Entries from June 2007 ↓

100 milestone reached!

Technically we’ve hit 101, but reaching 100 was a huge feat to grasp today. We have created a spreadsheet that only shows ‘Current’ loans and the income they bring in through payments each month ($178.81). So if we combine this with the Group Leader Rewards we should be able to create at least ten new [...]

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Week 5: New Features!

After my last post soliciting feedback, comments and ideas last week, we received over 40 comments via emails and Facebook posts. We value your input immensely. Please keep it coming and expect more new features to be released in the next few weeks based on your feedback and the existing product roadmap.
In the meantime, [...]

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Kiva Social Entrepreneurs

Before arriving in Malaba as a Kiva fellow, one of the assumptions I had about the businesses is that they would be entirely profit driven. Considering the economic situation that most of the clients here are living in, I could only imagine that people’s efforts would be entirely focused on making enough money to support [...]

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Boober plans to finance mortgages via p2p lending

Guus Drijver, head of Dutch p2p lending site Boober.nl, announced that boober plans to set up a site that will allow lenders to finance mortgages via p2p lending. This would require much higher loan amounts then those that are currently possible at Boober, where the maximum is 10.000 Euro. The aim is to  have the [...]

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Everyday People — Shining Example of Prosper Group

Here is a current listing from EveryDay People. This listing has an excellent chance of funding. In addition, Everyday People’s Group Leader StaciM has also endorsed AND BID on the listing. (Personally I think an endorsement without a bid is meaningless… kudos StaciM). The reason StaciM can bid with confidence is [...]

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Funding more Kiva loans

I started lending on Kiva.org 6 month ago. At Kiva everone can lend to small entrepreneurs in developing countries. At first I funded only 4 loans each with the minimum amount of 25 US$. Lenders do not earn interest on Kiva loans. Usually loans are for terms between 6 and 18 months. When I started [...]

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Prosper lenders avoid high risk loans

Earlier this week I put together a list of all the top Prosper blogs. As I was reading, I came across an interesting post from January on Money Walks. The article, Blame the Lenders? Or the Borrowers?, showed that high risk and E-grade loans made up a …

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Thousands of connections

Imagine a world without Walgreens, Macy’s, Banana Republic, Nordstrom’s, Blockbuster, Ethan Allen, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Safeway or Whole Foods. Instead of driving to your favorite mall or grocery store to buy clothes, food or supplies from a salesperson working for a corporation, you walk down the dirt road to your local market to [...]

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Socios dinamicos

La Paz, Bolivia
Buenas!
Its been a dynamic 2 days, filled with meetings, client visits, presentations and lots of delicious mate de coca. Heres the update:
Wednesday
I sleep past my alarm and awake to the sounds of husting taxis sounding their horns outside my hotel window. Jumping up I throw on my dress suit [...]

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Member Sign-in

We wanted to remind our blog readers that after you sign-up for lendingclub.com via Facebook, you can use our convenient “Sign In” button on the top right of this page to log directly onto your Lending Club account.
We are always looking for ways to simplify, so please let us know if you have any other [...]

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Who is GlobeFunder?

So who is GlobeFunder? GlobeFunder has been a work-in-progress business model for over 1 year. It started when one of the founders received a Stanford pod cast from a friend talking about an industry called microfinance. During this period of…

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hello from Ghana!

My name is Anne Sophie Breuning and i am a Kiva fellow in Ghana. I have now been in Accra, Ghana for almost 72 hours and my jetlag is slowly wearing off. The air is hot and humid; the streets are crazy with no sidewalks, open sewers, a million honking cars, and street peddlers hawking [...]

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What books are you reading?

Submit written mini-book reports here by posting via comments.

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Busy Week, Business Thoughts, and Media Exposure

Here are some things going on with me personally this week.
I may be the most busy person in the world this week. What makes me so busy:

I’m trying to square away things on my rental property. I’ve got a new tenant coming in for July. It turns out there was disconnect on [...]

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When group listings suck…

We try to be fair and judicious with allowing people to post their listings with tools and assistance. However, as of today, we have nothing but pure crap posted. We have another chunk of money landing tomorrow and we hope to put it into play, but there just isn’t anything in our group worthy of [...]

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What effect would a recession have on the Prosper marketplace?

In the financial news you can find a story almost every day about the weakness in real estate markets, rising foreclosure rates, and increases in the number of bankruptcy filings. Some economists worry about the effects spreading across the broader eco…

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Peer to peer lending in Canada - CommunityLend

Canada’s Globe and Mail has an interesting article about the peer to peer loan industry - Fast cash just a click away. After discussing the success of Prosper and Zopa, the article turns to the future of peer to peer lending in Canada. From the article…

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Prosper Around The Web

Time for some serious blog spam a linkfest :)
An article on Prosper from NuWire Investor:

It is common knowledge that banks make huge profits on the margin between the interest rates they charge borrowers and the rates they offer to savings account holders.The sheer size of these institutions allows them to easily diversify among a huge pool of borrowers and account holders, and they have

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NuWire features Prosper lenders

NuWire Investor has published an article about Prosper Lending which features two prominate Prosper bloggers - Kevin Gillett who authors Rateladder and Technologyguy who authors Lazy Man and Money. We just talked about rateladder and lazy man in our re…

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Health Scare and Some Financial Questions?

Yesterday, in a post on Lazy Man and Health, I introduced you to the Travelin’ Man. You might be familiar with him because he comments fairly frequently. Unfortunately, his doctor says that he might have bladder cancer. He sent a few bloggers an e-mail, asking a few financial questions. I’ll take [...]

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Cash in an hour - Wonga

Though not p2p lending, I found the concept of British Wonga (not yet launched) remarkable. With no debt and a decent credit record, british consumers can apply for a loan of up to 200 pounds (at about 14 percent interest) and receive the deposit less than 20 minutes after application. Subsequent loan applications can be [...]

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Cutting Out the Banks

Recently I was interviewed and featured heavily in an online magazine initial publication: NuWire Investor.  NuWire focuses on alternative investments.  This interview happened during a very brief manual bidding experiment (less than 2 weeks).  I am back to nothing but standing orders.
Here are some of my favorite parts of the article:
Many investors were intrigued by [...]

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Review: Top Prosper Blogs

Prosper is a social lending marketplace. In this post I wanted to look at one part of that online social aspect - blogging about Prosper.I’ve spent several hours searching the interweb and come up with a list of Prosper blogs. I’m sure that I’ve missed…

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Making Markets Efficient

A common discussion in our office is how we can improve returns for lenders and improve rates for borrowers.
But is this even the right conversation? I believe Zopa’s first goal should be to make the market more efficient – and to avoid temptation to move the market in a more favourable position for lenders or [...]

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Caminante no hay camino, se hace el camino al andar

ProMujer, Bolivia
Hi All!
I’ve spent the last few days meeting with MFIs based in La Paz, explaining the Kiva model, talking with their teams, and most important of all, visiting their operations in the field. Here are some bits and pieces of my adventures….(excuse the poor quality of photos, I switched cameras today [...]

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Prosper in USA Today Weekend

Found this little tidbit on Prosper in USA Today Weekend…
You can borrow money online, but is it safe?

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Using P2P to fund college

“Person to Person (P2P) lending has arrived on the internet and regular people like you and I can now loan money directly to one another via a secure and community based online marketplace. ” Source: http://www.squidoo.com/prospertips Alternative Fin…

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First Ever Contest - Grand Prize valued at Over $200

Many personal finance sites run contests and giveaways to give something back to their readers. I’ve been hesitant to do this for three major reasons:

I’m extraordinarily stingy
I hate to put something in the mail system without a name and return address. At the same time, I don’t want to use my own to [...]

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The long road…

We have always been very close to hitting 100 active loans, ok, very close (we had 98 at one time). We are hoping to bust through the barrier next week with the additional loans we have pending now and in the week ahead. One major roadblock has been the defaults. We have encountered several of [...]

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L5 (6th Largest Prosper Lender) Post Debt Sale Portfolio Analysis

L5 is the 6th largest lender (pick your favorite stats site to verify) and he was on the large lender panel at Prosper Days. I asked him for insights in the aftermath of the latest debt sale that his portfolio might have uncovered. As a smaller lender I don’t necessarily have enough vision to be [...]

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eBay + MySpace + ? = Peer to peer lending

Brad Slavin has written an informative 15-page paper reviewing the peer to peer (P2P) lending industry (pdf) with a focus on Prosper and Zopa. His outlook is very optimistic. I’ve extracted a few of the highlights from his article. Quotes are in italic…

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Do Prosper lenders discriminate?

When you sign up as a lender you are required to agree to a Lender Registration Agreement. Among other things, you agree to not discriminate against borrowers based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, sexual orientation…

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Prosper Lending 101

I just attended Prosper’s lending webinar, “Learn how to earn great returns on Prosper loans!” which was announced last week. It was an informative session taught by Prosper’s Brain Mass geared toward the brand new lender. This was the agenda:Transfer …

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Lazy Man’s Identity Revealed…

… to a friend… I’m apologize for the teasing title, but it just fit right.
I had mentioned in the past that I have an obsession with the fantasy baseball leagues and in particular a game called Baseball Mogul. I compete in these statistical challenges with people who I’ve never met in person. It [...]

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SLW Authoritative Report #3: Colin Henderson, writer at thebankwatch.com and CMO of CommunityLend

SLW is excited to present the third in our series of “Authoritative Reports”, which showcase stories from individuals that have first-hand experience in the world of Social Lending.
Following is an interview conducted by SLW with Colin Henderson, writer at the well-regarded blog thebankwatch.com, and Chief Marketing Officer at the soon-to-be-launched Canadian startup, CommunityLend. The following [...]

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A Prosper scam: The story of Jessica Wolcott

Jessica Michelle Wolcott is a girl in her early 20’s who goes by the username of JessM on Prosper. She applied for a loan 6 times on Prosper, but was never funded because she has HR credit and lives in a state where the interest rate is capped at 15.7…

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Paper on p2p lending comparing Prosper and Zopa

Brad Slavin has written a 15 page research paper: "Peer-to-Peer Lending - An Industry Insight". It contains a good summary on p2p lending aspects as well as a comparision between Zopa.com and Prosper.com. The figures given are not up to date, I assume the paper was written last year.

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Toogly to apply idea of peer to peer lending to company funding

As P2P-Kredite.com writes, German Toogly plans to apply the idea of p2p lending  to funding startups and companies. Anybody can draft a loan request between 1000 and 100000 Euro describing the business objective. Private lenders can bid between 50 and 100000 Euro. Interest rate and term are set by the borrower.
Currently Toogly only has the [...]

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My Compliments to Two Companies

It’s not often that I have praise to give companies. In fact I had to create a whole new category for this post. You may note that I already have a Rants category.
The first company I’d like to call out is The Men’s Warehouse. I chose them for my upcoming wedding because [...]

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Social Lending expert required

Are you the future of Zopa? Can you be a champion to our lenders and borrowers?
You’ll already know…
· All about Social Lending
· How Zopa works – for lenders and borrowers
· Where Internet 2.0 is going… and have a good grasp [...]

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P2P Lending Emerges in China

SLW was among the first to learn late last week that the first P2P Lending site in China is now in beta. The following was received by SLW from representatives of ppdai.com:
The first Chinese P2P Lending platform - www.ppdai.com is in test period and
will launch soon. ppdai.com will be targeted at the small P2P loan [...]

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We Have A Prosper Down

I went over to Prosper to see if some loans have finally gone through and funded and saw the following message:

Prosper Under MaintenanceWe are currently working on a system failure as of 2:20:00 PM Pacific, June 24, 2007. We are working to bring the system back online as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.Best regards, Prosper
Wonder what’s going on…

Update: Possibly some

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Weekend Personal Finance Review

It’s time for another weekend of round-ups. I’m taking the next two weekends of round-ups off to get married. Because of this I wanted to give you additional commentary for each article that I’ve chosen.

Ben from Money Smart Life says what he wants for Father’s Day. I found this article probably the [...]

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Authoritative Report of VHV

by www.sociallendingwatch.com

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Web 2.0 Internet Law in the 21st Century

On 23 June, I joined a panel of Tom Ilube (Garlik), Daniel Waterhouse (3i) and Clive Davies (Fujitsu) at the Society for Computers & Law Annual Conference on a panel to discuss the “Brave New World of Web 2.0″. I hung around over the next day and half, partly out of fascination for an excellent [...]

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TechCrunch’s bias - Prosper versus Lending Club

I’m a big fan of Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch. It’s the premier blog about Web 2.0 products and companies. According to Technorati, TechCrunch is the fourth most popular blog on the net. Many new web start-ups can trace their success back to a TechCr…

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Free online seminars for lenders and group leaders

Prosper is hosting a free online seminar for lenders. Topics covered include:Create a bidding strategyCreate standing orders that will “carry out” your bidding strategySet up watch lists to notify you when choice listings come upUse additional lender …

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SLW Authoritative Report #2: John Donovan, COO of Lending Club

SLW is excited to present the second in our series of “Authoritative Reports”, which showcase stories from individuals that have first-hand experience in the world of Social Lending.
Following is an interview conducted by SLW with John Donovan, COO of the recent startup Lending Club.
Lending Club is an online lending community where people can borrow and [...]

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Ppdai - p2p lending reaches China

Soon p2p lending via the internet will be available in the country with the largest population: China. Shanghai based startup Ppdai.com which is currently in its test period and open by invitation only, plans to launch in July. Two of the founders are former Microsoft employees.
Gu Shaofeng (Jack Gu), CTO of ppdai, told P2P-Banking.com: [...]

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Big City vs. The Country

Trent from The Simple Dollar states why he loves the country life in Iowa. He goes into the detail about the financial advantages of Iowa.
I have always lived near the big city, usually about ten miles away at the most. The two big cities are Boston and San Francisco. Here are some [...]

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I need help

Do you really want *me* managing finances anymore at Kiva?  Come on now!  Help me by finding someone to apply for this job.

Description

Position: Finance Director/CFO
Location: San Francisco, CA – Downtown/Mission District
Job Type: Full time with competitive salary plus benefits.
Contact: jobs@kiva.org

Do you have a strong financial background and the ability to assess new revenue opportunities? Kiva.org is a nonprofit organization that lets people connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. To date, our lenders have sent over $8M to entrepreneurs in the developing world at the rate of over $1M per month.

Called by many news publications as "revolutionizing how donors and lenders in the US are connecting with small entrepreneurs in developing countries" and "Kiva simply democratizes access to a worldwide microfinance movement that has been empowering the working poor for two decades", Kiva.org is changing the microfinance landscape.

Finance Director/CFO

* Role title will be determined by candidate’s background and skill set

Job Responsibilities:

* Prepare revenue forecasts, monthly management reports, budget, and board reports
* Strategize and forecast future earned revenue streams for the organization
* Create and keep updated Kiva’s internal control documents
* Author and implement next generation billing policies with microfinance institution partners
* Perform daily reconciliations of our database and payment systems
* Manage Kiva’s accounts receivable and accounts payable through Quickbooks
* Perform partner payments and manage our partner aging reports
* Liaison with Kiva’s external accountant teams to facilitate audits and tax reports
* Work with our product and engineering team to develop future accounting features

Experience Required/Preferred:

* Background in microfinance
* Thorough knowledge of Quickbooks
* 3-5 years direct finance experienc
* Background in management consulting or banking preferred
* BA/BS degree required, CPA/CFA preferred

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First light…

Our first new loan is pending review at the moment. It is listing #148157 and is providing a zero DQ ‘B’ credit rating with a 15% interest rate. We placed a bid of $50 (we still believe in diversification) on this one. It is a ‘No Bull Investors’ group loan which is good considering they [...]

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Fifteen Things I’d Like To Say to High School Lazy Man

The other day I had a dream. One of my older friends, a scientist had figured out how to soup up a DeLorean. It was the mechanics for street racing or anything like that… but when it reached 88mph the car had the ability to go back in time! I know it [...]

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Lendingclub grows fast, passes $100000 in loans

P2P lending service Lendingclub, which launched last month has passed 100000 US$ in closed loans. The growth rate, compared to other peer to peer startups launched this year in other markets (see previous articles) is very high. More than $210000 in loans will close in the next 12 days. (Source: Techcrunch)  

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Facebook’s Lending Club passes $100,000 mark

Just following the announcement that Prosper secured an additional $20 million in venture capital, Facebook’s Lending Club made an announcement of their own - they just passed the $100,000 mark in loans to users. While not even close to the $70,000,000…

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Prosper secures another $20M in financing

Today, P2P lending marketplace Prosper announced an additional $20 million in financing from DAG Ventures and Meritech Capital Partners. This is Prosper’s third round of funding, and brings the total in venture capital raised by the company to $40 million.
This makes Prosper the most heavily-financed P2P lending site in the world, pulling ahead of Zopa, [...]

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Prosper: A hands-on education in risk management

For some new lenders on Prosper it is a hands-on education in Risk Management. There are several different ways to learn about managing risk. Most colleges have economic courses on risk management, and there have been lots of books written about the to…

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Status Update

Just a note on the lack of Prosper data updates lately. Prosper made changes to their data export format and we’re updating our calculations to account for them. Unfortunately, it’s taking longer than usual because the changes were made without prior notice to 3rd party sites like ours and came at an especially bad time [...]

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Prosper secures an additional $20 million in capital

Rateladder broke the news last night based on a tip from Prosper Nights SF - Prosper secured an additional $20 Million in Venture Capital. It was confirmed this morning with a press release. Rateladder quotes someone, not sure who, as saying, “We wer…

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When Can You Retire?