Great Concept Effective way to support small and growing businesses while earning a profit on your spare cash. Excellent rates of return available for most deals. Kickfurther has really hit its stride in ensuring that it only puts on the platform top notch businesses with very little chance of default. Superb customer service as well.

100% loss of funds if companies don't pay. First few investments were great; dump some cash, wait a few months, pocket the interest, rinse & repeat. Except when some Kickfurthers paid zero - nothing - and then the final payment date passes. Your investment cycle is broken, your cash in limbo for who knows how long (if you're even getting it back). There are mechanisms for Kickfurther to cancel co-ops and obtain merchandise (if the merchant responds). There are mechanisms to settle for lower repayments (if the investors agree). There are also many many many ways a company that took a loan from Kickfurther can effectively ignore them while still raking in sales. Kickfurther doesn't send debt collectors, file lawsuits, seize collateral. The burden falls onto you, the investor, to sit it out and plead for the company to repay.

Deeply unethical company - Stay Away Deeply unethical company. They spam your email, try to sell you their product, then lie about how much funding your business is eligible for. Their customer service is terrible from my experience. I've been blatantly ignored with my concerns except when I was cold pitched I was called immediately after I had asked for a phone call. We were testing the waters, funding wasn't necessary nor are we desperate. Business is fine for us, but now we know if we need it, we shouldn't deal with them.

INVESTORS SHOULD STAY AWAY INVESTORS SHOULD STAY AWAY If you're thinking about investing with Kickfurther, don't. While the co-ops seem to have a number of protections such as personal guarantees, UC filings, etc, in practice, none of these are ever used. Kickfurther instead hides behind co-ops failing to meet a vote of "no confidence" by the co-op lenders to take no action against any of the companies that have failed to payback lenders. On it's face, this seems democratic but Kickfurther doesn't take into account lenders abstaining from a vote and since most lenders aren't actively participating on the platform NO VOTE CAN EVER GET OVER 50%. What Kickfurther should do, is look at what percentage of people that voted on an action were in favor or against (aka how any other vote in politics, the boardroom, etc works).

Solid platform for individuals and small funds The platform has grown quite a bit since early days. Deal quality has improved tremendously, albeit volume is still rather low. The stricter underwriting standards are paying off. Reporting infrastructure is still not there, but the team is capable, and with that piece in place next year this will be an even more robust and useful investment opportunity.