Stanford students Harrison Hochman ’21 and Devin Cintron ’20 launched a pilot of Sparrow Lending
Entrepreneur Name: Harrison Hochman and Devin Cintron, (Age: 21)
Business Name: Sparrow Lending, Stanford, California, United States
Harrison Hochman a 21-year-old young man and Devin Cintron a 20-year-old young man launched their digital platform that helps lots of students. Harrison Hochman and Devin Cintron, founders of Sparrow. Sparrow is a new online crowdsourcing platform allows students to fund their tuition and living expenses through small, non-accredited loans based on their GPA and personal stories. Hochman who is one of the founders said that they believe the profile of a non-accredited lender could be alumni who feel affectionate toward their next generation at their alma mater and are looking to make a social impact investment.
Hochman began to develop the idea last year when he participated in Birthright Excel. It is a startup accelerator program based in Tel Aviv. Hochman went on designing a better financing system for students who can't afford. He did this after learning about another participant’s exorbitant student loan package in Brightright Excel. Hochman continued working on Sparrow after the program. Cintron joined him at the beginning of spring quarter after the two were connected by Eric Lax MBA ’17, co-founder of the income-pooling startup Pando.
Sparrow does not emphasize credit scores or income histories in assessing students’ creditworthiness, the founders said. Instead, it lets students present themselves through customized profiles. Each student’s profile includes information such as GPA, extracurricular involvement, work experience, career goals and personal story. The founder Hochman said “A student is more than just that FICO score, more than just their GPA, more than just the internship they had at Goldman Sachs,” And that's correct!!
