19 May Interview with Bastiaan Burgwal about LoanStreet
Sparkholder, known for their financial analytical platform, has launched a new product called LoanStreet. The new service allows entrepreneurs looking for funding to find out if their loan requirements will be accepted by potential lenders or not. If they do get accepted, they can apply for them straight away through LoanStreet. This simplifies the intensive and costly process of obtaining funding for SME’s. Bastiaan Burgwal, Chief Product Officer at Sparkholder, explains what went into the development of the new tool.
“The idea for LoanStreet has been around since we started with Sparkholder in 2013. Back then, from a technological point of view, the LoanStreet idea was hard to realise and relationships with financiers were needed to act as partners. Therefore, we decided to start with the Sparkholder monitoring product and keep this idea in the back of our minds.” Last year, the team participated in the Exact Hackathon and developed a prototype application based on the LoanStreet idea, then named Predictr. They won and received great responses from both Exact and entrepreneurs in the audience, which encouraged them to continue development now that they had more experience and connections in the field.
As the prototype only analysed if a certain loan application would be accepted, a lot of work still had to be done to make the system capable of complying with the requirements from funding providers. Financiers saw the potential of the platform as a way to make alternative financing more accessible to a wider audience. “The average bakery on the corner of the street is not likely to turn to crowdfunding when in need of funding” says Bastiaan, “our platform can help them find these new ways of financing.” Launching partners Rabobank and Exact are amongst the 18 financing partners currently connected. Next week new partnerships will be added. Since the launch, financiers have already contacted the team as they see the potential LoanStreet has to enlarge their customer base.
In the future, LoanStreet hopes to add more partners, aiming at a wider coverage of financing options for all specific target audiences. They also have great ambitions with regards to speeding up the lending process. “In the end, we want to make SME funding even more accessible and offer instant lending. Apply for a loan and receive it within one day, but it will take a few more years before we and the industry are ready for that.”
