Garry and Alexis have been a huge help in getting Priime started, and have consistently given us solid feedback along the way. I can't say enough how excited I am to see them launch. Congrats guys!
That's a serious concern, and I'd like to help address it (I am the director of UX at ReadyForZero).
A core tenet of our business is that we always act in the interest of the user. So far, our monetization works as follows:
- Someone is on our site getting out of debt, and we have a good picture of where they stand financially (their data).
- We know what Lending Club looks for in approving folks to get debt consolidation loans.
- We can run this user's data against what we know about Lending Club's model, and see if (A) they would be likely to qualify and (B) it would save them time or money. If these things turn up true, we recommend to the user that they go apply, showing them the data that led us to this recommendation.
- If they apply for and get a loan from Lending Club, we get a referral fee.
Up until the user decides to go apply for a loan, we have sent no data at all to Lending Club.
This kind of model is how we plan to approach the whole business. It's about giving people control over their financial situation and data, not taking it away. There are plenty of opportunities for us to profit with this model in an open, ethical, and transparent way, all the while keeping people in the driver's seat.
