New batch available for pledges!

Our latest batch is now live and available for pledging. We’re excited to help find funding for our 11 borrowers ranging from graduating master’s students to working professionals to coding bootcamp admits. With over $120K available for pledging, use of funds range from student loan refinancing to living expenses. Interest rates range from 4-6% with loan terms between 1-3 years.

One of our coding bootcamp admits has even created his own supplemental site to share his passion for coding and detail his upcoming journey and expenses. Check it out here.

Browse through our listings today and make a return on your savings while helping others save money and advance to the next stage of their lives! Pledges are effortless to make and first-time account setup only takes minutes.

Questions or thoughts? Shoot us a note at questions@wefinance.co – we’d love to hear from you!

WeFinance is a platform for crowdfunding loans and can be used to access the lowest possible rates for refinancing existing debt or taking out new debt. Find out more at https://www.wefinance.co

Pages From the WeFinance Launch Playbook

We’re really excited to have officially launched our platform just over two weeks ago. Our launch borrower batch is seeking around $200K in loan capital from their extended networks and our lender network. Half of our borrowers have already reached their minimum targets, ensuring that both current and future pledges will become funded loans. Another quarter of our borrowers have already passed the halfway mark to their minimums, with nearly two weeks still remaining for this current batch to fund. Below, we’ve highlighted a few thoughts and lessons learned from our launch.

Think about launch traffic sources
We were featured in Product Hunt and TechCrunch during our launch, and we shared this with our existing networks using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and direct email. Of these, Product Hunt was the largest source of traffic, representing more than half of all new users in the first week after launch, even though our feature came 5 days after launch (versus the TechCrunch article, which came out the morning of the launch). However, both TechCrunch and Product Hunt produced a substantial number of qualified leads, and it’s important to remember that articles with paragraphs of content like our feature in TechCrunch give potential customers much more information about your product compared to services like Product Hunt and Hacker News, which primarily direct users to your site for more information. A new site visitor who has read an article about you will be of different value than one who is reading about you for the first time on your website. Make sure your site is prepared to offer a good experience for both! And of course, make sure you have Google Analytics or other services installed so you can observe traffic sources and play up the channels where you’re doing well.

Create a list of contacts for direct outreach prior to launch
Getting attention and buzz at launch is very important. We made a list of people close to us, both personally and professionally, to share the news of our launch, which was critical in kickstarting the conversation about our platform within our networks (and led to more sharing beyond our networks). Seeding this initial conversation for our networks to share was incredibly important, similar to how we encourage our own borrowers to seed excitement, support, and pledges from the closest people in their networks.

Be as responsive and flexible as possible during the initial launch
Our ability to be responsive during the launch period was critical. While we had laid the foundation to make our public launch newsworthy, there was uncertainty around when different channels would take off and which coverage would have the most traction. Therefore, we kept our schedules flexible to be able to respond to important inbound e-mails and messages.

For example, Product Hunt picked us up several days after we were originally submitted, on a Sunday. Interested PH followers began asking questions about the platform and we made ourselves available throughout the day to respond and keep the conversation going.

Leverage social media as much as possible
Using social media goes beyond posting a link to a TechCrunch article on our Facebook page or tweeting a link to our Product Hunt feature. We had to think about ways to engage people to share, not just consume. Given the importance of social media and social sharing of our platform, we encouraged our borrowers to use our launch press as tools to further engage their own networks on their listings.

Seek opportunities to piggyback on the launch in the coming weeks
The launch in TechCrunch and Product Hunt brought us a huge increase in traffic and inbound interest to borrow and lend on our platform. While that initial bump in traffic is temporary, we continue to seek creative opportunities to use enthusiasm around our launch to enhance future announcements, including the final days of our current listings and the launch of our next batch.

Our current listings close at 11:59PM PT on May 1, 2015. Browse today and pledge! If you’re interested in borrowing or learning more about the platform, visit http://www.wefinance.co/borrow.

Launching our first public batch!

We’re excited to announce our public launch with our largest batch to date, consisting of 15 borrowers ranging from college, JD, and MBA grads refinancing student loans, to coding bootcamp admits seeking funding for living expenses. Take a look through our listings page to browse borrower profiles.

These 15 borrowers represent over $200,000 in potential funding, the majority of which are student loan refinancings. Many of our borrowers are graduates of top universities and are now working professionals or have secured full-time jobs following graduate school.

Lend today to help these people save money while earning a return on your stagnant savings. Pledges are quick and easy, even for first-time lenders. Browse our redesigned listings and home page, and make a pledge today!

Thoughts or questions? Shoot us a note at info@wefinance.co – we’d love to hear from you!

WeFinance is a free platform for crowdfunding loans and can be used to access the lowest possible rates for refinancing existing debt or taking out new debt. Find out more at https://www.wefinance.co

Why Refinance?

The word “refinancing” conjures up images of cheesy, sleazy TV and radio ads purporting to bring you a ton of savings. Refinancing has traditionally been associated with mortgages, as housing debt makes up almost 75% of consumer lending (see NY Fed). With interest rates at historic lows for the last few years, banks and other financing providers have taken advantage of the great rate at which they themselves can borrow, allowing them to sell consumers new loans at lower rates. As a result, they benefit from new customers and a wealth of fees that come with the origination of new loans. Despite some costs associated with refinancing and the questionable advertising, refinancing does have its merits when considered carefully, and not just for mortgages.

Refinancing reduces the interest you pay on your loan(s)
Refinancing helps consumers save money by lowering the rate (and often, improving other terms) on their existing debt, reducing monthly payments or allowing them to pay off the loan more quickly. Changes in just a percentage point or two over the life of a loan can result in meaningful savings. For instance, for a $20,000 loan at 4% interest compounded monthly would take a monthly payment of $443.08 to pay off in 4 years. However, at 6% interest, that same loan with that repayment schedule would still carry a balance of over $1,000 at the 4-year mark. This opportunity for savings grows as the loan terms (years) and loan sizes ($$) of these refinanceable sums increase.

Refinancing doesn’t just apply to home loans
Student loan refinancings are picking up. Lenders have picked up on the fact that federal student loan rates are the same no matter who you are or what your credit history is. The government doesn’t adjust rates for factors such as graduating from a great school or landing a solid, new job. While government-subsidized rates have helped many gain access to education, there are many people with very low default risk who deserve better rates.

Watch out for fees and other costs
Many refinancing opportunities come with a host of fees, ranging from origination fees (often a percentage of the debt being financed), application fees, and for home loans, costs to cover inspections, appraisals, and insurance. Do your research ahead of time to ensure that a new lender won’t charge you an arm and a leg.

Don’t fall prey to inertia
Inertia is the biggest roadblock stopping consumer from reaping the benefits of refinancing. Once borrowers have accepted the terms of their loans and have gotten into a steady cycle of repayments, it’s easy to continue making those payments and not face what seems like a lot of work and pushing paper to save an unclear amount of money by refinancing. Banks love this inertia: even if market rates have gone down or there are other reasons that a borrower deserves a lower rate, banks count on the overwhelming majority of customers to stay put and not demand better terms.

The market is constantly changing and you are constantly changing. When things change for the better in the form of market interest rates declining or you lowering your default risk (e.g., the value of your home increases, landing a new or better job), you deserve better terms, especially on something that adds up as quickly as interest payments over time. The more debt you carry, the more benefit you will gain from refinancing. It’s always a good time to shop around to see what your options are, whether you’re only a year or two into your loan or a year or two from paying it off.

WeFinance is a free platform for crowdfunding loans and can be used to access the lowest possible rates for refinancing existing debt or taking out new debt. Find out more at http://www.wefinance.co