Last month, I interviewed Akash Agarwal about his new company, GreenNote. GreenNote is a microfinance Web site that you can visit to get help paying for college. Today it officially launches (although it has found some success in testing). Here is some information from a press release GreenNote sent me:
Students with active loan drives through GreenNote choose whether they wish to participate with the GreenNote Network of lenders. Unlike private bank loans or other traditional loans, GreenNote does not require students to have a credit report, co-signer or show proof of citizenship. The rate is fixed at 6.8 percent compared …read more

“Today, the cost of college is skyrocketing,” Akash Agarwal tells me. “It is growing faster than inflation and faster than the median income. Federal student aid is shrinking. This leads to a college funding gap for many students.”
Agarwal is the CEO of GreenNote, a new college loan provider (launching next month) that aims at using microfinance to close that college funding gap. “Up until now, students had to turn to expensive private loans to meet their needs,” he says.
The idea is that everyone has a social network. Students can take advantage of that by asking friends and relatives (and even …read more