Surowiecki profiles Upstart, a website that gives you cash in exchange for a small percentage of your earnings over the next five to ten years:
Upstart is still an experiment; fewer than a hundred people have completed funding so far. Critics argue that the idea is inherently flawed—that borrowers will hide their income or just take the money and slack off. And to some the concept seems uncomfortably close to indentured servitude. As Girouard puts it, “There is that gut reaction that says, Ugh, I don’t know about this.” It’s an understandable reaction, but the analogy is flawed: a share of your earnings isn’t a share of yourself. And you could say that young people are already indentured—to their student loans and to credit-card companies. There are precedents, too: Muhammad Ali’s early boxing career was funded by a syndicate of backers who paid for his training in exchange for a share of his winnings. Tournament poker players are regularly staked by investors. Creative work is often funded in a similar way. Publishers advance authors sums of money and take the vast majority of the profit until the advance is recouped.
The Dish 