“Creditworthiness is like virginity. It can be preserved but not restored very easily.” -Warren Buffett
Author: lumenous
Do we really need loan machines?
I never quite know whether fascination with algorithm-driven lending is a media thing or a Silicon Valley thing. What or whomever fuels fintechs, it's a global phenomenon, a point underscore by recent coverage of Jack Ma’s online lending to small businesses. As with venture-backed fintechs out of Silicon Valley, Ma’s effort, called MYbank, analyzes thousands [...]
Filling in the gaps . . .
“Once the therapeutic process wears down these defences [sic] and while we work through the emotions they were defending against, we feel worse because we’re now feeling the original pain. But better out than in, as my grandmother would say.” Wendy Bristow, May 4, 2017, http://www.wellbeing.org. It’s the fall and I’m brimming with hope for [...]
The big tech vendor and trust
The “original gangster of big tech” has managed to dodge the bad headlines and congressional grilling that have ensnared its rivals by working with regulators and advocating its own solutions. --Daria Solovieva | 01.10.19 | Fast Company I was raising money for my first startup back in 1998. It was the seed round which focused [...]
The battle over personal data
Our adversaries are no longer international despots or dictators, they are multi-national companies who exploit every byte of data we produce to achieve unfathomable riches for themselves. Those who possess intelligence on our psyches revealing things we don’t even know about ourselves. --Chris Herd | June 27, 2018 | Medium I live and breathe personal [...]
Follow the money
My team and I participate in a number of groups trying to devise an ethical framework that guides data-driven applications and algorithms. Participants ask what data? How is it collected? How is it used? Does it drive greater fairness? Does it perpetuate bias? Are the answers all hidden in a black box architecture. I have [...]
Guild economy, not gig economy
I really hate the glib way media, pundits, and, well, investors, rush to embrace a hip term. Ultimately, depriving it of any real meaning. I love to hate unicorns, for example. Now even investors are acknowledging that the term unicorn as applied to $1B+ companies has become symbolic of a rather skewed way of going [...]
What algorithms have to do with it
I originally wrote about the mysteries of algorithms and small business credit after attending two excellent conferences on the subject here in New York City. Here is a good panel discussion on the topic. Since then Cornell Tech has launched the Digital Life Initiative, offering an abundance of excellent research and deeper explorations. Background. There [...]
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