Investment Capital for IDN Purchases

[sturzstrom]

Hello all,

I am the group leader of Sturzstrom Funding (http://www.prosperfivestar.com) and a domain name investor. I formed an investment group on Prosper to assist individuals with their financial needs. This is also a great opportunity to help domain name investors finance their name purchases at good rates. For those of you who don't know about Prosper, it's an online lending site founded by the founders of e-loans.com and ebay.com. They offer auction style funding opportunities. You place a listing requesting an amount of money and everyday people like yourselves bid to become the lender, driving the interest rate down. By joining Sturzstrom Funding, you are guaranteed at least $250 in bids from me personally, which helps get your listing statred and generates more interest from other lenders. Visit my group page and read through the literature. You can also PM me if you have any questions, or post them here. Thanks.

Sturzstrom
http://www.prosperfivestar.com

[Rubber Duck]

Well there are a few obvious ones.

Geographical limits? Is this just for the US as most members are not from there.

Collateral if any?

Terms of Loans?


Hello all,

I am the group leader of Sturzstrom Funding (http://www.prosperfivestar.com) and a domain name investor. I formed an investment group on Prosper to assist individuals with their financial needs. This is also a great opportunity to help domain name investors finance their name purchases at good rates. For those of you who don't know about Prosper, it's an online lending site founded by the founders of e-loans.com and ebay.com. They offer auction style funding opportunities. You place a listing requesting an amount of money and everyday people like yourselves bid to become the lender, driving the interest rate down. By joining Sturzstrom Funding, you are guaranteed at least $250 in bids from me personally, which helps get your listing statred and generates more interest from other lenders. Visit my group page and read through the literature. You can also PM me if you have any questions, or post them here. Thanks.

Sturzstrom
http://www.prosperfivestar.com

[domainguru]

Hello all,

I am the group leader of Sturzstrom Funding (http://www.prosperfivestar.com) and a domain name investor. I formed an investment group on Prosper to assist individuals with their financial needs. This is also a great opportunity to help domain name investors finance their name purchases at good rates. For those of you who don't know about Prosper, it's an online lending site founded by the founders of e-loans.com and ebay.com. They offer auction style funding opportunities. You place a listing requesting an amount of money and everyday people like yourselves bid to become the lender, driving the interest rate down. By joining Sturzstrom Funding, you are guaranteed at least $250 in bids from me personally, which helps get your listing statred and generates more interest from other lenders. Visit my group page and read through the literature. You can also PM me if you have any questions, or post them here. Thanks.

Sturzstrom
http://www.prosperfivestar.com

Can I ask, is this US only? Borrowing and lending?

[touchring]

The real site is prosper.com

[domainguru]

The real site is prosper.com

It's an affiliate thing ...

[Drewbert]

Propser.com is a great system, but last time I looked, it's limited to the USA only. Those of us outside the USA with USD burning holes in our pockets can't contribute.

Hi Taj,

When did you decide to get into domain name investing?

Did you ge interested while interviewing people for http://www.millionairequarterly.com/ or did you get into it before then?

[bwhhisc]

QUOTE FROM LENDERS WEBSITE:
Our goal is to satisfy the needs of our group members regardless of previous credit history. SFG recognizes that good people sometimes fall on hard times and we will work with you to ensure your lending needs are met. We invest in many of our group member loans ourselves! We are proud to be part of the Prosper community, the first online peer-to-peer lending institution in America.
HONESTY: Tell lenders why you need a loan. Is it for a family emergency, debt consolidation, to catch-up on bills? Whatever the reason, let them know. Lenders are willing to help regardless of your circumstances. Banks don't care about your personal situation - Prosper lenders do!
DTI & DELIQUENCIES: These are not barriers to getting a loan on Prosper. Take the time to explain each one.
END QUOTE

Basically they get a pool of people to fund loans for those that most likely will not qualify for regulary credit (see prosper.com).
You pay a fee to join, that is how the affiliate part comes in. The risk/return looks way out of whack IMO.

[touchring]

Subprime payday loan?

A pawn service will do better. :p

btw,

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070421/bs_nm/autoshow_financing_china_dc

Auto makers hope to sell China on credit



By Kirby Chien Fri Apr 20, 10:51 PM ET

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Auto companies are trying to persuade Chinese consumers to spend money they don't yet have, a trick that goes against thousands of years of culture that warns: "One must think of poverty even when wealthy."

Auto financing is relatively new to mainland China, but the country has still managed to become the world's fastest growing major autos market, and second in size only to the United States, with consumers who still prefer cash to credit.

"Financing has huge potential but it takes time, because you have to change the behavior of the customer," Ulrich Walker, chief executive of DaimlerChrysler Northeast Asia, told reporters ahead of the Shanghai Auto Show.

"It will take a couple more years," he said.

DaimlerChrysler AG (DCXGn.DE) reckons financing accounts for about 10 percent of sales in China compared to 30-40 percent globally.

With an eye on that untapped market, DaimlerChrysler is launching a campaign to put Chinese drivers behind the wheel of a brand new E-280 Mercedes-Benz for just 280 yuan ($36.27) per day (for 3 years), and after handing over a 30 percent downpayment.

"This is an innovative concept that should help a lot more people hopefully to buy a Mercedes," said Wolf Bay, chief executive of DaimlerChrysler Auto Finance in China.

The Chinese auto market grew at 30 percent last year, with almost 5.2 million new passenger cars sold, and double-digit growth is seen continuing this year.

But that growth would be even greater if Chinese would break with some old habits, and just spend.

"Most people still buy cars with cash," laments Ma Qingsheng, a senior manager at the BMW Group (BMWG.DE) in China.

But the Munich-based carmaker has applied along with partner Shenzhen Development Bank to promote auto financing to reverse that habit.

Yoshimi Inaba, who heads up Toyota Motor Corp.'s (7203.T) Chinese operations, told Reuters that around 85 percent of Toyota's customers in China still pay cash for their cars.

"The auto financing business is an area that's going to see tremendous growth. It will take time to get the proper regulations in place, but once that happens it will give a big boost to auto financing, which will in turn prompt the next stage of growth in Chinese car sales," he said.

Inaba said retail financing was still a "grass-roots" business and each carmaker had to carry out its own background checks on borrowers, sometimes visiting their homes and making sure their jobs were stable. He said Toyota had not had any significant problems with defaults.

Some foreign automakers don't see the lack of financing as a problem.

"When someone has a net worth of $30 million, buying a car is not a big concern," said Stuart McCullough, a member of the board for Bentley Motors Ltd., now part of the Volkswagen (VOWG.DE) stable.

"Financing is not a big part of our business," he said.

Bentleys can cost as much as 13 million yuan in China.

[mdw]

propsper.com is a great site founded by Chris Larsen, who was in on the ground floor of paypal, not ebay. Great speaker too you can catch a speech of his in the Entrepeneurial podcast series from Stanford U: http://www.stanford.edu/group/edcorner/uploads/podcast/EducatorsCorner.xml

It's aimed at providing financing where there's very little available. Groups extend small credit to subsistence farmers, street merchants, etc. Not microloans, but pooling tiny credit from multiple people to form aggregate credit. Most of us domainers do not fall in that category. I think this is a case where the idea just does not quite fit the situation, unless some small village in a developing country wanted to build a site using their cityname (bought cheap in the aftermarket)

[Rubber Duck]

The basic problem in the West is just that about anything that is not secured against a house is considered sub-prime. Banks make huge amounts of money because they lend out a lot more money then they take in as deposits. It is the western banking system that will ultimately be its downfall. The collapse of the US realestate market is no more than the consequence of a global banking racket.

[bwhhisc]

propsper.com is a great site founded by Chris Larsen, who was in on the ground floor of paypal, not ebay. Great speaker too you can catch a speech of his in the Entrepeneurial podcast series from Stanford U: http://www.stanford.edu/group/edcorner/uploads/podcast/EducatorsCorner.xml It's aimed at providing financing where there's very little available. Groups extend small credit to subsistence farmers, street merchants, etc. Not microloans, but pooling tiny credit from multiple people to form aggregate credit. Most of us domainers do not fall in that category. I think this is a case where the idea just does not quite fit the situation, unless some small village in a developing country wanted to build a site using their cityname (bought cheap in the aftermarket)

If you look at their site closely, the first few pages are people that are being funded. Then from about page 4-44 little or no support to the other 90% of applicants.

On their statistics page, seems that the grand total of all loans over the last year are less than $75,000. Most of the loans are 36 month duration, and unsecured. At 10- 14% ROI that is simply a very poor risk. If you are thinking of putting money in, I would give this business model time to see how it plays out in terms of defaults for the investors. As you can see, prosper.com is the only true guaranteed "winner" getting their money up front when the loan is made.

They would probably find more investors if they would come up with some kind of "collateral" feature, or maybe a system to incorporate co-signers.

[Rubber Duck]

As you can see, prosper.com is the only true guaranteed "winner" getting their money up front when the loan is made.


That will be why they are called Prosper.com :)

[sturzstrom]

Hi Taj,

When did you decide to get into domain name investing?

Did you ge interested while interviewing people for http://www.millionairequarterly.com/ or did you get into it before then?

It was actually long before I registered Millionaire Quarterly (and yes, my name is Taj. WHOIS is a great service isn't it?). At my heyday I owned over 150 names. Small potatoes for some of you, but a big leap into the industry for me. Prosper is US based only, as some of you have surmised. It's still a great system. In the months since I made this post, I have discovered several other providers who are equally good, and one based in the UK.

[TonyP]

I'd rather stick my head in the toilet bowl than deal with these characters