right before our podcast I borrowed from one of the community members because my car broke and it needs repair

so I quickly went to to lendvils out and borrowed money like for real and took me only like 30 seconds to match with another person

so I'm happy that that product exists so even I can use it

look I struggle to pronounce digital and decisioning two words I have to say on most work days so there's no way I'm going to try the name of that Icelandic volcano that erupted in 2010

but if you were trying to travel at the time you'll know the one I mean it grounded flights just before my first trip to Oslo

one my boss and I needed to make I went by train a rather comfortable eight hours of the west coast of Sweden with plenty of space to stretch my legs

my boss for reasons I'll never understand decided to go by bus an overnight bus for 12 hours with his knees around his ears

none of this is relevant in any meaningful way to what we're about to discuss except that we're in Norway

the only country I visited by air sea and rail and it was that or talk about how expensive everything is there

although as I say it that might have been the more sensible introduction to what is actually a show about a business with its roots in a personal cost of living crisis

welcome to how to lend money to strangers with Brendan Lagrange

Angelica Osmanova founder and CEO of Landwell a Norway-based peer-to-peer lending platform welcome to the show

I personally have a soft spot for the peer-to-peer model I've explored it recently with Keva and before that with Monxo

and I have a soft spot for Norway having spent a couple of years working in the region but I'm going to delay my gratification for a minute

because your early life and your early career is too interesting to just glass over

so Leica before we get into what you're doing now tell me a bit about your life and your work before Landwell

absolutely hope first bring great pleasure to be on your podcast and thank you so much for inviting me over

my early life is quite interesting I come from Kazakhstan originally as of now I've been living in Norway for about 10 years

but how it all started was from me getting a scholarship to study in Norway and the scholarship was too small to pay for basic expenses

so it was around like four times lower than a standard salary in Norway and I had to borrow a lot of money from my peers to be able to pay my rent

which as you can imagine was not a very pleasant experience because you have to ask can you lend me a little bit of money here

a little bit of money there and have to remember who you borrow money from and I haven't dreaming of having an application that could sold these kind of issues for me

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