🧑‍🎓 Income-share-agreement Loans for Disadvantaged Youth

Idea started Oct 2022. Added to site April 23rd, 2024

This was the company I was going to build right after selling Finco, but the macro environment just wasn’t favorable due to extremely high interest rates.

In Latin America and developing countries in general, many promising young people from disadvantaged backgrounds never achieve their true potential due to factors external to them. Compared to their more affluent peers, their mothers had worse nutrition during pregnancy, they had a worse diet themselves, they have less stimulation growing up, and have a higher chance of dropping out of school for many different factors.. More importantly, many young people who do reach the end of high school still don’t go to the next step in their educational path because of economic, societal or other problems.

What if you could find the students who managed to beat the odds, and who not only finished high school but excelled above their peers? What if you could give them a chance to study a high-earning-potential career and find them a corresponding high-paying job? you would be changing not only their lives but that of their families and future offspring as well. True social mobility would be achieved, their potential not lost to inequality but rather realized thanks to grit and perseverance. Something like Makers with a more social focus.

I think you could offer these students an opportunity to study these careers through an Income-Share-Agreement loan. You would have every incentive to help them get the best possible career and job offer to maximize gains on the loan, while they would have every incentive to keep excelling to change their lives.

It would be important to also aid in adjusting to an alien academic setting, mental health, living costs and other important factors that may determine their chances of realizing their dream. Also, programs wouldn’t necessarily need to be 4 year long programs. Why not 1 or 2-year-long courses on current demanded skills in the tech economy? This would lower costs, lower time to graduation, lower time to revenue, and lower drop-out rates.

This has been my dream company for a couple of years now. Maybe soon I’ll get it done.