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Tuesday, June 19, 2007 

Try again

My first listing with Prosper.com didn't fund completely. I waited for seven days, the length of the duration of the listing, and watched the bids pile in one by one. Ultimately, I was able to raise 32% of my asking loan amount of $6500. But the interest rate I had offered was not enough. In fact within hours of posting my listing, I had received emails from at least two experienced prosper group leaders that the rate I was offering for amount I was requesting was too low. I decided to stay on and see what happens for experience sake, anyways. Now I'm planning to offer another listing, this time under a group, for a lesser amount (of $4000) and at a higher rate (of 9%).

I also had my wisdom teeth extracted yesterday. The doctor is good and my teeth were already erupted, so it wasn't too bad. But extracting wisdom teeth hurts the most out of all other teeth. I've been recovering for the past two days. My boss is so nice, he called me today morning and asked me to take today off and recover even though I was planning to go to work. My work this summer, an internship at a local family office, doing venture capital and some buyout due diligence as well as some technical help with their IT is coming along great. I'm getting to learn a lot and meet many new people. I'm also getting to spend some time at UVF.

I started looking at some places in Seattle on craigslist for my upcoming move. I emailed a few people regarding their listings, but haven't received any replies yet. I did receive one from a very paranoid person who wrote back very rudely about not wanting to give out their phone number. The listing didn't mention any pertinent details about the house, even where it was located in general, such as bellevue or renton or so on. There were many other details missing. Instead of writing a list of questions and sending it via email, I asked the person to send me their phone number and also gave them my own in case they preferred to call me so we could discuss more on the phone instead of emailing back and forth. They wrote back saying they will not give a total stranger her phone number. It was totally ridiculous. I had included my full name in my email to them. They could have googled me and known more about me than they were revealing about themselves by giving me their phone number. And I had given them my phone number too. Oh well, there are such super nutcases like that who want to find room mates online, but are even afraid to talk to strangers on the phone. Weird.

Apart from that, I have been reading about Casey Serin recently, the twenty four year old who tried to be a real estate investor and make fast money by flipping properties and the housing slowdown crushed him with a $2M debt load. He has rapidly become the most hated US blogger. I am not one of the haterz, the community of people who have taken on as job to hate him and his mistakes, neither am one of his supporterz, as he likes to call them. I cant decide whether to blame him or not. On one side, what he did is plain stupid. He deserves the blame for it. But on the other hand I pity him as well. Partly maybe because I relate with him and his big ambitions. I have also read Rich Dad, Poor Dad and other such books on real estate investing, that he fell for initially. He went deeper by attending the seminars that those authors hold and actually tried to do what they preach. I can see how someone can fall for their strong sales pitch and pressure and feel real estate investing is easy. I felt that myself when I was reading those books. But I didnt go down that alley like he did, maybe because I am less risk averse than him, or less stupid. Who knows, what will happen of him? Right now he is in Australia, maybe hiding from the authorities, although he doesnt say that, but I'm interested in watching what happens.

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About me

  • I'm Indyman
  • From Seattle, WA, United States
  • I am a Risk Management Consultant at KPMG. Before this, I was an Investment Associate at University Venture Fund in Salt Lake City, UT. My personal interests are in venture capital, private equity, technology, real estate, entrepreneurship, investing, stocks, india, patriotism, mumbai, hanoi, vietnam and life in the united states.
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