Mastermind.fm

In this interview, Jean and Joe speak to Mihkel Stamm – COO of EstateGuru, a real estate crowdfunding platform established in 2014, with more than €300m loans given so far. This makes it one of the oldest and most successful platforms in Europe.

In this wide-ranging interview, we go into details about how the platform operates as well as general real estate investing trends that Mihkel has been observing over the past years.

In today’s episode, we interview Allan Martinson from Xolo. Xolo helps people open companies in Estonia and also invoice for their services from Estonia without needing to register a company there, thanks to an innovative solution whereby Xolo is the company invoicing clients.

Over 40,000 solopreneurs globally have signed up with Xolo. They are launching either their fully-owned, Estonian-registered companies or using Xolo’s unique partnership-based virtual company model. Xolo manages a third of companies incorporated by Estonia’s e-residents.

In today’s episode, we interview Maxime Pallain, the co-founder and CEO of Raizers. Raizers is a real estate crowdfunding platform that currently offers several investment opportunities in France.

Raizers’ competitors when it started were private banks, family offices etc. Raizers’ innovation was in digitizing the way to give loans to entrepreneurs.

This platform offers loans to real estate developers, with a maximum 24 months and average of 21 months.

There is currently a 0% default rate on Raizers, and there aren’t any long-pending projects either.

They have financed over 500m in projects. In 2020, they have financed 52 companies with the help of 4 internal analysts (from big four and other important firms in the real estate and finance space, including venture capital funds) and 1 lawyer. This works out at one deal per analyst per month. I’m mentioning this to show that approving projects is not an automatic thing and requires a lot of work. Many proposals are dropped quickly after being received. For example, Raizers will not accept any development project if they don’t yet have the permit to build. In the end, only 10-15% are selected and forwarded to investors for consideration.

Raizers is very serious about debt collection if the need arises. All mortgages are first rank and there is personal liability as well.

Why do borrowers raise money via Raizers? One would say that if you can get a loan at the bank and you come to Raizers there is something strange, since the interest is higher. So that’s the first question asked if a client tries to borrow and avoid the banks outright.

Speed is typically one of the main reasons for skipping the banks, as the banks take way longer than platforms like Raizers. If everything is going well Raizers can give the money in 1 month, while with banks it would take 3-6 months. If you want to buy a building and you have a tight deadline for getting a great deal, the bank option would not be feasible. Another point is that as a borrower, you can repay the loan before, and you have additional fees like the initial fee and the exit fee at the end. So it might work out cheaper in the end for a borrower to use Raizers.

The minimum investment is 1000 euro and you need to pass a suitability test first. Raizers is not trying to find gullible and inexperienced investors and trying to attract them via ridiculously low minimum investments as other platforms do.

Raizers does not withhold any taxes for you. You can read more about taxation of P2P lending in my post on the subject.

In 2021, we might see Raizers offering the opportunity for investors to invest in the platform itself. This is something that other platforms have done in recent months, and it might be a good investment to consider.

We really enjoyed this conversation; Maxime proved to be very knowledgeable and open, and we’re impressed with this platform.

In today’s episode, we speak to Chandan Lodha from Cointracker.io, one of the leading crypto portfolio trackers and tax preparation tools.

Cointracker offers two main products:

We talk about the IRS tax form 1040 and taxation issues around the world.

If you hold Bitcoin or you’re looking to enter the crypto space, this is an essential episode for you, because it’s very important to know what happens if you eventually sell the cryptos in the future.

Also, with all the exchanges that have proliferated plus the massive DeFi space, it has become more and more difficult to track all your holdings, which is where tools like CoinTracker come in.

In today’s episode, we speak with Nikita Goncars, the CEO and co-founder of LendSecured. This is one of the newest lending platforms in Europe, however, it’s worth noting that it’s an offshoot of an existing lending business that has been operating successfully for several years.

The team has considerable experience in Latvia and they want to expand to the rest of Europe, with Germany and Spain being one of the first big markets they are targeting. We spent some time discussing their upcoming focus on agricultural loans, which both Jean and Joe found fascinating.

In this episode Nikita also shared his thoughts on why most of the lending platforms are based in the Baltic states. I found that piece of history quite interesting.

I would recommend having a look at LendSecured as it might be one of the most innovative players in the space going forward. It’s worth mentioning that LendSecured also has skin-in-the-game for every project launched.

In today’s episode, we meet Tomas Medeckis from Nordstreet, where you can invest in business and real estate loans.

We talk about why they are based in Lithuania and the pros/cons of that, as well as their great track record with loans so far. We also talk about investing in the Baltic region as well as Nordstreet’s plans on expanding beyond the region.

This platform has been returning 10-14% for its investors, although according to market fundamentals the expected returns in the next year should be around 10-11%, and Tomas was very open about the fact that returns are ultimately a function of market conditions.

Nordstreet has experienced 0 defaults while it has raised €10m so far, mostly from Lithuanian investors. It is open to all investors, however, with the only requirement being that they use a Paysera account for depositing and withdrawing funds.

In this episode, Jean sits down with Rob Dix, who is well known for his several projects in the UK real estate space. Together with his wife Mish, he also ran the popular digital nomad blog Making It Anywhere. His journey shares quite a few similarities with Jean’s, so it was interesting to discuss several of the topics that interest both of them, including parenting, property and other investments, as well as other life choices.

*We apologize for the sound quality in Jean’s part of the recording, unfortunately we had a technical problem and had to use the backup audio recording on this episode.

In today’s episode, we have Anthony Cerullo from YouHodler joining us to explain how this platform enables crypto hodlers to earn interest on their holdings via the YouHodler savings account, or even obtain crypto-backed loans and even gain big from crypto movements using the Turbocharge and Multi Hodl products.

You can check out Jean’s review of YouHodler if you’d like more details on the platform, the article is a perfect accompaniment to this podcast episode.

If you like the content we’re putting out, please consider leaving a 5-star review on iTunes, it helps a ton and encourages us to keep producing quality episodes for you.

Today’s episode features Martins Sulte, the CEO and co-founder of the biggest European P2P lending platform Mintos, as our guest.

Lending and alternative lending is not a new industry at all, but many European investors only became aware to this asset class in recent years, also because before there was no real way they could get involved since it required insider knowledge, contacts or big sums of capital.

Mintos itself start out with the founders and 4 developers, and it has not grown to over 160 people.

It was a pleasure to speak with Martins and have him share some of his widespread knowledge in the P2P lending space.

Mintos has been operating for 5 years and is the largest P2P lending marketplace with over 50% market share in Europe. More than 6 billion euros of loans have been facilitated so far and the average investor invests around 3000 euros.

The biggest number of investors come from Germany, Spain and the Czech Republic respectively, but this is mostly a reflection of those countries’ familiarity with this type of investing. There are more than 340,000 investors that have used Mintos and they come from 90+ countries.

More than 60 lending companies offer their loans on the Mintos platform, with over 25,000 people working at these companies and spread over 33 countries, so you can have a global reach when investing on Mintos.

The company supports 10 languages via its multilingual support team, while the website is available in 6 languages and there are loans available in 10 currencies.

If you’re intrigued by this episode, do make sure you check out Jean’s extensive review of Mintos on his blog.

In this episode, Joseph and Jean interview Chris Roper from MyConstant, a platform that offers crypto-backed lending and borrowing facilities.

As an investor, one may use several products available on the MyConstant site to obtain interest on their fiat currencies or stable currencies. On the other hand, you can also act as a borrower, by depositing crypto as collateral and obtaining a loan from MyConstant.

The platform focuses a lot on educating investors about crypto-based lending and borrowing, and as such is an ideal platform for those new to this type of investing.