P-to-P finance: Borrowing money from friends or family is about as old as letting your friend borrow a CD to rip and burn, so I guess it was just a matter of time before folks figured out a better way to do it online.
Recently, when I was tracking down some employee alumni of the 1.0 version of Smallbusiness.com, I discovered that Nashville-native Hill Ferguson is in San Francisco (actually, I knew that already as he went there years ago to work at Yahoo!) and has just launched Loanback.com, an online service that provides friends and family and small businesses a means to set up legal loan agreements and payment schedules — (side benefit: less soured friendships.)
Marc Hedlund blogged LoanBack the other day. Quote:
“Their idea is to make it much easier to arrange informal loans — the kind friends or family might give to each other, for instance. What’s notable about LoanBack, and is so often missing from the many, many, many Web 2.0 startups I see, is that LoanBack started with a need and then found the best technology to meet that need, rather than the other way around.”
Here’s the LoanBack blog.
Great idea, Hill. Good luck.
(Oh, I guess because of this article in today’s Wall Street Journal, I should disclose that I have no official or unofficial relationship with LoanBack other than sharing a foxhole with Hill a few years ago. Oh, and unofficially I advised Hill he should add a link to his blog’s syndication feed.)
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