The Mesh - Lisa Gansky [45]
Prosper is now the largest such institution in the United States, but it experienced a major speed bump along the way. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made an early investigation into Prosper’s core offering to determine if the company should be required to comply with banking regulations. Prosper argued that it was a marketplace, not a bank, and should not be required to keep a certain percentage of money on hand relative to the number of loans it issues. After a year of inquiry, the SEC’s investigators agreed.
In the four years after the company’s launch in 2006, Prosper’s 930,000 members had funded $190 million in loans. It is one of the many thriving p2p financial ventures, including the first of such marketplaces, Zopa, which is based in the U.K. and has expanded to Italy and Japan. All facilitate individual loans and offer significantly higher rates of return than traditional banks. In a recent article, American Banker, a notable trade journal, acknowledged this advantage in recommending p2p lending as a compelling asset class for diversification of investment portfolios. Other p2p financial companies, such as Lending Club, SmartyPig, BigCarrot, GreenNote, Kisskissbankbank, auxmoney, and smava, have entered the field, often focused on a particular geography or type of customer. The p2p funding tree is growing fast.
The company will direct him to crafters with llama wool products, including those who raise llamas and spin and hand dye their own wool.
Make magazine, a spin-off of O’Reilly Media, defines a related niche. Although they tend to operate independently, Makers comprise a vital, exciting community, of which crafters are a subset. From a traditional market perspective, Makers have been considered fringe, but they are good fodder for Mesh businesses. They host an annual Maker Faire. It is a phenomenal weekend event that brings Makers from all over the world together with other Makers, Maker wannabes, and Maker appreciators. Many are good early adopters—they can usually put up with setbacks and laugh them off. The community includes people interested in robotics, architecture, clothing, food, parachutes, bicycles, and many other things. They think about the built environment, energy, and transportation. The world of people who are passionate about how to design, make, repair, and embellish things is zooming along. Hackerspaces, for example, are sites that support those who want to start or join a local community where people share a physical space, equipment, and ideas for working on projects.
There are even emergent communities among the Makers, such as the growing DIY (do-it-yourself) group. A company called Instructables has built a simple method to demonstrate DIY hardware projects, with the idea that if people could get better at making stuff, then they would buy, and import, less stuff. Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, argues that traditional product manufacturers will feel pressure from do-it-yourselfers who have readier and less expensive access to sophisticated tools for designing and making things. DIY may also benefit certain Mesh businesses by removing financial and logistical obstacles to creating new products and services, or repairing and improving old ones. Even though it’s a tiny percentage of the market, the DIY community has grown substantially since 2005.
tell me where it hurts.
Mesh businesses can also find niches within a market by looking for points of pain for the customer. The Mesh is a game changer. During the transition, entrepreneurs have opportunities to create smoother surfaces along the way—to make sure that substitution is not sacrificial. Here’s an example. Imagine a father who wants a car so he can drop off the kids at school before heading to work. He figures he’ll have to walk to the car-share location from his house with his kids, their bag lunches, the car seats, movie from Netflix,