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CARTOONS BY CHRIS BRITT

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– PEER-TO-PEER LENDING –<br />

There are lots of websites on the Internet that will tell you that getting a loan is easy. Just<br />

a few bits of information and the money will be on its way. As they say, if it sounds too<br />

good to be true, it probably is.<br />

That said, there are<br />

peer-to-peer lending<br />

resources that are<br />

perfectly legit and can<br />

be a pathway to finding<br />

the capital you need.<br />

Think of it as a hybrid<br />

between a traditional<br />

loan and a Kickstarter<br />

campaign with just a<br />

little eBay thrown in<br />

for good measure.<br />

The process is<br />

simple. Three good<br />

examples are Lending<br />

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to use<br />

the Net and he won’t bother you for weeks.<br />

Club, Prosper and Lending Robot. You can borrow up to $35,000 in unsecured, low<br />

interest loans in most P2P programs. Prosper, which launched in 2006 has generated $ 4<br />

billion in loans to date. Lending Club has generated 11 billion since its launch in 2007.<br />

Lending Robot, a Washington State company and new kid on the block founded in 2012<br />

raised $700,000 in seed funding in 2014 followed by a Series A round of 3 million.<br />

The main benefit is that you can get an unsecured loan with a lower rate than most<br />

bank loan rates with less paperwork. Interest rates can vary greatly, but suffice it to say<br />

that the terms of the loan can make this option attractive for many businesses.<br />

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