The Smart Take From The Strong

12/27/07 posted by RateLadder

Pete Carill is the legendary former basketball coach of Princeton University. His style of play made famous through heartbreaking defeats such as the 1st round loss to Alonzo Morning’s Georgetown and brilliant victories like winning the 1975 NIT or Princeton’s victory over UCLA in the 1996 NCAA.

In semi-retirement he wrote a book The Smart Take from the Strong: The Basketball Philosophy of Pete Carril. Why do I bring this up on the Prosper Blog? I think his philosophy on life and basketball applies to P2P lending on Prosper.

His father used to say, “The strong take from the weak, but the smart take from the strong.” Prosper is a Web 2.0 lending community. As lender in the community I think all lenders can be categorized as weak, strong, or smart. Not in absolute terms but in philosophical terms. We are an egalitarian free market community; the only thing stopping us from being the best lender on Prosper is ourselves.

How do we define “best” lender? Well that is the beauty… “we” don’t, each individual can do so anyway they like. As long as you are being smart (in terms of your ideal) about how you go about your lending then you will be successful.

Personally, I want to make money (better than savings account), explore p2p lending, and be leader in this brave new world. Others might simply want to be social lending in an effort to help others. Rates will be set were the market sets them. Your ROI depends on your loan selection as much as the interest rate.

How will I become a better lender? Data analysis, trying new things, HIGH interest rates, and LOW default rates.

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RateLadder is the Editor-in-Chief of the Prosper Blog. He is a Prosper lender and has been since July, 2006. He has a passion for p2p lending. He owns RateLadder — My Prosper.com Journey and other P2P Lending Adventures, P2P No Bank the P2P Blog Aggregate, and ProProsper — Professional Tools for Prosper Lenders featuring SQL access to Prosper data.

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4 Responses

Ryan | December 27th, 2007 at 6:36 pm

Ah Pete Carril, perhaps no college coach embodies the ability for a team of less athletic (slower, shorter, less physical) but more intelligent group of inviduals to defeat a supposedly stronger opponent, UNLV, UCLA, Wake Forest and almost Georgetown, the number of top ranked teams felled by the Tigers under Carill is staggering. I like your concept, it doesn’t matter if someone is a smaller lender if they are patient and “smart” about their choices they can make a great ROI.

PrivateLender | December 30th, 2007 at 6:27 pm

Successful people measure their success by what they think of themselves, not by what others think of them. Prosper allows people to implement the lending strategies that are right for them, which means they can emphasize both the social angle of helping people and earning a great return financially as they see fit. One size does not fit all here.

RateLadder | December 30th, 2007 at 9:04 pm

@PrivateLender

Well said!!!

moremoneymarc | January 5th, 2008 at 2:32 pm

The nuances of the idea is interesting.

Strong take from the weak.. sugguesting strong personality lenders lend to lower credit bands (percieved superior picking ability)

Smart take from the strong. sugguesting smart lenders lend to Strong borrowers of both financial means, relativly unencumbered, and probably good financial stats.

Or was this not the way others read into this?
MoreMoneyMarc