There’s an old saying out there that goes something like “If you want to lose a friend, loan them money.” This was one of the thoughts that kept running through my head as I read TechCrunch’s report on a new start-up called Greennote – a company that seems to have a lot of the elements of wikinomics built into it, but one that also makes me a little uneasy the more that I think about it.

Greennote appears to much like a lot of other players in the P2P lending space (helping students borrow money to go to school), but what seems to set it apart summarized in the “How it works” box on the front page. It starts with contacting your network of family and friends, and ends with you reaching your goals.

If you click through and read the details, after you create a profile, you “ask your friends, family and community to help fund your education“, and then “people who believe in you commit to funding your student loan.” Greennote then creates legally enforceable loan documents (might the people who believe in you not totally trust you?), you get the money, and when you are finished school you start sending in loan payments that Greennote distributes to your lenders.

So Greennote is effectively making it easier to tap your friends and family for a loan – which kind of seems like a compelling proposition. The cost of this service will apparently be 2% of the loan value upfront from the student, and 1% from the interest payments to the lenders. As the TechCrunch article mentions, this seems a bit hefty – they note Fynanz only takes a 1% fee.

So it looks to me like Greennote is trying to walk a very thin line – they need people that are willing to lend money to their friends or family, but are only willing to do so with some legally enforceable documents in the background, and are willing to have 2% of the loan value (+1% out of the interest) go to an intermediary. I imagine there are many parents / other close relations that wouldn’t find this overly compelling – let’s just say default risk isn’t high on the list of considerations for many parents trying to help their kids go on to higher education, most would rather have their kids get all of the money than 98% of it, and they might just want to keep repayment schedules “flexible”.

In turn, Greennote needs to find enough people that can’t access the required funds through immediate ties, but have a large and interested enough social network that are willing to make a legally enforceable loan to them – while everyone involves takes the “risk” associated with lending money to friends. Maybe that’s a large group of people, but maybe not – it’s kind of like your tapping into people that trust you, but only to a certain extent.

Again, sounds like a great idea, and maybe I’m over thinking it, but I’m not quite sure that it’s going to work – also noting that I imagine most people’s social networks have a disproportionate amount of people that are roughly their own age, so having everyone try to borrow from each other (or each others parents) at the same time could be a problem. Though I suppose one could argue that once one becomes indebted to everyone they know simultaneously, the default risk could be remarkably low – unless someone wants to alienate their entire social network by simply not paying anyone back. Regardless, it will be an interesting company to watch – is borrowing from one’s own social network a compelling proposition or not?

(aside: if you are thinking of launching a blog on your site, and describe it as “an interactive forum”, don’t put the blog link up on April 14th and then leave it blank for weeks on end. It’s better to just wait until you are ready to actively blog).