Colektivo is a new debt-financing startup that appears to be attempting to bridge peer-to-peer loans with crowdsourced investing. A sort of Kiva for entreprenurs, bridging the concepts behind startups like CommunityLend and Vencorps. Startups are asked to fill out a loan application, and a group of lenders then decide if they want to make a loan to that startup.
Colektivo runs the first investment fund on the Internet managed by a group of investors. The investment fund sole purpose is to supply local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with debt financing. This synergy between SMEs and savers represents a real alternative to banks and traditional investment products. The incomes of interest generated by the loans are redistributed to the savers whereas the principal portion is reinvested in other SMEs. With a minimum investment of 100$, investors are able to buy investment fund units
My first impression is that Colektivo is taking the worst from both worlds and attempts to bring them together to form an idea that seems full of risk and that promises minimal reward.
The peer-to-peer loans industry has been under a lot of pressure and has lived under a cloud of uncertainty in almost every jurisdiction so far. Prosper.com was shut down by the US SEC in November 2008, and in Febuary 2008, IOUCentral launched and was then quickly shut down here in Canada. My sense is that they are trying to avoid regulatory hell by managing it as an investment fund, which may or may not work, I am not qualified to say.
So, take the peer-to-peer model, and then layer on the further uncertainty of the crowd-sourced investment model and I get jittery. I hope they can prove me wrong though.
I am, however, feeling more and more bullish about Vencorps, which uses crowdsourcing to find good investment opportunities, but which uses its own money to make the actual investments. I have been watching some of the pre-launch contests they have been running, and I do see the potential.
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