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 [...]
Category: Communitarian economy
My credit bureau cold call
Here we are, post breach of Equifax and the credit bureau model is just not going away. Once again, I am reminded of a call I got several years ago. I was already thinking about how some financial data-sharing technology I had built might give business owners a way to get more control over credit [...]
When the lines between consumer and business blur
I have (mostly) stayed away from all things Silicon Valley for some time now. After all, I moved across the country two years ago. This relates to a recent post by the New York City-based venture capitalist, Fred Wilson. Fred was writing about a panel he moderated on how globalization and outsourcing are changing the [...]
Small biz, small bank synergy is real!
I spend more time listening to independent business owners than to bankers. That's the point of the Descant platform after all. Listen and help them share their own story to show they are worthy of credit and trust. What jumps out across the board is indie business prefers community banks. Why? They experience relationship banking [...]
Vintage wine and canapes, oh my
Just catching up on the latest from the brilliant (well at least super rich) folks gathering in Davos to discuss the problems of the world. This New York Times piece notes, in part: Yet the solutions that have currency seem calculated to spare corporations and the wealthiest people from having to make any sacrifices at [...]
Small business at Harvard.edu!
I have long been a fan of Doc Searls from his seminal (co-authored) publication, The Cluetrain Manifesto, to his work with Linux Journal, and more recently his tireless battles for consumers who are tracked across the internet like so many bits of soulless data. Today Doc features small business and how credit cuts against them [...]
Credit bureaus and the NSA??
The Atlantic Monthly recently published an essay covering the history of credit bureaus. I thought of the number of times people have challenged my descriptions of bureaus and small business credit. "But everyone knows they are about consumer credit (emphasis theirs)!" As this piece makes clear, the mercantile agency that would become Dun & Bradstreet [...]
I’ll show you my credit score, if you’ll show me . . .
I just came across the news that Facebook has a patent on an invention that allows lenders to view the credit scores of our circle of friends on Facebook to determine whether or not we are creditworthy. Check out some coverage here. I couldn't be more concerned about how social data are being collected in [...]
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