Kiva truly inspires me, not just because of what it does, but also because of its awesome, bootstrapped biz model. Some of the best lessons to be learned from Kiva's model can be found here.

Quoted: Yup, there’s a lot any entrepreneur can learn from the Kiva story

cheap, but good?

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Good news. Wells Fargo remains as one of the strongest mortgage lenders. For a bank, they still have a good number of mortgage products.

Quoted: NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co , the fifth-largest U.S. bank, reported surprisingly strong quarterly results and raised its dividend, easing investor fears about mortgage losses and causing its shares to soar on Wednesday.

To think that the maker of Budweiser, the symbol of American beer giants, will likely be sold to the Belgian brewer that makes Becks and Stella Artois.

Quoted: Anheuser-Busch is said to be in friendly talks to sell itself to the Belgian brewer InBev, which raised its offer to $70 a share from $65.

We haven't yet seen the Spring rebound we've expected, although condo units in certain areas of the city are moving well. As the article stated, good deals can be found in new construction, where builders holding onto several properties are most likely to make deals.

There's a lot of anxiety in the market centered around such issues as: whether or not prices will continue to fall; mortgage market problems; the general condition of the economy; volatility in gas/food prices; employment. . . . The advantage of the current RE market is that serious buyers have breathing room to carefully consider their situations.

Quoted: Networking is all about meeting people and making conversation, but there’s much more to it than that, or there could be, if you do it right. Ilise Benun's article will prevent you from making all the networking mistakes.

Quoted: ""All of the state's major industries are hitting [peaks] at the same time," Portland-based economist John Mitchell said. Anderson rates chances of a Seattle-area recession next year at just 15 percent, versus 35 percent for the nation as a whole.

The interesting thing about Redfin is that it's a tech company. Its business strategy and models have more in common with IT startups than traditional real estate businesses, which is what makes it unique. Critics would then say that the focus on revenue growth and web expansion is what takes the requisite personal experience away from real estate process.

Quoted: Admit that revenues are a mystery. If you don't have any revenues yet, you can't say what they'll be. The point of a model is to prove you can make money if people buy your product, not to insist that they will. By developing different scenarios based on different levels of demand, you can later calibrate hiring and spending according to which scenario fits reality best.

Quoted: Recently, Forbes magazine and TV financial pundits as diverse as Jim Cramer and Suze Orman all have the same advice: "Invest in Seattle real estate."