ZapMeals: Closing the Gap Betwen Mouse and Tummy

A great new Web 2.0 launch that plans on revolutionizing the restaurant and take-out industries. The start-up has an amazingly ambitious plan to help restaurants and home cooks monetize they excess capacity and inventory while delivering quality, low-cost food options. This is an amazing long-tail opportunity that I never even saw coming. Basically the company connects local buyers and sellers of meals, while redefining who the sellers can be (anyone who likes to cook) and offering their services to a global buying audience. This is one company I’m going to watch intently! Check out their presentation and you’ll see why I cant wait for it to launch!

Zopa Planning a National Roll-out?

I’ve been a Prosper lender since October of last year and in January I started lending on Kiva as well but my online lending trifecta wont be complete until I can gamble on human hope using Zopa. Zopa is an online market place for lending to other folks much like Prosper in reverse. I’ve been anxiously awaiting the coming of Zopa but despite all the funding noise and media attention they havent made it to the US.

Well that may be about to change. According to an email they sent out this morning they are getting ready to launch, not just in the California as they originally stated, but nationally. With Zopa I’ll be able to loan money for as little as 6 months and further diversity my portfolio of person to person loans. From purely social lending on Kiva to the modestly social lending on Prosper and wholly economic lending on Zopa, I am becoming a banking institution $100 at a time.