A new idea for small business lending and support

From my email, from Amanda Brown, she is developing this plan with Ben Laufer:

I am a master’s student at Stanford in Management Science & Engineering and a fan of your blog Marginal Revolution. I have been following it more closely in the midst of COVID-19, especially the conversations about small business financing during the crisis (e.g. today’s post about bridge loans).

I was hoping to get feedback on an idea for a new small business lending platform which would allow community members to fund fractional amounts of a business loan. The thesis is that fractional loan contributions from local supporters would give institutional lenders confidence to fund the full requested loan amount (and that the total amount contributed by peers would supplement traditional measures of borrower creditworthiness, such as FICO score, cash flow, etc., when setting the interest rate). For example, 10% of the principal might come from all the peer investors combined, and the remaining 90% from a single big lender. To my knowledge, nothing quite like this exists. In the wake of COVID-19 shutdowns, it seems especially important for small businesses at the heart of our communities to be getting access to low-interest financing based on peer endorsement.

Adding the “peer staking” element to a small business loan signals to investors that the local community believes in the future success of the business and the borrower’s likelihood of repaying (and peers would also be able to earn the same interest rate return on the principal as the majority funder… so it’s not like crowdfunding, where you contribute but won’t see your dollar again…). The design also increases accountability without the need for a collateral since borrowers would feel a personal responsibility to repay their peer debt-holders, who may be friends, family or customers.

I am wondering what your thoughts are on the idea (and its relevance at this time). If you think it is worthwhile, perhaps you would consider sharing this 5-minute survey with your followers to collect feedback on the idea:

https://forms.gle/Tk2Gweqa5frTacid9

Amanda Brown ([email protected])

Ben Laufer ([email protected])

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