[JayBallentine]

how about the #1 thing like verifying if a merchant is current on their rent...how is a computer going to do that???

Here's a possibility...

"Are all of your bills automatically paid from your primary business bank account - including your rent? If so, you qualify for our express funding / approval program - we'll have you funded in 24 hours! Enter your bank log-in details here!"

Then the software checks to make sure that he is current on the rent plus evaluating all other factors.

Not enough merchants automate bill payments now, but that trend is starting to change as we are becoming less interested in doing things like manually writing checks to cover the rent. Additionally, baby boomers are aging out and tomorrows "Joe Merchant" will be younger and more tech savvy - and will use apps to pay bills, order inventory, deploy marketing campaigns, and apply for business funding.

Carefully organizing big data and social graphs will make it easier for the entire process to become more and more frictionless for both funders and merchants. In 5-10 years whether a guy will default should be entirely predictable EVEN IF his credit is amazing and he's banking $1 trillion a month.

I could go on and on about this stuff... hopefully we'll make some positive contributions.