just a thought

Originally @ TechCrunch Africa is on the verge of something big. This seems to be a quiet, cautious consensus in some investment communities. The past year has been peppered with stories of tech startup hubs emerging across the continent, from Lagos to Kigali to Agadir. The model of American tech entrepreneurship looks to be slowly sparking a renaissance in the Silicon Sahara. As the gaze of America’s VCs begins to settle on African entrepreneurs, many open questions are left unanswered. Will Africa play host to the tech world’s next gold rush? Can these markets stay stable enough to grow the next billion-dollar Internet companies? Does Africa have what it takes to emulate Silicon Valley? The answer is a resounding “Yes.” Big things are ahead for African tech. But to understand the rising star for Africa, you first must understand why the road to Africa goes through China. The running of the bulls: China’s eco...

Originally @ TechCrunch At a San Francisco Halloween party this year, I ran into a man wearing nothing but bubble wrap, covered in glitter, waving a wand. “I’m a unicorn,” he explained. Anyone from the bankers on Sand Hill to the barista at Philz can tell you: a unicorn is a startup that reaches the rare and vaunted high-water mark of a $1 billion valuation. Except that it’s no longer that rare. Or vaunted. In fact, there are now over 150 of these companies, almost none of them public. And that is starting to be a problem. Not necessarily for executives, who nimbly broker “private IPO’s,” or investors, whose preferred shares insulate them from downside risk. The real risk is to the rank-and-file employees who staff these Silicon Valley juggernauts and who stand to lose the most from a tech bubble. 2016 will be a definitive year for tech. Bubbles adhere to a weird uncertainty principle: you can’t be in one if everybody knows it. Yet for years running now, the town criers of Sil...

Originally @ Early Growth Financial Services Starting your own business is tough. Whether launching the next big venture-backed startup or a corner store in your neighborhood, running a company requires entrepreneurs to take risks and make sacrifices. But those sacrifices shouldn’t include giving up outside funding and just trying to make do. Yet more and more, small business owners are finding themselves coming up short when they look for funds to build their ideas into a reality. Small businesses looking for modest loans are out of luck—and normally have to wait months to even find out they’re declined. For many banks, what it comes down to is that $75,000 loans just don’t generate enough interest revenue to make business sense. The average bank SBA loan in 2012 was $337,000—more appropriate for a well-established business with lots of employees than an entrepreneur looking to get his project off the ground. Even given the tight credit environment, there are steps that startup...

Originally @ Newfination Editor’s note: Nik Milanovic is the head of business development & marketing analytics at  Endurance Lending Network . He is also a Newfination Expert in crowdlending. Banking is changing for good. Unlike the sweeping changes and crashes the banking system underwent six years ago, though, this time things are changing for the better. Crowdlending is poised to reform borrowing, fixed-income investing, and consumer savings.

Originally @ Newfination Editor’s note: Nik Milanovic is the head of business development & marketing analytics at  Endurance Lending Network . He is also a Newfination Expert in crowdlending. A recent  blog post by  Lend Academy founder Peter Renton on Lending Club’s entrance into the small business lending market brought up a too-familiar question: do small business loans underperform consumer loans? The concept of small business loans generating abysmal returns is a common misconception among peer-to-peer investors. But where does this myth come from? And what evidence is there to the contrary? If you look only at peer-to-peer lenders focused on consumer loans, it’s easy to walk away thinking business loans are too risky to generate positive, reliable returns.  Nickel Steamroller , which provides analytics and insights on the ROI of peer-to-peer lenders  Lending Club and  Prosper , highlights this issue. Over Lending Club’s historical perfo...

Originally @ Stanford Review In early August, viewers of NBC’s Meet the Press witnessed a strange spectacle. The show’s guest that morning claimed that the United States’ economic recovery since the recession that began in 2008 had not been uniform. Rather, he argued, the pace of recovery was split along an income line that, for all intents and purposes, created two distinct types of economies. This is an idea that has not been emphasized enough in undergraduate education at Stanford. The idea that there are two separate economies—one for the rich and one for the poor—is not novel in Western economic literature or political campaigning. It is an almost tautological fact that the economy and its pace of recovery from recession functions in a markedly different manner for higher income brackets than for lower ones. What made this assertion so startling on Meet the Press was that it came from Alan Greenspan, the champion of free-market economies and liberty as the greatest good. As ...

Originally @ Stanford Progressive “It is better to have a passion for beautiful girls than to be gay,” Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi quipped offhand when challenged by a recent sex scandal. Unfortunately, at least for those living in Uganda, his deplorable comment is a quite accurate assessment. The past year has witnessed the evolution of a bill in Uganda aimed at strengthening the criminalization of homosexuality by adding a death penalty for the offense. The bill, which merited and received widespread international and media scrutiny, spurred Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to form a committee to investigate the implications of the new legislation, which ultimately led to a recommendation that the bill be repealed. Even so, it was by no means defeated handily. It did not create large-scale indignation or outrage amongst the people of Uganda. In fact, its renunciation belied the true will of many Ugandans, who view homosexuality as unnatural and criminal by nature....