I'm always looking for a heartwarming small business story. This recent news about the super-big acquisition of Lynda.com, caught my eye because I started my tech career in online learning. But it also features entrepreneurs who didn't start out with the goal of a getting rich. I love how the confluence of personal passion and [...]
Credit is broken; And it needs a unicorn?
I easily tire of Silicon Valley fads. One is the (recent) ubiquitous use of the term unicorn to describe super-unique start-ups that become huge wins for investors. Also, my daughters trained me in a different view of unicorns. Still, a recent TechCrunch post that used the term caught my eye. The author is predicting a [...]
Juxtaposition
Two stories from very different contexts came across my news feed today. The first announced a major investment in a small business lending service. The other took a fresh look at the war on drugs and the origins of addiction. Let's begin with the piece I read first thing this morning. I have written earlier [...]
Real businesses . . .
I have been working on the plight of small businesses in the American credit industry for many years. As entrepreneurs who are often lumped in with companies that have 500 employees and more, it seemed a good idea to write first about the people are top of my mind. As I write about digital platforms, [...]
New data regulations; What could go wrong?
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has spoken. In a lengthy piece released a few months ago, the FTC took on the $150B data broker industry. Many of the companies focus on data collected for behavioral marketing/targeted advertising but credit bureaus comprise a significant segment of the industry. The title is descriptive--"Data Brokers: A Call for [...]
When good character has a (short-term) cost
I recently met a former colleague for coffee. Let's call him Andrew (not his real name). He was telling me about a family business he had joined in the past year. The company had grown over the years without taking investments but had a significant line of credit from a regional bank. What happened in [...]
Small business loans 2.0
There are just a few blogs and online news services I track every day. Today I am thinking about a post I read some time ago, an innovative financial services startup that addresses the following problem: Building a business around online advertising is hard enough without having to combat the cashflow issues created by lengthy [...]
Two sides of a coin
So to speak . . . I follow coverage about the role major banks are playing in supporting Internet-based payday lenders. Among my concerns are the insane interest rates and the ability of such lenders to automatically withdraw payback straight out of a bank account, sending the account into perpetual overdrafts. And then there's the [...]
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