prosper

Homebuyer's best friend

A home is often one of the biggest purchases you will ever make, so it goes without saying that buying a home can be a really stressful undertaking. That's why it's important to go into it fully prepared. Mortgage+Care Loan Calculator offers just the right amount of tools to help you calculate your monthly payments for mortgages and other major purchases.

This program's user interface is as basic as it gets. A small window that acts as the main menu appears with different calculation tools: Payment Calculator, Amortization Schedule (it's misspelled on the menu; a … Read more

Prosper CEO says P2P lending could reboot economy

In advance of the Finovate ("Financial Innovation") conference that kicks off on Tuesday in San Francisco, I talked with Chris Larsen about his peer-to-peer lending company, Prosper. The prospects for peer-to-peer lending dimmed last year when the Securities and Exchange Commission decided to regulate some of the P2P financial instruments as securities; this forced P2P lending companies to retrench as they'd previously been treated more like banks. Prosper itself shut down its lending platform six months ago.

However, California in particular is getting ahead of the game and has given Prosper the green light to start up … Read more

Start-ups in the city: SFBeta mixer

Webware is a media sponsor of the SFBeta mixer that's on tonight. I'm looking forward to finding some new companies there to cover. Most of the official presenting companies are not new to Webware, so I'm hoping that somewhere in the crowd I'll find the CEO of some tiny, unknown, and very cool start-up. Wish me luck.

The official presenters get demo table space, but there's a changeover halfway through the evening since there are more presenters than tables available. With any luck, there will be a CEO stare-down--or worse!--when the first shift of … Read more