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Health & Fitness

Heard About Lending Club?

There is a fast-growing peer-to-peer lending market like ABC's Shark Tank. An Internet community called Lending Club is how our society will self-cleanse and re-create itself.

As the errant information junkie that I am, I don’t know how I’ve missed the Lending Club, which I just learned about last week.

I love innovation, with a capital L-O-V-E. Doesn’t matter if I’m the innovator or someone else. I experience it as an exquisite art form.

Lending Club is one excellent example.

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Lending Club, opened in 2007, is an online financial community that brings together creditworthy borrowers and savvy investors so that both can benefit financially. By removing the bank as a lending source, Lending Club makes it possible for investors to earn a higher return. Borrowers can get a lower rate on personal loans, which are available from $1,000 to $35,000

There is a fast-growing peer-to-peer lending market. You may have heard of ‘angel investing’ where a wealthy individual is willing to invest in a company at its earlier stages in exchange for an ownership stake.  If you’ve been watching Shark Tank on KABC Friday nights (my favorite show), you see it in action.

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Founded by entrepreneur Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club is backed by a solid team of innovators from financial services, consumer products, and technology.

Lending Club was recognized as one of the 20 "Breakthrough Ideas for 2009" by Harvard Business Review, is on the JMP Hot 100 list, won the Webby Award in 2008 for the "Best Banking Website", has been nominated for "Top 100 Innovators" by The Industry Standard, and the Always On Global 250 Top Private Companies list. There's more but you get the gist.

They’ve been all over the media, the written on by the likes of CNN, Reuters, Entrepreneur, Fox Business, CNBC, The Huffington Post.

They’re located in San Francisco and hiring.

A benefit of our down economy is the innovation that will emerge that I strongly believe will improve the quality and meaning of our lives more than ever before.  We'll be forced to look our values in the face and reassess what's really important in the scope of things, and what isn't. I believe life, including business, will be more community-oriented.

I say this even as I face financial challenges, and major life and business changes. I've always yearned for a simpler life. Am I heading in that direction? There will be change, of course, but there would have to be to move to that simpler, more fulfilling existence. 

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