Fairbridge

When I started Fairbridge and spoke about investing in Bridging Progress Gaps, most investors assumed I was investing in Africa. It took a lot of effort demonstrate that the opportunity for investing in human development is massive, and underserved here in North America. The opportunity wasn't so hard for me to pick up on with my lived experience in a disstressed developing country and from traveling the US extensively. Addressing tough socioeconomic problems is the hardest problem of our time and the most brilliant entrepreneurs will have to step up and will be rewarded. Success of Western countries matter because of the collosal risk of losing the credibility of the product of institutions they have sold to the rest of the world to hold things together 🌍. I am not such a big fan of career economists, but sometimes they say good things. I just finished listening to the book Good Economics for Hard Times, and an sharing a few quotes from the book that support our view of the world at Fairbridge. We need your help to spread the word!!! #Africafridays #Bridgingprogressgaps #economicmobility #accesstohealth #planetarywellness #venturecapital #founders #startups

A few years ago at Fairbridge, we started to understand how remittances from the diaspora were fundamentally transforming the nature and character of capital flows to frontier and emerging markets. We identified an opportunity to leverage blockchain technologies to aggregate and direct capital from millions of retail investors in the diaspora towards productive uses (SME lending, healthcare access and insurance, energy, education) back home. From the many companies we saw in the space we chose to partner with Maurice Iwunze and Gregoire Lecomte at SympliFi in 2020. Here's what we learned: 1️⃣ 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆: Capital supply is incredibly low in most of the world and remittances can play a huge role to plug this gap. Remittances are a great source of capital because they have very minimal bureaucracy.  2️⃣ 𝗟𝗮s𝘁 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹: Many local partners through which the lending would be executed also need to have the infrastructure (tech etc. ) to execute efficiently. 3️⃣ 𝗘𝘅𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮 𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝘆: Performance metrics e.g., NPLs are terrible where there's no stability of policy. Clever solutions for matching hard currency lending and local currency productivity are a massive opportunity. We continue to believe that pools of diasporic capital will play the leading role in closing the capital gap, especially in Africa and we are looking for the best entrepreneurs in this space!!! #Bridgingprogressgaps #accesstocapital #venturecapital #Founders #accesstocredit

Our community round is open! We can’t think of a better way to celebrate our three-year anniversary than to democratize access to owning a piece of Sphere itself, so that our community - the people who have gotten us this far - can officially be part of our journey. Head over to our page on WeFunder to invest: https://lnkd.in/gF573u5Y Please note: investment involves risk. We are 'testing the waters' to gauge investor interest in an offering under Regulation Crowdfunding. No money or other consideration is being solicited. If sent, it will not be accepted. No offer to buy securities will be accepted. No part of the purchase price will be received until a Form C is filed and only through Wefunder’s platform. Any indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind.

I just had a great conversation with Alex Wright-Gladstein, CEO of Sphere. I've been working to align 100% of my financial investments with my values, including climate action and social justice. I came across the Sphere 500 Climate Fund (SPFFX). It "tracks the Sphere 500 Fossil-Free Index. It invests in the biggest 500 US companies, minus fossil fuel companies. We vote our shares for climate action." It's designed to be a great fit for employer 401k plans (e.g. low fees), but you can also invest from an IRA or a regular brokerage account. If you want to invest outside of a 401k plan, check them out here: https://lnkd.in/gacUxRVP. And if they're not a choice in your employer 401k plan, they have a form letter email you can send to your HR/benefits manager asking them to add Sphere to your plan: https://lnkd.in/gehyfa8p. I invested in the fund from my rollover IRA account at Vanguard.

We are fired up to be on Schwab's Advisor Services MarketSquare! Of the 600+ advisors we serve, many leverage Schwab. Reach out to rohit@sorafinance.com to learn more about our Schwab relationship and the recent launch of our 5.0% interest rate pledged asset line product. https://lnkd.in/gX4dxfZ8 cc Rohit AgarwalSiddhartha Oza

There’s been a lot of talk about cashflow scores, but most aren’t delivering results. Why? They’re not solving the real problem: making accurate, near-term predictions for both consumer and SMB credit products. At pave.dev, we’ve taken a different approach by building tailored cashflow scores for each type of credit product—whether it’s consumer loans like cash advances, small dollar loans, BNPL, or SMB products like charge cards and merchant cash advances tuned for each industry. Each of these products comes with its own unique repayment behaviors and financial needs. A one-size-fits-all score can’t capture these nuances, which is why generic cashflow scores fall short. The real value of real-time cashflow data is in its ability to predict what happens in the next few days or weeks. Instead of waiting months or years to see if a score works, you should see results almost immediately. Generic rank-ordering scores miss this, leaving lenders without the relevant insights they need to make better, faster decisions for both consumers and businesses. For more on why tailored scores are the solution for both consumer and SMB lending, check out our latest post, link in comments 👇 #CreditScoring #Fintech #CashflowData #Lending #BNPL #SmallDollarLoans #SMBLoans