The Next America

Prosper and Adventure Training Concepts

If you're going to rip people off, you should at least have the courtesy to disappear.

Edited: Brian Jones, CEO of Adventure Training Concepts, may be having some tough financial times which caused him to default on a prosper loan. But he's man enough to face things immediately when confronted. I've changed my opinion to legitimate default and genuinely wish him the best of luck going forward.

Prosper was/is a great idea, but turned out to be unbelievably poorly executed. Their idea of due diligence on borrowers was completely pathetic. They are plagued with massive fraud and unpaid loans. And an occasional loan that appeared low-risk, yet cratered after 4 months. The loan defaulted and eventually sold for about 8 cents on the dollar. Definitely something to consider if you're thinking about doing business.

Considering the other loan I have which is about to default, I'm break even on prosper (15-20 loans). Pretty interesting lessons learned for the opportunity cost of parking $1K for two years. There's a great community at prospers.org.  The company has proven itself both incompetent and completely unable to regain the confidence of lenders, almost all of whom have been burnt badly (even senior prosper employees).

The best part is the information is public with open APIs. So there's lots of third party sites that help you look at your portfolio or that can calculate just how ripped off most lenders have been over the last 3 years.

I feel really bad for many lenders who are in for 100K+ and are taking huge losses. I learned a lot for my minimal investment -- just hope I get the rest of my money back at this point.

Auto Glass Repair

The story is yet to be posted....but I needed two side windows replaced on my car today (based in Bristol, RI).

Bristol Glass came through for me. $290, same day service (though I needed to go 20 miles to Attleboro and spend a couple hours at a dunkin donuts with dysfunctional wifi). They are a full service glass shop and I'll probably be sending over some glass shelves for a piece of furniture to be cut soon. As a bonus, they did an outstanding job cleaning the broken glass which I considered out of scope for the quote.

Diamond Triumph Glass was $485, next day at their facility in Cranston. Very difficult to explain which windows to the likely foreign-based phone agent. I was surprised since they had replaced a windshield last year for $175, the lowest price of several quotes, and did a great job.

JN Phillips was $550, two days later in my driveway.

Two others didn't answer the phone quickly enough.

Since my deductible was $500....my problem. Auto glass is something you can shop pretty hard and pretty quickly. Most normal mechanics can't do it anywhere as cheaply and quickly as specialists.

The Last Horizon

For holiday vacation this year, I went to Bermuda and stayed at Horizons, as I have done every year since 1996 (except 1999 when deployed to the Middle East).

Horizons closed this week permanently, slated for redevelopment with a neighboring property, the Coral Beach Club. Redevelopment is long overdue. The rumor is that it will become a Four Seasons (the rumor status appears to come from Four Seasons policy to ensure standards are met prior to agreeing to use the FS name).

What I won't miss: the tennis courts amazing state of disrepair, the erratic lunch service, opaque billing, unresponsive management (they even ran out of tennis balls).

What I will miss: the loyal, amazing, and long-serving staff, an outstanding multi-course dinner from a unique menu every night, the community of people who visited every year at the same time, clotted cream at afternoon tea, the ability to play par 3 golf on a walk-on basis starting and ending on any vacant hole, the cottage format with public spaces and balconies and breakfast served in cottage (we miss you Blanche).

I grew up going somewhere different every year and every vacation. Except the beach, because we got a really good deal from my aunt. But only because of the deal. We went all sorts of places, but nowhere twice. Every hotel, every attraction was always new. I'd sit in the backseat reading the AAA guide. Some detours (Canyon de Chelly) were amazing, some less than that. My father could never understand why someone would go on vacation every year to the same place for almost 25 years. Why not try Jamaica? or the Bahamas? or....

I now understand. For all the faults and flaws of Horizon's management, they were always outweighed by a community of people. To have true friends at the bar that you look forward to seeing again the first night of every trip. If you can successfully incorporate community into a business model, it will carry a business over many hurdles.

How to leverage the modern toolset to bolt community on existing or planned destinations? Not clear. Though the opportunity appears massive.