June 19, 2023: Easier access to your capital

What is goPeer?

goPeer is a Toronto-based private credit investment platform. We bridge the gap between Canadian borrowers and investors, offering access to a diversified range of high-yield credit opportunities. With a focus on transparency and risk management, goPeer aims to create a trusted marketplace that benefits both borrowers and investors in the Canadian lending ecosystem.

What is the insight/reason that you launched this business?
We have observed that many borrowers, particularly individuals, face challenges accessing loans from traditional banks due to stringent requirements, long processing times, and limited flexibility in loan terms. Simultaneously, we recognized the potential for individual investors to seek alternative investment opportunities that offer attractive risk-adjusted returns.

By launching goPeer, we aimed to bridge this gap by leveraging technology to create a platform that facilitates direct lending, providing borrowers with easier access to capital and everyday investors with a new avenue for portfolio diversification and potentially higher returns on investment.

How did you get started?
After recognizing the challenges faced by borrowers in the traditional lending landscape, we embarked on our journey by obtaining an EMD registration with the Ontario Securities Commission. We then raised capital to hire our first employees, built a minimum viable product (MVP), and went live! A significant initial challenge was seeding a two-sided marketplace, but we overcame it by executing on our go-to-market strategy effectively.

Who are your customers and how do you help them?
goPeer's customers encompass two primary groups: borrowers and investors. Let's explore how goPeer helps each of them:

Borrowers: goPeer assists individuals in need of personal loans, typically individuals seeking funds for debt consolidation, home improvement, or other personal expenses, by:

• Providing access to capital at competitive rates

• Streamlining the lending process

• Personalized experience

Investors: goPeer provides an investment opportunity for individuals seeking attractive returns beyond traditional investment avenues. Investors benefit from investing through goPeer by accessing:

• Portfolio diversification

• High risk-adjusted return potential

• Transparency and risk management

Overall, goPeer benefits its customers by offering a user-friendly platform that connects borrowers with investors, providing accessible capital to borrowers and alternative investment opportunities with potentially attractive returns to investors.

What is your biggest victory? What setback(s) did you overcome?
Our biggest victory lies in a borrower who, through goPeer, refinanced a high-interest rate loan and saw their credit score soar by 80 points (!). Witnessing this transformation, we take pride in our ability to provide borrowers with better financial opportunities and help them improve their creditworthiness, setting them on a path towards a brighter financial future.

We also find it rewarding when borrowers leverage our platform to consolidate their high-interest debt and ultimately become debt-free. What brings us even greater satisfaction is seeing these borrowers transition into investors on our platform, using their newfound financial freedom to help others on their debt-free journey. It's a testament to the power of community and the positive ripple effect created by our platform.

What piece of advice would you like to pass on to other Founders?
Focus on creating a seamless and user-friendly product that solves a real problem. Surround yourself with a talented and diverse team that shares your vision. Embrace challenges (there will be many!) with resilience, learn from setbacks, and stay committed to your goals. These are the pillars that contributed to goPeer’s success.

What are the highlights of working at your company?
Highlights of working at goPeer include a mission-driven culture focused on making lending fair and accessible, fostering innovation through technology-driven solutions, and being part of a dynamic and fast-paced environment. Employees have the opportunity to contribute to a meaningful cause, work with innovative tools, and experience the excitement of a rapidly evolving industry. At goPeer, individuals can make an impact, embrace creativity, and thrive in an energetic work atmosphere.

Learn more about goPeer and the Intuit Prosperity Accelerator: Toronto here.

TechTO's Founders Journey Series gives you unparalleled access to some of today's top Founders and Leaders from across the Canadian Tech Ecosystem. We chat with our guests about their journeys to building their current business and the lessons they learned along the way.

Our most recent episode of The Founders Journey features Erin Bury, Co-Founder and CEO of Willful.

Erin is the co-founder and CEO at Willful. She spends most of her time educating Canadians about estate planning, and her mission is to encourage people to plan for the unexpected.

Willful is currently providing more than 150,000 legal documents to help Canadians plan for the unexpected and ensure their families and loved ones are taken care of in the most vulnerable times of their lives.

In today's podcast, we discuss:

• Erin’s early start in the tech industry

• Years spent working at BetaKit

• The inspiration behind Willful

• The mission to educate Canadians on the most important document of their lives

• Simplifying the estate planning process

• Growing to 150,000

• The most important lessons learned

• Being both a mother and entrepreneur

• The future of Willful and helping Canadians to stop procrastinating

Listen now on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts

Where can you connect with Erin?

Find Erin on LinkedIn here

Quick Takes returns next week on June 29 with a brand new episode

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Loop exists to eradicate costly and time-consuming issues faced while banking across borders. With Loop, you can get a US bank account as if you were an American business, get a corporate credit card that eliminates fx fees, and gain access to the best FX rates in Canada - for free.

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Get started with Loop here!

Need more information or a demo? We’re happy to chat, book a consultation with our team here.

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Massive growth, getting customer loyalty, working with your family and more hot topics for founders. Our Founders Journey Series shares the interesting stories behind some of today’s most well-known startups

How this former consultant grew this health tech startup into one of the largest in the industry (you’ve probably heard of it)

“If you have an idea, say it. If you have a question, ask it.”

Director of Customer Success, Boast (Canada | Remote)

Why is this cool? Boast.AI is building the future of tax credit recovery with artificial intelligence so companies can get more money, faster for less time and risk. In this role, you will lead a team of CSM’s who are the primary customer facing role for a portfolio of companies that are all building highly innovative technology.

Principal Engineer - Data Engineering, Ripple (Toronto, ON)

Why is this cool? Ripple is the world’s only enterprise blockchain solution for global payments. In this role, you will architect and implement the data infrastructure for analytics and data centric product feature at Ripple, which will include creating their complete data Platform for unified data Ingestion, distributed systems for processing, self serve data lakes and batch/stream ETL data pipeline for golden datasets for analytics etc.

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• TechTO x OneEleven present: The Summer Social Series | June 26, 2023: Kick-off Collision Week with us at the ultimate summer party! We’re expecting over 400 technologists, innovators, founders and more to attend! Will you be on of them?

• TechTO: Sales is BACK | July 6, 2023: TechTO: Sales makes its grand return, and you need to make sure you’re on the list!

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