Beta Testing a social lending platform

Clearly "beta version" no longer means "testing, looking for problems before go-live, inviting feedback", but is more along the lines of "advance marketing blurb".

If I wanted to lend to someone who was a friend (that I already trust) I dont understand why I need this site. They're my friend I'd lend them the money interest free.

My trustworthy friends and family members are not people I want to levy interest on, with any need they have.

xell,

Then you are lucky. Often, friends and family loans went bad because of not managed properly.

CircLender offers a better way to help people manage friends and family loans. We help our users croudsource loans, formalise arrangement and also keep track of repayment.

In addition, our system allows friends and family members to help out each other financially without interest. The website is not about helping lender to make a profit from their social circle, rather, our objective is to offer a better way for friends and family members to help out each other financially.

Hi Ben,

Tracking repayment is only one part of our services.

The whole idea is to manage the borrowing process from the beginning till the need. The following context is what we are trying to do/offer. I cut and paste it from my website to share with you.

WHAT WE DO

A loan to a friend or family member often results in the loss of both money and relationship especially when it lacks structure and clarity. Our goal here at CircLender is to offer a better solution for friends and family members to help out each other financially.

For Borrower

We make it easy and less awkward for you to crowdsource loans from your social circle. It is as simple as creating a loan request and inviting potential lenders to respond to your request.

Key advantages include:


• Lower or zero interest
• Faster access to money
• Often no collateral required

Hi andy,

1. Yes, the interest rate is set by the borrower. In normal practise they will set an interest rate that they think is affordable to them. Or they may set it to 0% hoping that his/her friends and family members can agree on that.

2. Compare to traditional bank loans, friends and family loans are much faster to obtain.

3. Most often, friends and family loans are unsecured loans, which mean the lender do not require the borrower to pledge assets or belongings as collateral. FF lenders fund loans out of the goodness of their hearts to help out a friend or family member. Unlike other stranger to strange lending platforms who deal with asset finance, banking or leasing business, collateral might not be that relevant in our scenario. I guess I should take away "often" and only emphasise on no collateral required to prevent confusion.

haha ok...

I guess you really hate the idea of crowdsourcing/crowdfunding. This is not a model invented yesterday. It is a model using by many crowdfunding sites nowadays.

FYI, I will not have access to your email address unless you register with the system. Your friends will be using his own email services to send you the loan request, not through us.

dolphin,

I don't treat users comment as criticism.  In fact, feedback from the people here have given me lots of insight to fine tune my site further. If you follow the site from day one, you probably notice that majority of the changes on the site are from the criticism in this thread. You may not like my style, but this is a typical "you treat me like this, and I treat you the same" kind of interaction. I am not here for marketing purpose, so I don't have to please anybody.

I can take suggestions no matter how sarcastic it would be, because I believe that this is the right way to make things happen. To me, I don't care if what I am doing now is viable or not. There are 2.8B internet users out there, and I have billions of opportunities to test out my idea.