Small Businesses Use Crowdlending to Borrow from Communities, Not Banks
Seattle, WA (PRWEB) August 27, 2014 -- One site on the edge of this crowdlending evolution is InvestNextDoor (http://www.investnextdoor.com). An early market mover in this space, InvestNextDoor is now seeing two applications per day with numbers rapidly increasing, according to Lisa Ohman, InvestNextDoor COO. “We’re on par with the growth rates Lending Club saw when it first opened seven years ago,” she explains. "With 27 million small businesses supporting 50% of employment, we see tremendous market potential to help turn around local economies.”
With their exclusive crowdlending model, businesses propose their own terms and investors use stock market dynamics to bid up or down their own proposed interest rates. This uses the positive tension between what the business pays and investors make to create a fair and balanced market. The company provides the services usually in the hands of banks directly to borrowers and investors, including the entire issuing and servicing cycles.
Tabitha Creighton, CEO of InvestNextDoor went on to say, “This kind of progress demonstrates why we hit the reset button on borrowing and investing. It’s no secret that small businesses succeed because they’re loved by their communities – so who better to lend to them? InvestNextDoor has created a community-engaged crowdlending marketplace. It creates a new source of reasonably priced capital for small businesses, and better returns for Main Street investors.”
Foundation Capital out of San Francisco, recently published a presentation called Marketplace Lending: A Trillion Dollar Market for the People, By the People. They say, “…today technology and innovation are making possible a new generation of financial services that are more affordable and more available. That’s why we believe what we’re calling marketplace lending will be a trillion dollar market by the people, for the people."
Transparency matters, and small businesses can find out how much it could cost to borrow right on the homepage with InvestNextDoor’s Instant Summary tool. With bank and credit union approval rates between 18-51% for small business loans and only 50% of private capital raises meeting their goals, small business needs more money to grow. Small business drives 50% of GDP and 50% of employment and a lack of capital means a slower economic recovery. Clearly borrowing and saving cycles are broken and out of sync with what’s really needed. InvestNextDoor is creating a win‐win for both investors and borrowers, as expressed by Leslie Maclean, a recent customer of InvestNextDoor: “InvestNextDoor is exactly what I wanted when I needed to borrow money to grow my business. I get access to the funds I need and I can build stronger ties to my community. It's a win-win for me and my investors."
About InvestNextDoor Inc.
InvestNextDoor (http://www.investnextdoor.com) is a crowdlending marketplace where individual investors lend money to small businesses in their community. It creates a new source of reasonably priced capital for small businesses and better returns for Main Street investors. Focusing on communities first amplifies the economic effects of consumer investment in small businesses by keeping more of the benefits of the borrowing lifecycle within a given community. InvestNextDoor is hitting the reset button on borrowing and investing for Main Street.
Tabitha Creighton, InvestNextDoor, http://www.investnextdoor.com, +1 6043538454, [email protected]
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