Read our newsletter packed with all the latest buzz, developments, news, and stories from Pigeon.

The Carrier | Pigeon

Heeeeeey everyone! Welcome back to The Carrier! Can you believe it’s July already? We’re more than halfway through the year and have so much to share with you as we take a break from our regularly scheduled tanning program.

This month we've got a good one. While most other newsletters around the world are covering Twitter suing Elon Musk (I think this is the second straight month we’ve name-dropped this man 🤔), Biden surviving COVID, or the fall of the British government <- lol, I feel like this happens a lot…our July edition of The Carrier will have you feeling pretty spicy by the end of it. We’ll be covering new features, national news coverage, and robots — yes robots.

Alright, it’s time to come clean. What were you doing on July 14th at about 8 PM EST ? 👀

If you were tuned into CNBC watching The News With Shepard Smith — SHAME ON YOU! If you didn't hear from our numerous social media posts, here, here, and here 🙄 we got featured on national TV! Yeah, we hope you feel bad for missing it (…just kidding, we still love you).

During a super special segment, one of the co-founders of Pigeon, Kaben Clauson, chatted with Andrea Day about inflation in America and how it is forcing people to turn to their loved ones in a time of need.

As a part of our 5 minutes of fame, CNBC interviewed a pair of our beloved customers Connor Woodrum and his brother Christian. Christian and Connor are awesome early members of the Pigeon community, and they used our technology to aid in the purchase of a new car. As you’ll hear in their story, Connor desperately needed a new car in order to get to commute to and from his new job, but he didn’t have any credit or savings built up in his time of need. So, lo and behold, Christian came to the rescue and offered to loan Connor some money to make it through this ordeal. Wanna guess what platform they used to service that loan? 😏

We’ll give you a hint, it starts with an ‘igeon’ and ends with ‘loans’. He he he.

Want to watch the full segment? Check it out, below 👇

Inflation forcing folks to ask family and friends for loans

If you’ve used Pigeon (which you should have by now if you’re continuing to read our newsletters) you may have had to undergo our “less than ideal” process in order to attach your banking information to your Pigeon account. Up until now, you would have to present us with your routing number and your account number, we would confirm those details with our payment processor, send you 2 microdeposits within 2–3 business days, have you come back to our website to confirm those deposits, and only then would we allow you to transact using that bank account 😕 yeaaaaah we know…

Anyways! Those days are in the past! And now we have created the ability for you to instantly add your banking information to Pigeon!

We get it! When people need cash, they usually need it pretty quickly. So after tinkering away at this for a while we finally added the ability for you to make Instant Bank additions to your Pigeon account!

Since we are spending the next couple of weeks celebrating Beyoncé’s new album release, let us put it this way:

Beyoncé is a queen. Beyoncé wouldn’t wait for her bank account to be added to Pigeon if it took a long time. Beyoncé would use Instant Banking. You should be like Beyoncé and use Instant Banking.

We are always working on ways to improve our platform and the Pigeon experience for you. We want to make sure that you know we are there for you and are available to guide you through all your questions and concerns as you make loans with your friends, family, colleagues, loved ones, and more.

Recently we partnered with Intercom to offer you an additional way to reach us if you want to ask us questions, clarify something, or give us feedback. If you’ve visited our website in the past couple of weeks, you may have noticed a tad bit more blue on your computer screen. Go to pigeonloans.io — do you see that little blue box on the bottom right-hand side of your screen? Yeah, that’s our new robot — and it’s here to pump you up!

If you click on that little blue box, you’ll enter into an awe-inspiring world of customer service support. Usually, you’ll see the handsome or beautiful face of one of our real human employees pop up on your screen, but if we are asleep (which we tend to do at least once a week) you’ll meet our new robot friend who will help you out while we are away.

Our goal is to answer any questions, comments, concerns, ideas, or feedback as fast as possible and as helpful as possible.

So far we’ve gotten rave feedback on our new customer engagement tool. Issues are getting resolved faster, more information is being passed along, and we are better equipped than ever before to make your Pigeon experience as simple and easy to undergo as possible!

Also, in case you don’t want to chat with us or our robot (it’s okay, we won’t take it personally), we’ve set up some helpful articles and content within our chat widget itself. So if you want to access our articles, FAQs, or learn best practice tips and tricks on your own, you can do that all with the click of a button.

Weeeeeeell, that is all we have for you this month!

As always thanks for being you and hanging out with us till the end of this month’s edition of The Carrier.

Hehe, we switched up our farewell on you. Stay speedy. Meep meep.

July 2022: All The Latest News About Pigeon

Check out all the exciting things that happened in the Pigeon community in July 2022. We made it onto primetime TV with a recent CNBC interview! We're also covering our newest updates to our tech and some awesome self-help tools we've created just for you.

The Carrier: Breaking All Barriers

How you doin this fine evening in late June (or maybe early July by the time you’re reading this 😉 timezones, am I right)

Happy first month of summer! We know a lot of you are taking some time off from work, enjoying some quality family moments, forming new memories with sand in your toes, or maybe you’ve been going on flirty little walks(you know what they say about June? June is for lovers!). Since you’re all soooooo busy, we will keep this month’s edition of your favorite newsletter short and sweet.

The first thing on the list to cover today is a fascinating, fabulous, and fun article about Pigeon on (🥁….drum roll please….🥁) Forbes!

The founders of Pigeon recently got together for a casual but meaningful conversation with Frederick Daso to chat about who we are, how we work, and where our future fits in societal trends right now. If you have any questions about Pigeon at all, this might be a great starting point to get to know us better - Frederick was on point with the questions he asked.

Honestly, we know a lot of you guys are lazy readers, so here is your TLDR -below are some of the highlights from the article:

Nearly 27 million Americans relied on borrowing from friends and family in 2021 according to a Bloomberg article.

Many don’t know that Pigeon recently changed its business model to make our lending tool completely free.

Our investors believe we are the solution to helping fix bad predatory lending practices.

The recent decline in the U.S. economy makes the opportunity for Pigeon even bigger, with more people turning to their social circles for financial help than in years prior.

Usually, we are here to joke around and brag about ourselves a little bit (mama is proud of us too). But for this next announcement, we, unfortunately, have to shift the tone to a slightly more serious note.

Recently, we’ve been made aware of individuals, groups, and entities using our name, image, and likeness to portray our services in an unethical light across the Internet. Over the past few weeks, the team behind the Pigeon magic has been working on thwarting external efforts to use Pigeon's likeness to defraud and scam vulnerable individuals in a vulnerable time of need.

Here are a couple of examples of this behavior we have seen in recent weeks:

Members of Facebook groups pretending to be employees of Pigeon in order to defraud uninformed individuals;

Promises of unknown groups & individuals claiming to give out loans on our behalf after filling out an application and submitting an ‘origination fee’ via methods like CashApp or Zelle;

Fake applications, surveys, or inquiries for information from people in need of loans;

These unethical and immoral acts described above are in no way associated with Pigeon, our employees, brand, community, name, image, or likeness.

As we continue to grow and better enable people to help one another across the world, we want to make sure you protect yourself and make smart decisions as you interact with the community that is Pigeon. So today we are reaffirming our commitment to do right by you!

Please protect yourself, and keep in mind these things when interacting with Pigeon:

When in doubt, send us a note at support@pigeonloans.io or chat us online via our website.

Pigeon will never ask for personal information outside our official channels.

Pigeon does not currently provide loans to anyone; we are not a licensed lender or partnered with one that enables us to distribute loans.

Our official email and messaging channels end in @usepigeon.io or @pigeonloans.io, we do not own addresses ending in Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or other domain name providers.

Pigeon is a free platform that will not charge you any mandatory fees (i.e., no origination fees, no subscription fees, no forced costs to use our services).

Pigeon employees will never reach out to you outside of official company channels.

Our official business names are Pigeon or Pigeon Loans, Inc. — we do not operate under any other name.

Our official channels, contact information, social media, posts, and more can all be found on our homepage www.usepigeon.io 😊

If you would like to read more about this in greater detail, you can check out our published piece here. And once again, when in doubt just shoot us an email or a ping and we will be more than happy to assist or any answer questions you might have.

Now, to lighten the mood a little we’ll return to our regularly scheduled program to bring you amazing news! We did it, we really did it, and we lasted longer on the podcast airwaves than anyone ever thought possible. We recently released our 20th episode of The Chirp and we’re so excited to share this news with all 10 of you…!

For all you Chirp fans out there you already know we normally interview all kinds of people. Entrepreneurs, writers, musicians, thinkers, artists, philanthropists, travelers, mechanics, and so many more, we keep an eclectic bunch of people in our inner circle.

For this episode, we have decided to celebrate and instead of coming to you with only one guest this episode, we’re bringing you a super montage episode filled with all of our greatest hits over the course of the last nineteen episodes! A list of names you might recognize includes:

Dan Narcisco, an expert in Litigation Finance

Chris Daniels, Founder of the Shrimp Society

Josh Barker, CEO of City Innovations Labs

So go ahead, give it a listen and let us know what you think. And, if you have a sneaking suspicion that you would like to be on the show, or that you have some evoking stories surrounding loans or personal finance — please reach out! We want you! We need you! 😩 We would love to have you!

Well, folks, that’s all. We promised you an easy read, didn’t we?

Get out there and enjoy the summer weather with your friends and family, and remember to check in with us from time to time too!

June 2022: All The Latest News About Pigeon

Check out all the exciting things that happened in the Pigeon Loans community in June 2022. We've got a feature in Forbes, a word of caution for our community, and a special episode of The Chirp to share!

The Carrier: An Episode, An Article, A Caution. Oh My!

Okay, okay, okay. We know it’s been a while. We were busy ya know. It takes a lot of energy to try and outbid Elon Musk on his hostile takeover of Twitter 💁‍♀️

But we’re back! And this edition of The Carrier actually might be one of our feistiest ones yet. You gotta remember since we didn’t publish a newsletter last month 😲😲 we have a bunch of double whammy content lined up for you this month.

⚠️ Hazard Warning: This news is so hot off the press that it may lead to severe burns, mind-numbing excitement, or other injuries if not handled with care.

Now that Brittany is free, we have decided to take over the cause and pivot the movement to #FreePigeon. With all due respect to the “Princess of Pop”, we’ve made a monumental change to Pigeon that is sure to excite everyone!

So here we go! As of today and forevermore, we’ll be traveling the globe releasing captive pigeons in cities all across the world! That’s our new business!

Actually, our news is even better than that. Pigeon is now free to use for everyone and anyone! (cue Jamaican air horn)

Since our inception, we’ve dedicated ourselves to a mission of wanting to help people, and the way we do that best is by making empowering people to make finances more accessible to one another, especially within communities, social circles, and relationships. We’ve already helped tens of thousands of people and have created more than $1,000,000 in loans between folks across 7 different countries. However, we believe we can do more, and have decided now is the time to put our money where our mouth is. We want to take our mission of social good to the next level.

So with that said, our product is now free to use. You can create, import, track, build and manage however way you want for as little cost as you want. We’ve wiped away any mandatory fees on our platform and left in its place optional costs when it comes to moving money through our application, which you’re obviously never forced to do. 😉

This does seem too good to be true. Well, luckily for us — you’ve just got trust issues because this is true. Go check out our website, and have a look around. We bet you won’t be able to find a subscription fee anywhere… Go on… Give it a try 😏

We know, we know. This might take some time to process. Please take some time to look up some counseling resources near you if you feel like you need to talk to someone. But as you will see over the next year or so, we are working on launching a whole series of products & ideas that will help better facilitate relationship-based finances. So, process this news fast and strap in for a whole ride.

Some of you probably would have noticed this by now, but a couple of weeks ago we made some tweaks, improvements, and redesigns to the website. With all of these “other” changes happening with Pigeon (cough cough, did we mention we’re free now all, cough cough).

Have a look at some of the changes you can find now!

A whole new loan creation flow. Which you can also use to track existing loans that you might have started before your Pigeon journey! This is a great opportunity if you want to just document transactions with your lender or your borrower of any given loan:

Our payment methods are here to stay as well, check them out with their new modernized look.

Annnnnd, of course, we created an awesome tour video of this new experience just for you. Cue the background music!

Pigeon Loans Brand New User Experience Preview

Okay now that we’ve covered the changes you will be seeing or interacting with in real life, it is time to draw the curtain back a little and show you the latest behind-the-scenes development at Pigeon.

For all of you wondering how well our company is doing financially (which might be all 3 of you), let’s just say we’re doing well, and we’ll continue to do well for at least the next couple of years. We just CLOSED AN OVERSUBSCRIBED SEED ROUND. And as of early April 2022, Pigeon become one of the hottest kids on the startup block as a result of us officially raising and closing $2.5 Million Dollars 😲

And please, don’t hate on us for using Baby Yoda in this newsletter. With news this good, we had to rely on the force of the Internet OG.

Anyways, where were we? Oh yes — we raised a total of 2.5 million smacaronies in an extremely successful Seed round, and we plan to use that money to make Pigeon even better for you! We are extremely grateful for all the generosity and trust we have received from our investors, customers, and community. So, thank you!

Muahahaha, your favorite ghostwriter will be back next month for another edition of Da Carrier!

May 2022: All The Latest News About Pigeon

Check out all the exciting things that happened in the Pigeon Loans community in May 2022. We're announcing our new free-to-use service, we're launching a brand new user experience, and we've got more pigeon-related jokes than ever before!

The Carrier: We’re Back & Full Of Free Updates

Wooooohooo, Woooo, Wooow, Woa, Wow. It’s probably mind-boggling to even think about how many different words there are to express your excitement for this month’s newsletter. Woah! We know, calm down Stacy…

Welcome to the March installment of The Carrier. Like every other month, this edition is packed with the latest and greatest updates directly from Pigeon’s ghostwriter. And this month, you are all in for a special ride: we are feeling fun, flirty (is this PC?), and ready for some spring treats! For both newsletter veterans, and newcomers (shame on you for taking this long to find us) alike: “Welcome, welcome, welcome!”

How many words starting with the letter “M” do you think we can cram into one sentence? The month of March marked many memorable days, filled with momentous moments.

^ Our intern is back, please excuse their corniness.

Momentous Moment 1: YC Demo Day 👨‍🏫

By this point, everyone knows (if you didn’t know…again…shame on you) that we have been hard at work trudging through Y Combinator workshops, talking to our customers aka you, and developing strategies to further grow Pigeon and this amazing community we’ve built. As is the tradition at YC, we underwent DEMO DAY (*enter dramatic music* dun dun duuuuuuuun!), which is the grand finale. Every YC company in this batch, all 414 of us, huddled together for 2 days to pitch to more than 1,100+ interested investors our dreams for changing the world with our businesses.

Well, Demo Day for us was on March 29th. Along with founders from 42 other countries, representing every possible industry, and solving every kind of problem imaginable. We are still coming down from the post-Demo Day high, but we’ve loved speaking to everyone who was interested in getting to know us or joining our flock! It was & is invigorating, to say the least.

You can read more about the event, and the W22 batch here. Wanna watch our pitch? We’ve granted your wish below 👇

Pigeon Loans: Y Combinator Demo Day W22 Pitch

We did want to take a moment to thank Y Combinator, for not only letting us participate in the batch but also for mentoring us throughout the past three months. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience we’ll never forget.

Momentous Moment 2: The Miami Modern Finance Forum 🎙️

Okay, so we told you in last month’s newsletter that we were hosting a Q&A and party for the Pigeon community, and well we did that. On March 11th we conducted The Miami Modern Finance Forum! To kick off our newest fundraise (wait till you read next month’s newsletter 🙃), we gathered all of the Miami-based Y Combinator-backed startups in the W22 batch (who also presented at Demo Day btw!)

We hosted a special panel and Q&A, sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank, where we were able to chat with a special select group of investors and stakeholders. We answered some questions, we ate some delicious food (shoutout Coyo Taco), and we had many engaging conversations throughout the night.

Here is a breakdown of the companies that presented at the panel:

​Building dream careers in technology. Teaching UX/UI design and to help people get great jobs.

​A modern luxury black card membership with a digital 24/7 concierge. Onyx is a personalized and more affordable luxury credit card experience for the next generation.

​Embedded finance platform for LatAm. Valari allows companies to access additional capital based on revenue and issue loans to interested customers.

​The future of savings. Finnt makes it easy for anyone to earn high-interest rates from the crypto market.

…and yours truly was there *takes a bow* but you already know us.

And of course, you might recall us mentioning an after-party in newsletters past 👀?

Well, let’s just say “what happens at the Miami Modern Finance Forum After Party, stays at the Miami Modern Finance Forum After Party”.

Momentous Moment 3: An All-Star Engineer 🦸

Finally, we have found ourselves an all-star engineer to join the team and we couldn’t be more excited to introduce him to everyone! Let’s all put our hands together, smile nice and big for us, and welcome Brennan Batalla — our new ✨Director of Engineering✨.

Pigeon on LinkedIn: Meet Our Flock: Brennan Batalla

Brennan received his Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rowan University in South Jersey, followed by his Master’s Degree in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Pigeon, he has worked at Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, and Capital One. Now, as Director of Engineering, Brennan will be working towards developing every aspect of the Pigeon platform (literally everything). We could not be happier to have him on board.

And, might we say it seems like Brennan is equally as excited to join us, as we are to have him. We shall leave you with a quote, directly from Brennan:

The experience I gained from working for these large tech giants was valuable, but I have never felt quite at home, like a bird without a flock.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for scrolling. Thanks for being you. And we’re out (mic drop).

March 2022: All The Latest News About Pigeon

Check out all the exciting things that happened in the Pigeon Loans community in March 2022. We've got presentations, new team members, Demo Day, and more!

The Carrier: Exciting Beginnings & Bittersweet Endings

Ahhhhh excited to hear from us again? 😏

It was the shortest month of the year, but funny enough this is now the second time you’ll be hearing from us in February. If this sentence confused you…first shame on you…second, that means you missed our HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT (so go read it!). We know, we know, we’re not going to keep you waiting any while longer, you’re excited for this double dose of The Carrier and so are we — so let’s get to it!

We are throwing a celebration for the Pigeon community!

You are invited to the Miami Modern Finance Forum After Party.

8 PM at The Freehold ( Located right on NW 2nd Ave in the heart of Wynwood, Miami).

The most exciting part of our Y Combinator journey so far has been getting to know the other companies in our cohort, learning from them, and sharing resources as well as experiences together. So with that in mind, we wanted to bring together all of the Miami based W22 Y Combinator companies under one roof, and host a joint panel, codenamed the Miami Modern Finance Forum *sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank*. This momentous event is invite-only and only open to investors in our upcoming Seed round. BUT, we thought it would be fun to open up this opportunity to a larger part of the Pigeon community and so we’ve organized an after-party for the ages aka the Miami Modern Finance Forum After-Party that you’re all invited to!

That being said, please consider this your Official Invite to the Miami Modern Finance Forum After-Party! It will be on March 11th, 2022 at The Freehold in Wynwood, Miami. So, mark your calendars and come meet the Pigeon team, as well as so many other Pigeon supporters!

Oh, also… we have themed cocktails, the biggest names in Miami tech, and good music, so there is definitely something for everyone! Plus, if you arrive early you can hit the open bar (8 PM — 10 PM).

Need another couple of reasons to celebrate?

Well, why don’t you just keep on reading? 👀

This is always one of the most fun things to write about every month. We love bringing you new features which improve your lives, make the whole experience of loans with others easier, and showcase the overall Pigeon experience we all know and love. Now, for the first time ever, we’re launching a new feature! As of only a couple of weeks ago, you can now import already existing loans directly into our platform.

Picture this: You lent your sister $1,000 USD to help her pay off some debt. A couple of months later, you realized you have no idea if she ever paid you back…better yet, even said thank you (lol, yes we know the pains). And then the real questions start haunting you. Did I remind her that this was a loan? Can she even pay me back all at once? How do I even approach this situation, she’ll so defensive about it. Well, now you can go straight to Pigeon, regardless of where you are in this situation, input some information and we can take over from there. Phew. What. A. Relief. Right?

Importing loans are super easy, and honestly, just a smarter way to go about managing your money and relationships. No one has time for stress, we’ve got WW3 to worry about 👀🍵

If you’d like to learn more about our new Import Loan feature, you can visit our latest guide in the Help Center, which will walk you through this whole importing loan process step by step.

New Nest Content On Promissory Notes ✍️

Finally, we wanted to let you know that we have some fresh new content on The Nest!

As of recent weeks, we have been receiving a lot of questions about promissory notes: What are they? Are they necessary? Where can I make one? Does it have to be notarized? So, we figured we might as well build out a series of articles to answer your questions, and serve as a Grand Guide on the topic! We regularly release new content on The Nest, but here are a couple of our most recent articles in this series:

8 Ways A Promissory Note Can Become Invalid (with Examples)

What is a ‘Master’ Promissory Note (MPN) vs a Regular Promissory Note?

Should You Notarize a Promissory Note? Maybe & Here’s Why

If you want to impress your date or your in-laws, you could definitely read up on all things *promissory notes* and then spew all these fun facts at them over dinner. Like, did you know a promissory note might be rendered invalid if you do not have the original copy available?

Good thing Pigeon stores those promissory notes for you, huh? Wouldn’t want that note to be invalid… 😏👀

Anyways, that is all we have for you this month. We promise, no more newsletters from us in February! Although, we do look forward to seeing you on March 11th!

February 2022: All The Latest News About Pigeon

We've released a brand new feature that will allow you to upload and import any existing loan you may have with others! We're also celebrating in the heart of Miami, so come join us.

The Carrier: Celebrations, New Features, and more!

We know it’s February, we know…we’re late, we get it. We waited extra long for the January edition of The Carrier on purpose you party poopers. We’re sorry, we won’t do it again, but it was for a VERY GOOD reason. You might have glanced through the headlines and already guessed why we made this decision. We had no choice because this edition of your favorite monthly newsletter is going to knock your socks off! 🤯

Pigeon received a $500,000 investment from Y Combinator 🚀

Goodness, writing out those words seems almost surreal. But yes, it is true.
Out of tens of thousands of applications (literally), Pigeon was one of the lucky start ups that were selected to be part of the current Winter 2022 batch of Y Combinator !!! For the past few months we've had to keep this news super secret, and over the past couple of weeks, we have been meeting with various YC companies, learning the ropes, and have been refocusing on some really exciting developments that we are excited to share with you in the future!

Funny enough, we’re still not at liberty to reveal the exact stats for the applications for this batch (nice try VCs we know you read our newsletters), but we can give you some numbers from the last batch for context on how huge of a moment this is for Pigeon:

As part of Y Combinator, and for the first time ever in batch history, we received an additional $375,000 in investment from YC to go along with their standard deal of $125,000 invested in companies like Pigeon. Do the math, carry the one…and you get 500,000 smack-a-roonies that we get to spend on making Pigeon the best platform in the world for people like you to make loans with your friends and loved ones!

We are incredibly excited to be part of the Y Combinator family, and we cannot wait to see who we will meet, and what lessons we will learn over the next couple of months.

Now, if you have been following us from the beginning you should be a little surprised by the image above because there are new faces here! Yup, that’s right, we’ve been hiring.

We recently hired a new Director of Business Relations to join the Pigeon team. With all of the recent changes and upcoming developments, we needed to expand the team to be able to continue exceeding expectations (and making punny newsletters for you).

Benjamin Schein (aka Red, aka Jack of All Trades) has joined as the new Director of Business Relations so he can lead our efforts to greater connect to communities, businesses, and individuals with Pigeon Loans. Having worked in various industries before joining Pigeon Loans (the life of a consultant), he has a great talent for adapting to new situations and forming meaningful connections with those around him. He has been working tirelessly since he’s joined, and we could not be happier to have him.

Join us in welcoming both Ben to the Pigeon team! 🙌

Speaking of growth: Want to join the Pigeon team? You can also apply to join our team!

We are looking for an All-Star Software Engineer & a Social Content Star to come join our ragtag crew. If you’re looking for creative freedom, and the ability to design, build and orchestrate new paradigms from scratch that speak deeply to solving the needs of people we believe Pigeon is the perfect place for you to do just that!

And in case you need a little more of a reason to apply to join our team here is some little additional incentive: We have recently moved to beautiful sunny Miami! So if you happen to be visiting Miami, live in Miami, think about Miami, dream about Miami, or know how to spell Miami, you are always welcome to hang out with us at the office (though remote work is of course also acceptable 😉).

We honestly had so much other news, we didn’t even decide to put it in here (like the fact that we updated our Terms and Conditions to include our new Miami address…oops) because it would be too overwhelming.

Obviously, all of these conversations are occurring behind the scenes and with the utmost secrecy, but just know if you’re at the gas station in the next couple of weeks and see a pigeon waddle up to your car — that bird is one of ours, and we paid for that promo.

January 2022: All The Latest News About Pigeon

Pigeon is now backed by Y Combinator. And oh yeah, we moved our office to Miami and hired a couple of pretty cool folks!

The Carrier: YC, News, and Moves - Oh My!

I guess this is the end of 2021 and just like the end of 2020 (remember that year *insert nervous laughter*) we’re looking forward and definitely not backward to the upcoming year. This year has stretched everyone to their limits so not to stretch you any further we’re gonna make this final newsletter of 2021 a short, punchy, and punny look forward to the coming year.

2021 was a funny year for Pigeon because it was “technically” our first full year of existence. From January all the way until now (with only minor breaks of degeneracy in between) we’ve been working extremely hard to make our ecosystem the smartest way to make loans with your friends, family members, and loved ones, in the easiest, simplest, and safest way possible. With so much already developed, you might be wondering “hey Pigeon, what more could there be left to create?”…well Judy, funny you ask, let us tell you 😏.

In 2022 we have a few new exciting, tantalizing, overly stimulating, outrageously amazing features which we will be building just for you! All of these new creations are obviously still things we are working on, but we’ll give you at least 1 hint as to what’s to come. So without further ado, let’s reveal the first (and only) hint we’ve got for you. In 2022, we’re going to be building something very credit score oriented. We know, we know, *gasp* another thing I can’t qualify for — haha, well silly reader, we aren’t going that route, we’re doing an about-face and finding a way for you to benefit from making loans with your friends and family on our platform in a completely new, but positive way!

We will, of course, roll out a more comprehensive outline of how this new feature works. But basically, Pigeon has shaken hands with some very powerful people recently to allow you to do things that weren’t possible before in the world of interpersonal loans. In the United States, credit scores and credit history are a big deal to people’s financial journeys. So giving you all the ability to potentially do something credit score related on our platform, is going to be huge! But all of this is still a secret so don’t tell anyone 😉.

When we started this year, Pigeon had moved a grand total of less than $1,000 in loans across maybe 6 people. Honestly, it was probably just us (your alluring authors/founders) making loans with each other and our grandmothers volunteering to be our earliest beta testers (thanks gram-gram). Well over the year, we added more grandmothers to our platform, and over the course of 2021, we moved a pretty significant amount of loans for all you amazing people!

In 2021, we saw over $400,000 in monetary value moved through our loan creation platform. A far cry and a huge increase from the humble beginning we started with at the onset of the year. In 2022 however, we expect things to get even better. So for the coming new year, we’ve done our projections, and quite honestly the numbers shocked us a bit. In 2022, Pigeon is set to process over 1 million dollars in loan volume! That’s right, 1,000,000 smack-a-roonies. It’s going to be an amazing year for everyone in our community.

Soooo not going to lie, in 2021 we kind of Han Solo’ed this thing. We kept our internal circle very small, only asked for help when needed, didn’t really make a whole lot of ‘corporate friends’, and did our best to fly under the radar. However, all good solo journeys eventually come to an end, and in this upcoming year you’re going to be seeing our name pop up a lot in a lot of different places…like a lot.

In 2022, you should expect to see Pigeon across your TV screens, guest staring on your favorite podcasts, in the news (hmmm maybe a spot on TMZ), on the social webs, in your real estate pamphlets, in your bank accounts, in your dentist’s office (???), in a verse in a Migos song (brrrd brrd), we’re going to be all over the place. How is all of this possible you ask? (Good to hear you're asking the tough questions still Judy). We’ll partnerships and friendships — that’s how all of this will get done 🤗.

We’d like to leave you with one final tidbit of things to look forward to in the coming year. If you’ve been looking hard enough and have been actively refreshing our website, looking for new content every second of the day (shout out to the real ones out there) then you realized something pretty cool.

Have you noticed that we have been linking out to loads of fascinating articles via our socials, newsletters, and community outreach lately? Maybe like this one👇

Well, this is because we have been developing and growing our educational content significantly recently. The Nest home to all things finance, relationship, and loan-related is growing and will grow even faster in 2022!

In 2022, we plan to put out new articles, new podcast episodes, new videos, and even more editions of your favorite newsletter every single week! Now, we know that we’ve been pretty good at hiding all of these developments, but rest assured the moment we walk into the new year we are going to bombard you with loads and loads of awesome content — you’re welcome.

Well, there you have it, our “wrap forward” into 2022! Enjoy your parties, your celebrations, your jeers, and jives. Thank you for all your support in 2021 and we look forward to making 2022 an even better year than the last!

See you next year (haha we’re so funny).

December 2021: All The Latest News About Pigeon

Instead of recapping 2021, we're going to switch things up and let you know about all the new and exciting plans in store for Pigeon Loans in 2022!

The Carrier: Wrapping Forward To 2022

Are you also feeling the post-thanksgiving blues? Well, don’t you worry!

We have another edition of your favorite newsletter intended to continue the celebration throughout the rest of the year 💃! Since November is all about giving thanks, we wanted to structure this newsletter a little differently this month. We want to spend some time acknowledging a couple of things that we are thankful for.

Can you guess what the first “thank you” item will be in this newsletter? We will give you a little hint…it is an exciting…milestone.

We‘ve. Reached. 1,000. Loans. 😲😳😱

That's right.. not ten, not one hundred, not two-hundred and thirty-seven, but one thousand created loans on our website. That is just plain mind-boggling.

In the holiday spirit, we wanted to take the opportunity to thank all of you for trusting us and with your money and trusting the Pigeon community with your relationships and loan experiences. From businesswomen creating value in their companies to those who just need a little extra cash to cover rent, we appreciate you, and we are honored that you have joined the flock.

Here is a little insight into what these 1,000 loans are up to on our platform:

The longest loan we have on the platform is 60 months or 5 years long, and the shortest is one month long.

The average interest rate you all have been charging each other is 5.8% and these loans have a term length of about 25 months.

On average we see loans of about $5.2K in Principal value, and the total amount loaned within our platform has been over $400,000!!! Crazy.

We are ecstatic that we have been able to provide a platform for you to get these loans done and help one another in a safe, secure, and private way. 🥰

Now, can you guess what the second “thank you” item will be in this newsletter? We will give you a little hint…it is an exciting…achievement.

We Just Wrapped Up An Oversubscribed Fundraising Round 💰

You might have guessed it (but we know you definitely didn’t)!

We recently closed our very first investment round for Pigeon and did so with overwhelming support from everyday people, institutional investors, venture capitalists, research institutions, family offices, and more!

In the startup world — an oversubscribed round basically means that we have been offered much more money than we had aimed to raise. Let’s say for example you asked your buddy for $1 to buy a Birken bag (suspend your disbelief) and he gave you $2, you would have more money than you asked for given the time frame you needed it in. A signal like this is another sign of the increasing support that the Pigeon  community has for one another. Our crowdsourcing investors through WeFunder, our wonderful angel investors, our VC investors were all much more supportive than we ever could have imagined. We are extremely grateful, and we are looking forward to growing an even brighter future for Pigeon together!

Okay, can you guess what the third agenda item will be in this newsletter? We will give you another hint (since you’re batting 0 for 2 right now)…it is an exciting…opportunity.

Those who live in Florida, or those who recently bought a house might recognize ExP Realty as one of the countries fastest growing international brokerages. ExP Realty, founded in 2009, is a massive community of real estate agents (60,000 real estate agents to be precise) who help you buy, sell, or flip real estate.

This Thanksgiving season the Pigeon Loans community is thankful for a lot of things. We're thankful for our newly oversubscribed fundraising round, our new partnerships, our new milestones, and our new levels of achievement in the month of November.

Latest News via The Carrier