‘Fun’ category

Let’s take a look at the replay

Posted by Luke at 11:52 am

Well our August promotion has come to an end. We’re a bit late posting because of labor day and its aftermath, but we officially stopped counting submissions to our How Low Can You Go? Help Challenge on Sunday.

And now comes the hard part…tallying the votes (er, the help).

Remember, we are counting all CD’s that people applied for in August. That means that if someone applied for a CD on August 31st, but it hasn’t commenced yet, we’ll still count it once it does.

Why is that important? Because that means that the smoke hasn’t cleared at the finish line yet.

There was such a flurry of activity in the last week or so, that we’re still waiting to see who will claim our fabulous prizes. We’ll post the winners as soon as the results are known.

For now, let’s give everyone who participated a big round of applause — ya done great!

Posted in Fun | No Comments »

Surprise Surprise

Posted by Luke at 3:46 pm

My, it’s been quiet around here lately. Let me just clean out some of these cobwebs…

Ahem.

Much better.

Ya’ll are in luck, because we’ve been cooking up something special for all you lovely Zopa-ites: a contest! Who doesn’t love contests? (especially ones that are ridiculously easy to win?)

It’s gonna be a chance for you to save a bunch of money on your monthly loan repayments, and earn some money to boot. You might call it, a “save and earn” plan. Ole Ben Franklin would be proud – the more you save the more you earn.

We’ll post more promotion details soon, but in the mean time, I suggest you start thinking about all the people you know who might be in the mood for a Zopa CD – a solid investment with a smiley face.

And check back soon for details because you could find yourself about $1,000 richer in no time.

Posted in News, Fun | 4 Comments »

And the Webby goes to…

Posted by Luke at 4:37 pm

Zopa has just been awarded the Webby for Best Financial Services website!

This is the second year in a row that we’ve won a Webby, and all I can say is…it rocks. Seriously. I could get used to this.

For all you Webby fanatics, here’s a dramatic reenactment of how it all happened:

Webby Presenter: (opening e-envelope) …and the winner of the award for Best Financial Services Site of the Year is…Zopa.com!

Zopa: (e-sobbing with e-delight) Thank you! We’d like to thank the webcademy and our fellow nominees, as well as our developers, designers, and staff. We’d like to thank our mothers, our great-aunts, and all the bloggers who covered us. And above all, we’d like to thank our beautiful, passionate users. It’s been an amazing ride, and we would never be here…

*Webby Orchestra begins playing Webby theme-music*

Zopa: …if it weren’t for all our wonderful users. Users like AiflGrad, mraugust, and SuzCllns…

*Webby theme-music crescendos as Webby presenter shuffles Zopa off the stage*

Aaaaand scene.

Well. I guess they don’t call it the “Oscars of the Internet” for nothing.

Anyway, thanks to all of you lovely users, as well as everyone who voted for us. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Posted in News, Fun | No Comments »

Happy Valentine’s — Have a Donut

Posted by Betty at 6:35 pm

Happy Valentine’s!

As a special treat today, I brought a box of these Valentine donuts from Krispy Kreme into the office. Have you seen these before? (I tried to bring the Snowman-shaped ones in over the holiday season, but they were out…)

I’m still waiting for raspberry filling in these! But glazed will do fine for now, except maybe for this guy, who has an even bigger sweet tooth than we do at Zopa.

Posted in Fun | No Comments »

Love and Marriage—The Zopa Way

Posted by Shane at 5:50 pm

Fall in love. Get married. What could be more human? It’s one of the oldest and most beautiful one-two combinations that we have. It’s even older then the sun rising in the East and setting in the West. Okay, maybe not that old. But it’s certainly older than Zopa.

And we’re okay with that, because Zopa, as the pioneer of the social finance revolution, is adding something entirely new to love and marriage: a way to fall in love, get married, and NOT be up to your neck in credit card debt!

Look at kempoguy or laerz76. Two guys, both in head-over-heels love with their fiancées. Both trying to make ends meet, put away a little something for the future, and give the love-of-their-lives the wedding of her dreams.

It’s not easy. But it’s not impossible either.

Luckily, these two guys are thinking ahead. And now both of them have chosen to reach out to an online community filled with people like you. People who believe that you can do well for yourself and do good for others at the same time. Who know that love and marriage are dreams worth supporting.

Now, if we could just get invited to somebody’s wedding…

Posted in Editorial, Fun | No Comments »

A Good Omen, If There Ever Was One

Posted by wade at 7:10 pm

Ever heard the wonky joke about the economist and the $20 bill?

On the way to work today, and a bit groggy since we’re all working like nuts on the launch, I came across the veritable $20-bill-on-the-sidewalk.(Well, $10 anyway).

That’s gotta be a great omen, as we are in the middle of launching a new financial service. And particularly because for Zopa borrowers, the help they receive is going to feel a little bit like finding money on the sidewalk.

Okay, so it’s a stretch!

Posted in Fun | 1 Comment »

One (Sniff!) Ping Pong Table, Slightly Used

Posted by wade at 11:28 am

Zopa has a long history of ping pong.

When the founders of Zopa were hashing ideas out so many years back now, it was in founder Richard Duvall’s converted barn. And it was usually over a game of ping pong.

And at least one member of the Zopa UK team played on what apparently was London’s worst table tennis team, at least if you believe the video they made about it a while back.

So it was in that spirit that here in San Francisco we made sure to have a ping pong table. We put it in our conference room. And it was good. And we learned to serve legally, and bought fancy paddles, and settled a large number of issues with sudden death games to 11.

But now, we need our conference room for–well, conferencing. And our storage room where we were keeping our old ping pong table? It’s stuffed with racks of computer and networking equipment.

So it’s time for our ping pong table to go. And we can’t think of a better way to get rid of it than to give it to the first member who wants it. If you want it (and you’ve got the right truck or car to cart it away), drop us a line. You can have it for free. We just want it to have a happy home…

Posted in Fun | 4 Comments »

Random Photo, Part 1

Posted by wade at 11:41 am

Took this from a moving car!

Posted in Editorial, Fun | 2 Comments »