[JayBallentine]

Great concept. Impossible to execute properly.

That's a dangerous line of thought. Folks were literally outraged that because of this thing called the Automobile, their good old roads and horses had to be disrupted. Telephone companies were ambivalent when cell phones came around; "they're no threat." Where is Bell Atlantic / South? Jerry Yang, former founder and CEO of Yahoo! looked Larry Page and Sergiy Brin dead in the eye and told them their vision for search was impossilbe to pull off. Now Google is a verb; "Google it." Reed Hastings CEO of Netflix was told that there was no way people would rent movies by mail (this was when Blockbuster was huge). Democrats clung to Hillary Clinton before Obama because they felt it was impossible for a black man to be elected President.


The annals of history are littered with the carcasses of those who have chosen to denounce big goals as being impossible, rather than to figure out how to make them possible. It's very easy, and comfortable for you to say; "impossible" because it gives you peace of mind. What's really hard to do is to figure out how to make it POSSIBLE. The laws, the algorithms, the data structures, PCI compliance, security, etc. Sun Tzu says; "know your enemy better than you know yourself." What do you know about all these formers securities traders, lawyers, bankers etc who are heading up all these crowd funding initiatives?

Software is eating the world, and it will eat this industry if guys don't start to innovate from within.

[FactorExchange]

Well said Jay. Breaking the mold is something needed in this industry. Owning a functional aggregation entity in this industry, we have been told that what we have striven to do is impossible. I will tell you point blank that it is indeed very possible and extremely effective when executed correctly.

Firstly, trying to capitalize on 1.8% is not feasible because quite frankly the volume is just not there to support the over head necessary to build and maintain an enterprise such as somolend. One realization that needs to be made is that our industry in the grand scheme of things is tiny as finance goes. The pie is just not big enough to pull this model off based on fees alone. Look at The Receivables exchange. They processed an extremely large amount of business with a very similar model. At the end of the day they could not support the overhead and are on the verge of folding after laying off the entirety of their sales staff. The keys to the model are syndication and low overhead. Taking points is not amenable to the brokers or lenders.

On the technology front, providing tools for brokers to access more markets is much more effective at driving revenue than a syndication marketplace. We are about to launch an MCA based, extremely low barrier to entry comparative rater that gives brokers just that. Access to up to 15 direct lenders and system by which brokers can efficiently process and manage business to said lenders. We have been doing the aforementioned with people for the past three years and are very excited to see what this innovation will bring to our large network of brokers.

Being that we syndicate 50% of every deal that I can tell you first hand that not every lender is allowing syndication. As a matter of fact most are starting to require "accredited investor" status from would be syndication investors. This will help thin out the number of people who will be able to syndicate as the industry matures.

[Ryan Shiroky]

That's a dangerous line of thought. Folks were literally outraged that because of this thing called the Automobile, their good old roads and horses had to be disrupted. Telephone companies were ambivalent when cell phones came around; "they're no threat." Where is Bell Atlantic / South? Jerry Yang, former founder and CEO of Yahoo! looked Larry Page and Sergiy Brin dead in the eye and told them their vision for search was impossilbe to pull off. Now Google is a verb; "Google it." Reed Hastings CEO of Netflix was told that there was no way people would rent movies by mail (this was when Blockbuster was huge). Democrats clung to Hillary Clinton before Obama because they felt it was impossible for a black man to be elected President.


The annals of history are littered with the carcasses of those who have chosen to denounce big goals as being impossible, rather than to figure out how to make them possible. It's very easy, and comfortable for you to say; "impossible" because it gives you peace of mind. What's really hard to do is to figure out how to make it POSSIBLE. The laws, the algorithms, the data structures, PCI compliance, security, etc. Sun Tzu says; "know your enemy better than you know yourself." What do you know about all these formers securities traders, lawyers, bankers etc who are heading up all these crowd funding initiatives?

Software is eating the world, and it will eat this industry if guys don't start to innovate from within.

THAT is a potent post my friends...