Ep 176 Jeff Goldenberg, the head of growth at Borrowell a leading Canadian online marketplace lender. Listen as Nathan and Jeff talk about the concept of Engineering as Marketing and the trickiness of growing a loan related business.
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3 Key Points:

Engineering as Marketing is a concept in which a service or product is provided for free and in turn is used as a lead generator.
Borrowell keeps the loans it processes off its books as it’s only a marketplace for buying and selling loans – not processing the loans themselves.
Like in the case of Borrowell, growing a business is never straightforward – Burrowell has to examine all its loans carefully so they don’t pay the price.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:00 – Nathan’s introduction to today’s show
01:40 – Jeff joins the show.
01:50 – Borrowell is a marketplace lender. They offer online loans to high credit Canadians.
03:37 – Customer acquisition cost is Burrowell’s key metric when measuring their progress.
04:42 – Borrowell isn’t bootstrapped – they’ve raised 5.4 million by the end of last year.
05:31 – Jeff talks about loan capital and equity in Borrowell.
06:22 – Borrowell is only a marketplace in which people buy and sell loans. Investors such as banks provide loan capital.
08:46 – Growth is tricky because Borrowell doesn’t want to process unreliable loans quickly that might sink them in the future.
09:36 – Jeff is available on Twitter: @jeff_goldenberg.
10:05 – Borrowell is closing in on half a billion loan applications in Canada.
11:04 – Jeff’s favorite growth tool is known as Engineering as Marketing. Which is when a service or product is made free and used as a lead generator. (Dropbox, Hubspot)
13:00 – Borrowell takes a percentage of each loan between 1-5%.
14:51 – They are raising below 20 million in a Series A.
16:53 – Famous Five

Resources Mentioned:

Edgar – Nathan uses Edgar instead of other scheduling tools for Twitter because Edgar cycles through content over and over (buffer/others you have to re-input content over and over – time consuming). In the last several months, Edgar has driven Nathan over 3728 clicks that he didn’t have to work or pay for. Here isNathan’s Edgar Content Calendar:

 
 

Growth Hacker’s Guide to The Galaxy – Growth hacks for the Digital Marketer
@jeff_goldenberg – Jeff’s Twitter
LinkedIn – Jeff’s LinkedIn
Zapier – Jeff’s favorite online tool
Traction and Choose Yourself – Jeff’s favorite business books
Elon Musk – CEO Jeff follows 

Bio Jeff Goldenberg is the Head of Growth at Borrowell, a leading Canadian online marketplace lender.  He is a sought after expert and speaker in the areas of digital marketing, growth hacking and business development for innovative, high-growth companies. He is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at MaRS Discovery District as well as a mentor at the TechStars/Startup Next accelerator.
Famous 5

Favorite Book?- Traction and Choose Yourself
What CEO do you follow?— Elon Musk
What is your favorite online tool?— Zapier
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be?— You don’t have to jump on a concept with two feet – you can test the waters first.

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