September 18, 2015 @ 1:31 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

  VENTURA, California — iRent Inc., a top real estate marketplace for home and apartment rentals, announced today the appointment of Michael W. Walsh to its Advisory Board. iRent is a rental property marketplace where managers, owners and renters can connect in a secure, trusted environment. On iRent, anyone can sign up and list or search rental properties for… Read More

September 18, 2015 @ 1:09 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

  To writers of fiction and nonfiction alike, TechCrunch editor John Biggs has this to say: “I’m looking for things I love.” Biggs, who has written reams on the intersection of book publishing and tech, recently launched an imprint on Inkshares called Ray Bridge Press. Ray Bridge Press is the… Read More

September 16, 2015 @ 11:43 pm By Midori Yoshimura  |  

Orange Collecte, a service to enable private individuals and charities to finance their projects, has added a mobile twist to crowdfunding by launching one of Africa’s first mobile crowdfunding platforms. Launched in Côte d’Ivoire last week in partnership with French charity-giving site HelloAsso, Orange Collecte is linked to Orange’s existing… Read More

September 16, 2015 @ 12:44 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

For Alquity, a $100m high-growth UK-based asset management company, the road to becoming a $1 billion fund runs through Crowdcube. The company is raising £500k via the crowdfunding platform to support its growth objective of becoming a $1 billion fund by 2019. Funds raised will be used… Read More

September 15, 2015 @ 1:08 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

  Recently, Soul Htite, co-founder and CEO of Dianrong.com, one of China’s fastest-growing peer-to-peer lenders, did a little debunking of P2P and conventional banking assumptions. In a recent exclusive interview with FinanceAsia, he noted, One of the common misconceptions of P2P lenders is that they go head-to-head with… Read More

September 14, 2015 @ 11:19 pm By Midori Yoshimura  |  

  PCH, which designs custom product solutions for startups and Fortune 500 companies, today announced that it will host a dedicated Hardware Hackathon at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2015. The event will form part of TechCrunch Disrupt’s popular 24-hour hackathon, running from Saturday, Sept. 19 to Sunday, Sept…. Read More

September 11, 2015 @ 12:37 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

People aren’t the only thing that can leave an indelible mark on you–last summer, my favorite (and only) pair of flip-flops nearly did. It was several weeks into fall 2014 before the tops of my feet lost their crisscross pattern from the Teva flip-flops that I wore… Read More

September 10, 2015 @ 3:47 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

UK financial services company Hargreaves Lansdown is looking to proceed into the peer-to-peer lending space, as part of plans to develop the business following the Retail Distribution Review (RDR), according to Mortgage Strategy. The RDR “is intended to remove the risk of ‘commission bias,’ whereby supposedly independent financial advisers,… Read More

September 10, 2015 @ 1:08 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

Ablrate, a peer-to-peer lending platform that is among the first to offer investors access to asset-backed loans against aircraft transactions, just announced its first loan in the waste-to-energy section for SEaB Energy Ltd. According to the press release, the new transaction for GBP250,000 gives investors 11% pa returns for… Read More

September 9, 2015 @ 9:00 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

As the director of Trillion Fund, a renewable energy and social investment crowdfunding platform, Julia Groves has a key piece of advice for women new to working in crowdfunding: Learn to show off. “Grit your teeth and do it, otherwise someone less amazing than you might get the… Read More

September 8, 2015 @ 9:00 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

  First, Indiegogo and Shock Top asked everyone to drop a brick in their toilet, as part of their partnership to battle the California drought. Now comes round 2 of the program, with funding for a new invention: EvaDrop, a water-saving shower head. Americans use more than… Read More

September 3, 2015 @ 4:00 pm By Midori Yoshimura  |  

  With the publication of the Small Business Borrowers’ Bill of Rights, one of the first consensuses on responsible small business lending practices, earlier this month, marketplace lending platforms including Funding Circle, Lending Club and Fundera showed their support for greater transparency for borrowers and accountability for platforms and… Read More

September 3, 2015 @ 3:14 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

  The first real estate project in New York to be financed notably through crowdfunding, AKA United Nations, will open to guests starting Sept. 10, notes a recent story on BloombergBusiness. The extended-stay hotel-condominium on East 46th Street near Second Avenue cost $95 million to purchase and fix up… Read More

September 3, 2015 @ 1:01 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

    In Germany, investment crowdfunding is doing well–both debt-based and equity-based crowdfunding jumped notably in Q1 2015 versus Q4 of 2014, according to numbers from the German Crowdfunding Network. What of the country’s peer-to-peer lending? Dominik Steinkuehler, co-founder and CEO of Lendico, a multinational P2P lending platform,… Read More

September 2, 2015 @ 1:04 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

    A recent national survey in the UK found that 7 per cent of over-65s, about 728,000 people, will consider peer-to-peer lending, according to Yorkshire Building Society, which conducted the survey, and FT Adviser. Yorkshire Building Society is among the largest building societies in the UK, with… Read More

September 1, 2015 @ 7:00 pm By Midori Yoshimura  |  

  One of the UK’s leading figures in FinTech, Louise Beaumont is the head of public affairs and marketing at GLI Finance, a prominent investor in the SME alternative finance sector. Her straightforward self-summary–“I grow companies–from initial spark, to operationalisation, results delivered, and value created”–is… Read More

August 31, 2015 @ 1:09 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

    Boost your credit score by social networking and playing online games? Don’t hit the “Back” button–this isn’t clickbait. Instead, it’s what China Rapid Finance, one of China’s largest peer-to-peer lending sites, believes–they’ve just rated 50 million Chinese consumers for creditworthiness using social networking and… Read More

August 30, 2015 @ 10:44 pm By Midori Yoshimura  |  

The first oil and gas project to crowdfund under Texas’ new regulation has met its campaign goals on Crudefunders LLC, a Houston-based crowdfunding portal offering direct investment in oil well drilling projects to non-accredited investors and accredited investors.  David Taylor, CEO of Crudefunder, is cited in the Houston Business Journal… Read More

August 27, 2015 @ 1:25 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

  Every field has its familiar terms, and crowdfunding is no different. Words and phrases such as “innovate,” “disrupt” and “raise $___ to transform the ___ industry” are often standard in campaigns and product descriptions, usually for good reason. That said, one of the newest launch videos from pre-order platform Celery… Read More

August 26, 2015 @ 1:27 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

  London-based Angels Den, an angel-led equity crowdfunding platform, has now successfully raised $1 million from a Mexican family office to launch their angel-led crowdfunding model across Mexico, with bases in five major cities. Following two years of preparation, Angels Den Mexico has ambitious growth plans… Read More