DCamp - Interesting Event

There are so many fun and interesting events here. What a different world than Seattle (where there are some events but not this quantity of startups and entrepreneurs getting together so frequently). This event promises to be interesting.

Yokel - Local Shopping

Founded by Scott Randall (FairMarket) and Don Zereski (Lycos), Yokel is a local shopping search web site. The company was founded in 2005 and is currently in beta.

Yokel tells you where things are in local stores. Suppose you want to find a television in your area, you can "Yokel" for it. Yokel will show you all the stores in your area (Sears, Wal-Mart, CompUSA, etc.) that have a television in stock. Pretty convenient if you need to find something and don't want to order it online.

Randall previously founded FairMarket, an Internet auction software provider in 1997. The company had a $100M IPO in 2000. Zereski was VP of Products for Lycos, where he was involved with Matchmaker, quote.com, Tripod, and other Lycos online properties.

All in all it's a very compelling team with an interesting product. I'll be interested to see more.

If you search on MSN, the company comes up under "television stores" ranked third.

PeLeMa: Another Peer to Peer Lending Network

Another peer to peer lending company? PeLeMa falls into the same category as Prosper and Zopa.

I have not read about the company anywhere else but they are advertising on google. Search for "peer to peer lending" and both Prosper and PeLeMa come up.

PeLaMa indicates that they have made $400K in loans and have 8,000 registered members.

It'll be very interesting to see how this market plays out.