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Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

"Invest in Main Street, not Wall Street." doesn't really tell me anything. Why would I be interested to only invest in business located at one street in some city in the US? Wall Street I understand to be the "business/finance" neighborhood of the US, is Main Street something similar to that but for "normal" businesses?

Seems like a weird tagline, but could also be that I'm missing something as I don't live in the US.

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I think "Main Street" is referring to small businesses, which are usually outside of ordinary people's reach when it comes to investing, since most business investing is limited to "accredited investors".

Small business lending is an interesting space. Small business often fail and thus small business loans tend to have garbage rates. I'm assuming the idea is to hit people on an emotional level, allowing 'investment' into someone that you can relate with as opposed to some large corporation.

>Small business often fail and thus small business loans tend to have garbage rates. I'm assuming the idea is to hit people on an emotional level, allowing 'investment' into someone that you can relate with as opposed to some large corporation.

So the article wants people to make a worse investment (lower ROI and/or higher risk), and hopes that they will be okay with it because small businesses are more relatable? Am I understanding this right?

It's not an article and I was making an assumption. I worked at a similar company (with one the the founders of this place) and the idea was that "affinity based" loans have a lower chance of defaulting. I have no idea if the numbers back that up though. It's like a rough mix of social media and small business lending. It's not necessarily the most financially prudent, but I don't think it is trying to be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Street

I had no idea it was a generic term, and searching for it didn't cross my mind. Thanks! Guess my previous comment can be ignored as I don't seem to be the in target market either.

It's a common idiom in American politics. It was pretty cliche to contrast Wall St and Main St (finance industry and rest of the economy) during the 2008 crisis.

Is just a name, but you are really investing in a single store. Like a coffee shop. But investing in retail now have a lot of risks

Apparently it's not just a name but a specific name that (every?) US cities has for their street where it's mostly businesses located. Don't think we have any equivalent in Europa, closes would be the main plazas I guess.

For what it's worth, though almost every North American city I've visited has a Main street, and all of them appear to have small businesses on them, they are often not the street with the most small businesses. For example, in Toronto, there is a Main Street, but it's a North-South route north from The Beaches, rather than downtown, so King St. and Queen St, which are East-West, naturally have far more small businesses because they run through more of the downtown.

Sorry if my comment was unclear, I didn't want imply that Main Street is the street with "most small businesses" but that Main Street itself consists "mostly of small businesses", compared to streets with residencies or mixed usage.

It all depends on ROI. Perhaps these small businesses will give more return if they can get seed money to get started. It's an interesting business model for sure. Similar to Lending Club but for small businesses.

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