It’s our 3^rd anniversary! A big “Thank You” to all our customers, supporters and friends.😊
It’s the right time to share with you some real stories. Here they are!

Converting an inquisitive visitor into a supporter (Fani)

It was during a weekend just before Summer 2017. We received a challenging question on Facebook. Someone had investigated the hosting of our website and noticed that it had been registered in the name of an ex-colleague, Bilyana. He was stating that it is something strange, even suspicious…

I spent quite a lot of time chatting with him, explaining that the domain ownership was OK, trying to convince him that we’re not a pyramid! I even contacted Superhosting to update the information in the public directory Whois.

The questions were sharp, and the person was obviously an expert, both in Technology and in Finance.

After a few hours of exchanges, we closed the discussion. I believed I had pretty much answered all the concerns raised. Time to rest and enjoy the weekend after sweating a lot…

A few days later, we discovered by surprise that a review of Klear had been published in one of the most influential financial blogs in Bulgaria. It was a deep analysis, mostly positive and obviously genuine.

Unexpected rewards always have the best taste!

Santa Klaus special squad (Fani)

In autumn 2017, we had launched a campaign called Beer to Beer, producing delicious Klear branded crafted beers, one at 5.5% for investors and one for borrowers at 6.5%😊

We decided to use part of the stock as a gift for our top 30 investors.

So, by the end of December, we all spent a day packing nice boxes of these beers, contacting our customers to arrange a delivery in person by someone from the team.

It was a great moment of fun for all of us. Many of our investors were deeply touched by this personal attention.

We try our best to provide a full lean and efficient online service. But sometimes, having a face to face meeting with our customers is invaluable. We love it!

Falling from the sky (Plamen)

Our first office was on the last floor of a nice building close to Tokuda. It had a great terrace with a built-in barbecue facility. One day, in spring 2016, we organized a barbecue party after work. Everything was going well when, suddenly, we heard a deafening noise. A crane had fallen on the Petrol station, 50 meters from our office. We were shocked. The station was destroyed and soon sirens of ambulances were heard coming.

We cancelled the barbecue. Not in the mood. We knew we had been extremely lucky not to be hit. But we could not enjoy the moment as some people had been hit by the crane. The days later, we understood that the injuries were not life threating. Well, that was kind of a miracle.

We almost all cried (Plamen)

One day Bibi, one of our first colleagues, announced us that she had decided to leave, following her husband who was taking a new job outside Bulgaria.

For the farewell party, each of us secretly had recorded a video with a personal message to our colleague and friend.

Came the day of the party which we held at the office. We opened a few bottles of a nice French white wine and the show began.

Each video was an amazing piece of pure emotion. Bibi could not refrain from crying and all of us got a least one tear in the eye.

Expedition in Ruse (Plamen)

We regularly organize Uncover P2P events to explain the model and to have discussions with people interested in investing. That’s great but it’s for people living in Sofia only.

Then, one day we received an invitation from Vihren, a friend and an investor from Ruse. He’s the man behind the Startup Factory in Ruse. He proposed to come and have a weekend session with the Tech community of Ruse to show the model and to present the technical architecture of the platform. Loic would do the business model part and I was designated to show the software technical details.

I still can’t understand how an extreme introvert like me accepted such a challenge… It was 100 times more difficult than coding in the backend of Klear platform. But we made it, and I even stayed on stage twice the planned time😊 I would not say that I felt like a fish in the ocean, but afterwards, the feeling of accomplishing something beyond my limits was just great.

Ruse expedition will stay printed in my memory.

It’s time (Bobi)

It was one summer evening and as usual, we were making one of our Uncover P2P events. But this time, we were in a new place and only a handful number of people came. Still, we made the full presentation and a little demo of the platform, followed by a Q&A session. After that, we finished the event and with the couple of people that stayed, we decided to reward ourselves with a few beers, meantime continuing the discussion about P2P Lending and the platform itself.

Time was passing, and, in the end, we were only us (four colleagues from Klear) and two of our attendees - a boy and a girl. We kept talking and at a moment the girl looked at her watch and saw that it was around 22:00. She said: “Guys, it’s long after work, why do you still stay after the presentation, just for two people, instead of going home?” We looked each other, and we replied "Cause the project, Klear and everything we do, we do it really with a pleasure and even when we are giving from our free time to explain to only two people what we have created, seeing the positive feedback from them and having just nice discussions about it, it’s a real joy and a great motivator to continue further with the work that we are doing! “

We stayed a little bit more, just casually chatting until the time came to close.

Then we gathered our stuff and headed home to rest, waiting the sun to rise again and the new day to start, allowing us to have the chance to do something that we love.

It’s Christmas time! (Andrey)

Friday 23 December 2016, it’s 16.30. We’re almost done with the week and ready to head to well-deserved Christmas vacation.

It’s also the time we usually check the last daily batch of incoming payments in our online banking.

Suddenly, Bobi shouts out. Hey, we received 98 000 BGN from a new investor.

Come on Bobi, you’re joking!

Well, it was not a joke. We had opened the platform 2 months ago only, so Lukasz called our investor to check that there was no mistake, that for example he did not put an extra zero😊 But everything was confirmed. We got the declaration of origin of funds and we offered him special conditions with a few shares of the company. Everybody was delighted.

Since this time, he has doubled the amount invested with Klear.

Meeting our customers (Andrey)

I loved our first B2B meetup. It was in March 2016.

It was our first attempt to have face to face discussion with whoever wanted to know more about Klear and about us. We didn’t know what to expect and who would come.

Surprise😊

It was great indeed. We all had a nice and fun evening. We talked a lot with many people. Some were friends. Some were unknown, and we simply enjoyed meeting new interesting people.

Since this day, we keep organizing similar events on regular basis.

A customer feedback which makes you feel good! (Ivan)

Every day in our work we communicate with a large number of clients, each with its own differences, but the common among all is that we want to help them and when we succeed, the feeling is great.

I had once a client who needed to refinance his current loans and he turned to us because the service we offer is highly efficient and the price we can offer is far better than most banks. The client received the money he wanted very quickly while travelling and even outside the country. He appreciated this quick reaction, and he was very grateful to me personally for the time and comprehensive answers to the questions he asked. This situation made me feel great because there is nothing better than a feedback from our customers!

We have an ambassador (Iana)

I remember how an investor on our platform called on the phone on Friday late afternoon. It was the first time in the company that someone would ask such a question, but many positive emotions were left in me.

He was very pleased with our services and was happy to recommend us to his friends and acquaintances. Then he asked me if he could make a surprise to a close friend by giving him an investor profile on our platform. Wow! If our service could be a gift to some people, it's the most irrefutable proof for us.

It turned out that it was not so easy to perform such a request (yes, we need to have a direct relationship with our customers because of KYC regulation) but I felt very pleased and even more motivated to work!

So sad to say no☹ (Loic)

We got a credit application from a couple living in Pleven region. A few years ago, they had taken a credit to repair huge damages from the flooding in 2015 and, unfortunately, the husband lost his job sometime after. This led to delay in the repayment. Things went back on track, but the negative record stayed in the CCR.

Because of this, our expert system gave a negative opinion. On the other end, understanding what happened and seeing that the current situation is fine, our mind and heart was saying “approve”.

What to do?

I had to make the call and I decided to follow the system decision. It was no. We were at the very beginning of the platform and we could not take any risk. It was the rational decision, may be right, may be wrong, but for sure a sad one which made me have a bad night.

Good surprise😊 (Loic)

It’s the story of one of the few loans with serious problems in repayment.

It was in delay with more than 3 months. We had a contact with the lady who took the credit. She was in a very difficult situation because, sometimes, shit happens. We were regularly contacting her to see how the situation was evolving and to try to collect the delay. Hope was very thin.

And one day, without notice, we received a payment. We contacted the lady. She said that she found some money and decided to pay us, not the other creditors. Why us? Because we had always been correct with her, she said.

This made our day. Not just because of the money but because it shows that when you do the right things and do things right, you get a return one day.

Oops what’s happening with our website traffic (Loic)

We had launched our website at the beginning of 2016 with a limited content. We were regularly watching online google analytics to monitor the traffic. In the first few months, it was rather desert…

Then one day by the end of March, we suddenly noticed a big spike. What was happening? Was there a problem??? Anxious, we checked. And we discovered that our latest blog article “10 money principles which deserve to be tattooed” was shared multiple times on Facebook and generated a lot of visits.

That was our first encounter with the power of social media and the revelation that great content can generate virality thanks to the crowd.

A credit under good omen (Madlen)

My working day started as usual. I was browsing the list of credit applications, drinking a cup of coffee, and I saw that I have a video call with a client at 9:00 o'clock. She was the perfect profile and I was for Approval even before the call. Everything was perfect. The call was smooth and uneventful when, suddenly, at the end of the call, she asked me "Can I wait and take the credit after 3 days because, now, Mercury is retrograde ☹”

She was so cute, and she made my day.

Taking a credit in pyjamas (Madlen)

There is no way to forget about one of our first clients. It was early morning and I called the customer to check a few details of its application. At the end of the phone call, we were supposed to switch to a Skype video conference: just a few minutes to check the identity. Then he asked me “Is it ok to make the video call later because I just woke up and I’m still in pyjamas.”

I told him that there is no problem to make it now and he was so happy to be able to take a credit from his bed with pyjamas😊

The wedding (Madlen)

Once we had an application from a young couple. They were not yet married but living together. Both had recently graduated from the University and had started working in famous auditing companies.

They needed money to finance their wedding. Sometimes it is delicate to talk about the project with our customers. But this one was easy. They were in a good mood, and we were more than happy to finance their personal project. It was the first time we financed a new family.

Getting prepared for her second child (Madlen)

We had a credit project which was for a washing machine/dryer.

As usual, during the phone call with the customer, we discussed the project.

It is important for us to understand the context in which the loan is needed. Sadly, every day we see applications where the person took too many credits. We believe that it is the role of a responsible lender to check with the customer that a new credit makes sense and is not just a whim.

Back to the case, I understood that the old washing machine/dryer broke a few days ago and the lady was expecting to deliver soon her second child. Well, that makes sense to have such appliance with all the work generated by a newborn child!

The credit was approved, and we were very pleased to help this happy mother.

To be continued...