Glad we were able to meet anyway and I hope you have a better understanding of SmartHippo now. I’ll take a crack at some of the questions in the comments…

@Steven -There are actually not many bank/broker reviews available online. Particularly aimed at mortgages as well, we saw that gap and that’s why we have reviews. We also integrate them into our site, so if you were to do a rate search and find a really great rate, but the lender has a poor rating, s/he might not be the best lender to work with, especially if service is important to you.

The difference between SmartHippo and other sites that provide mortgage rates, is we are consumer-centric… Meaning most are just trying to get your personal information to sell to brokers, and in that situation, you can assume they are more concerned with padding their pocketbooks than giving you the best deal. SmartHippo keeps it anonymous, but does ask some qualifying criteria to get you accurate rates.

@Debtkid-It’s definitely true our biggest challenge is traffic. Especially when it comes to mortgages, the average user will check out the site a few times, but once s/he secures a mortgage, s/he has bigger things (like moving) to worry about than coming back to the site. For this reason, we’ve modeled the site expected a fluid number of users, with a few who keep coming back because they are genuinely interested in mortgages and helping others out.

Also we publish a monthly personal finance newsletter (not just on mortgages) with tips for managing a budget, saving money on bills etc., to keep us front of mind. I think enough people have had a bad experience with mortgages to motivate them to write a review (whether good or bad) However, we also run the occasional contest to motivate people to come on and write a review about their experiences.

Anyone can find reviews anywhere these days, so what’s their real value for consumers? And most importantly how they’re going to achieve it.

Make sure you stop by his booth and talk to him afterwards! He seems to have a pretty good thing going there.

I plan on doing some email interviews over the next few days with some of the companies since I won’t be going. I just posted an interview with VaultStreet. They have a pretty impressive offering that would be useful for some people.

I’m looking forward to your interviews. I always like hearing about the challenges of starting a new business.

SmartHippo looks like a more user generated BankRate. With users keeping banks/mortgage companies accountable to interest rates. The power of the people, right?

I’d ask Vestopia how they picked the manager’s they are following. I mean, If I was a super-duper top wall street trader, would I really publish my trades real time? Probably not. Find out who they’ve got and how they got them.

For SmartHippo, I’d ask, “how are you going to get more users into this?” Right now they look a little thin, and what’s the average person’s motivation for sharing this type of info.

Anyway, my two cents.