wenner, president and CEO of DLP Capital

Don Wenner is the founder and CEO of DLP Capital, a private real estate investment and financial services firm based in Allentown.

LVB: How did DLP Capital get started?

Wenner: I started DLP Capital in Allentown in October of 2006. I started out as a business focused on homeowners looking to sell their home. We would also step in and buy people’s homes if they didn’t sell. A lot of people were unfortunately underwater at the time, and we helped.

The business has grown over the years by providing safe, affordable housing. We currently provide housing to more than 4,000 people in the Lehigh Valley.

In total we have 3,100 families investing with us, more than 500 of them in the Lehigh Valley. These are all accredited investors, meaning they have at least $1 million in total net worth or $200,000 in annual income.

We currently have five different investment funds people can invest with.

We use that capital to buy housing that we then rent out to people. We have more than $5.25 billion in housing made available for working families.

LVB: You are one of the Top 100 Privately Held Businesses in the Lehigh Valley. To what do you credit that success?

Wenner: Our goal as an organization is to positively impact the community and to become one of the Top 100 companies in America.

We’re currently about one tenth of the size of the companies that are currently on the Forbes Top 100 Privately Held Business list, but we’ve also been on Inc.’s 5,000 Fastest Growing companies list for the past 12 years.

We’re always consistently growing.

LVB: What are some of the challenges of maintaining your status as a Top Privately Held Business?

Wenner: The hard part of developing a company and scaling it is leadership and having the ability to develop leaders. Many companies fail when they reach a certain size because they don’t know how to handle the challenges that come with the growth.

LVB: In general, what qualities do you think a company needs to have to be a Top Privately Held Business?

Wenner: Companies that achieve a good size organization must be able to consistently attract, hire and retain the best leadership. Too many business owners become clock readers instead of clock makers. You have to build a broad and strong stable of capable leaders.

To have the best leaders starts with recruiting and then building the right leaders.

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