Hello from Nicole. I am thrilled to have recently joined the GROUNDFLOOR team as our VP of Marketing. I have a 15 year background in technology start-ups focused in the areas of product development, go-to-market planning and customer acquisition strategies. My specific experience has been with business-to-consumer offerings and SaaS platforms, including Art.com, Cafepress, Buildlinks and Motricity. I am honored to be joining the brilliant and hilarious team at GROUNDFLOOR. If you want to learn more, check out my LinkedIn Profile, and to get in touch directly you can find me at nicole@groundfloor.us.
Enough of that and on to the good stuff. Here are GROUNDFLOOR we always have a lot of balls in the air. As a typical startup company, it's a juggling act for sure. Two things that never waiver are our commitment and genuine interest in our investors. We want to know what interests you, concerns you and what may even keep you up at night. We will never assume that we know what community needs when is comes to investing in microloans - which is why we will ask you. In fact, it's our intention to ask you fairly often if your needs and opinions have changes.
Recently we sent out an Investor Survey to ask and learn your most recent viewpoints. Our intention was to gather your thoughts on microlending in general: your level of comfort with the concept and how you plan to make it a part of your investment strategy in the future.
We also asked more specific questions about enhancements you would like to see within the GROUNDFLOOR community as we connect investors to builders. The feedback we received was generous and extremely helpful in guiding our team in some new directions and to reinforce decisions already in motion. It will take some time to digest all the details of the survey results but we wanted to share some of the highlights with you immediately. Here are some very notable trends gathered from the data.
A smart and passionate community: GROUNDFLOOR has an educated and passionate community of investors. Our investors understand why microlending is important and how it will help you to meet your financial goals.
Commitment to microlending: Of those investors who have already invested in one project, 75% of you expressed a high likelihood of investing again in subsequent or additional projects.
We can do more: GROUNDFLOOR can (and will) do a better job at explaining some of the nuances behind a particular project. Examples include: What is 'loan to value' (LTV) and how is it calculated? How does LTV mean for a specific project? How is the project valued? Is there an appraisal done and how do I see it? Some of you want to know more about our builders. It was all great feedback that we have taken to heart.
Project volume: We overwhelmingly heard that our investors WANT to invest. But you are asking for more diversity and volume in our projects - including new neighborhoods and new states. And we have heard you loud and clear that many more projects are needed to support our fast growing community of investors. This is exciting for us because we have BIG things coming in the next few months that will greatly expand the project offerings from builder to investor.
Over the coming weeks we will be sharing more details of the feedback you provided. A huge thanks to everyone who participated.