PAY IT FORWARD: The Student Finance & Income Share Agreement (ISA) Blog
How Students, Educators, Employers *and* Investors Win Together with ISAs
Student Loans Are Also Income Share Agreements BUT Tax Low Earners More!
Some people have asked me about how loans are different from ISAs. Here is an important fact. At its heart, a loan is also an income share agreement, because you are paying off your loan from your income, thus “sharing” your income! Here is the key difference between...
Paying for College: Why We’re Doing It All Wrong
The dream of higher education, and what that means for subsequent generations, is starting to feel more out of reach for many students today, because of the mountains of debt that’s often required to complete a program. However, accessing loans to fund a degree...
How to Improve Your Most Important Interpersonal Skills for Professional Success
In many job settings, communication is key whether managing a team or executing day-to-day work. Whether you’re brainstorming ideas to solve a problem with your supervisor or navigating an issue with a work colleague, it’s important to not only know how to handle...
Job Seekers: To Attract Recruiters, Build and Maintain a Professional Brand… Everywhere
There is a lot about the 2020 job search that is simply out of anyone’s control. Regardless of how stressful this situation may feel, do your best to create opportunity for yourself. Use this time to better understand the employer recruitment process and set yourself...
5 Ways to Improve Your Resume to Get Interviews and Get Hired
We’ve all heard that having a stellar resume is one of the best ways of improving your chances of landing an interview. But how do you know that you have a great resume? What if you’re not getting any responses after applying for jobs that seem perfect for you and the...
The 3 Keys to a Successful Job Search Strategy: Do the Work
If you knew how to leverage recruiting trends and technology deployed by employers for your job search benefit, would you do the work? Great news, thinking through your approach ahead of time will enable you to generate a less stressful and more efficient strategy for...
The Income Share Agreement (ISA) as an Investment Hedge – Why is it Safer?
The ideal investment for a financial investor is one that moves with the market in a good economy and against it (or not change much with it) in a bad one. Finding such an investment is hard. The best that investors can typically do is to invest a portion of their...
Student Debt Can Hurt Job Prospects. Income Share Agreements Can Help.
An important effect of student debt that has not received a lot of attention is that it reduces the amount of time available to finding a job and leads to compromises during job searches. Students have to make debt payments after graduation and must find employment as...
Which is More Like Indentured Servitude: Income Share Agreement or Student Loan?
We have heard the concern that income share agreements (ISAs) can be like indentured servitude. At face value, this seems plausible, given the notion of “income sharing” embedded in the name of this financing option. I would like to dispel this criticism of ISAs in...
Will Income Share Agreements (ISAs) Only Work by Cherry-Picking “STEM” Programs? The Reality is Quite Different.
Update (3/2019): I had a great conversation with Will Quist at the 2019 Life Capital conference and acknowledge his well taken point. That is, in the discussion that follows, we are assuming that ISAs have a cap. The question of what kind of cap structure is optimal...
ISA Investment 101: Key Risks in ISA Investing
ISA investing strategy, like any other investment option, has risks. Having invested in early stage companies as angel investors, the co-founders of MentorWorks take risk and risk mitigation very seriously. Our ISA investment risk assessment strategy is similar to...
ISA Investment 101: Due Diligence
In our time as angel investors, we have conducted due diligence through a relatively extensive process, with multiple checklists, reference checks, expert conversations, and document checks. Christopher Mirabile, Managing Director at Launchpad Venture Group describes...