4 ms·

> There are a lot of them in the DC area. You just don’t hear much about them. For those of us entirely and woefully ignorant on where to start, could you prov

> There are a lot of them in the DC area. You just don’t hear much about them. For those of us entirely and woefully ignorant on where to start, could you provide a few names? I'm entirely apprehensive of this model on principal after having to deal with a project that relied mainly on Departmnt of Ag grants that stifled me in every step despite making them profitable for the first time in its 8 year history. But the truth is that as a former bootstrapping founder I hope funding is actually an issue that UBI can mitigate. The idea of not having to rely on government programs, VC, or banks but rather a system that relies entirely on private funding from members of your family, friends and community with an incentive structure is something that interests me a great deal. One of the more creative things I saw when I worked in Kitchens was this model where the Mexican employees would group their paychecks and give it to one member of the group of 5-7 workers/employees and it would allow them to have substantially more money than their single paycheck to take care of things that they would otherwise would need predatory payday loans for or simply have to do without until they could save enough to do so. And this would continue until every member of the group was served and it would start again, its an interesting system but it ultimately relies on Trust that I think could and should be done away with given that the technology exists to do so. That's not to say Trust isn't a valuable commodity, but is entirely unnecessary concern if well designed. Remittances are another meaningful business model that I think are not only under-served but attract the worst people to them in hopes of keeping people in desperate situations to retain their demographic.

sthatipamala 6y ago
The money pooling scheme that you’re describing sounds very similar to a chit fund in India. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chit_fund https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chit_fund
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > The money pooling scheme that you’re describing sounds very similar to a chit fund in India. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chit_fund https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chit_fund Yeah, that sounds about right from what they'd tell me when I asked. I lived in many rural Ag areas in Europe and in the US and never saw anything like that before. The difference being that in both those regions Ag is heavily subsidized by the State and access to loans are far more accessible. But one of the cooler things we saw with Bitcoin was microfinancing in Africa [1] specifically towards subsistence (often female) farmers, where small investments (sub $1000) would allow a mother to send her children to school in order to focus and invest in equipment or repairs that would eventually allow the business to grow and become profitable. From what I recall the default rate for that demographic is incredibly low, a guy who was making up-cycled glass bottle homes in Africa in a ted-talk or something similar went through the numbers during his talk and it stuck with me. During my apprenticeship one of the farmer's son in Germany I briefly worked with when I got there had just gotten back from a year abroad in Africa for his Ag degree and he had talked about how critical it would shift the entire landscape if greater access to loan programs had emerged while he was there, this was during the Banking collapse in Cyprus, mind you. He had started to make biochar/pyrolysis device from old oil drums he could source locally at scale and had tried to create a credit system to just get them into people's hands; eventually he gave up because while the demand was there, as were the results in his test fields, the money to achieve a success model was not as many simply couldn't risk defaulting on payment. Also now that you mention it, I had a regular customer who said they were from a car club when I had my car part business during University that had a similar scheme; they would focus and budget for the costs of a member's car, and with the members dues and money they got from various fundraisers and any donations they got that period they pooled all that money and they'd finish a persons car for that term/year. I was introduced to them by a girl I met when I lived in the dorms one night and we I only ever spoke to them via AIM, they often always bought misc things like headlights, used seats and fenders from me in Fall and Spring. I totally forgot about that until I read that wiki entry. Human's have a great ability to adapt to a situation and through effective collaboration it reminds you how amazing we can be at overcoming often insurmountable odds and it also shows that ultimately we are all the same regardless of where we're from as the same means and methods are seen and reflect a collectively held value system. 1: https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/bitbond-and-bitpesa-target-p2p-loans-for-african-businesses https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/bitbond-and-bitpesa-target...
smeeth 6y ago
There are some case studies from a government review of the program here [0] if you are interested. Your skepticism is warranted, especially since the government doesn't make programs like this as accessible as they should to people who aren't in the know/not already mired in government funding through DOD, NSF, etc. The list of massive companies that have taken this funding at an early stage is quite impressive though: Genentech, Illumina, Qualcomm, Biogen, and Symantec for example. [0] https://www.nap.edu/read/11963/chapter/13#282 https://www.nap.edu/read/11963/chapter/13#282

sthatipamala 6y ago

The money pooling scheme that you’re describing sounds very similar to a chit fund in India. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chit_fund https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chit_fund

Melting_Harps 6y ago
> The money pooling scheme that you’re describing sounds very similar to a chit fund in India. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chit_fund https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chit_fund Yeah, that sounds about right from what they'd tell me when I asked. I lived in many rural Ag areas in Europe and in the US and never saw anything like that before. The difference being that in both those regions Ag is heavily subsidized by the State and access to loans are far more accessible. But one of the cooler things we saw with Bitcoin was microfinancing in Africa [1] specifically towards subsistence (often female) farmers, where small investments (sub $1000) would allow a mother to send her children to school in order to focus and invest in equipment or repairs that would eventually allow the business to grow and become profitable. From what I recall the default rate for that demographic is incredibly low, a guy who was making up-cycled glass bottle homes in Africa in a ted-talk or something similar went through the numbers during his talk and it stuck with me. During my apprenticeship one of the farmer's son in Germany I briefly worked with when I got there had just gotten back from a year abroad in Africa for his Ag degree and he had talked about how critical it would shift the entire landscape if greater access to loan programs had emerged while he was there, this was during the Banking collapse in Cyprus, mind you. He had started to make biochar/pyrolysis device from old oil drums he could source locally at scale and had tried to create a credit system to just get them into people's hands; eventually he gave up because while the demand was there, as were the results in his test fields, the money to achieve a success model was not as many simply couldn't risk defaulting on payment. Also now that you mention it, I had a regular customer who said they were from a car club when I had my car part business during University that had a similar scheme; they would focus and budget for the costs of a member's car, and with the members dues and money they got from various fundraisers and any donations they got that period they pooled all that money and they'd finish a persons car for that term/year. I was introduced to them by a girl I met when I lived in the dorms one night and we I only ever spoke to them via AIM, they often always bought misc things like headlights, used seats and fenders from me in Fall and Spring. I totally forgot about that until I read that wiki entry. Human's have a great ability to adapt to a situation and through effective collaboration it reminds you how amazing we can be at overcoming often insurmountable odds and it also shows that ultimately we are all the same regardless of where we're from as the same means and methods are seen and reflect a collectively held value system. 1: https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/bitbond-and-bitpesa-target-p2p-loans-for-african-businesses https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/bitbond-and-bitpesa-target...

smeeth 6y ago

There are some case studies from a government review of the program here [0] if you are interested. Your skepticism is warranted, especially since the government doesn't make programs like this as accessible as they should to people who aren't in the know/not already mired in government funding through DOD, NSF, etc. The list of massive companies that have taken this funding at an early stage is quite impressive though: Genentech, Illumina, Qualcomm, Biogen, and Symantec for example. [0] https://www.nap.edu/read/11963/chapter/13#282 https://www.nap.edu/read/11963/chapter/13#282