I continue on my on of my pet projects, exploring the evolution of financial services companies in Second Life. The first new venture that Atlas Venture Capital (AVC) is launching is Dawes Financial Corporation (DFC). DFC will be a mortgage originator in Second Life. They are expected to offer two-month loans, paid weekly, with an initial deposit of at least 15%. DFC will hold title to the properties.

What makes DFC different from the mortgages originated by banks in Second Life is that they will use capital raised via their IPO to fund the mortgages as opposed to funds individual deposits. This should protect them from running into a cash crunch that runs on the banks can experience.

Initially, Mike31 Dawes will hold 51% of the company, the lowest amount VSTEX allows owners to hold. An additional 25% will be held by AVC. The rest will be available via IPO. Initially, during a pre IPO period, an 13% is being offered to AVC shareholders at a reduced price for large blocks. Already over half of this is reported to have been taken. The final ten percent, plus any of the shares not taken by AVC shareholders are intended to be made available by an IPO on VSTEX.

VSTEX has instituted new procedures to promote involvement in the exchange. Shareholders of VST with at least 5,000 shares are encouraged to vote on all proposed IPOs. It was initially reported that over 50% of all such shareholders must vote in favor of the IPO. This might work okay while there are a small number of such shareholders but as the number grows it is reasonable to suspect that a lot of shareholders might not get around to voting. Because of this, it appears as if the rule will be that over 50% of all voting shareholders with positions of at least 5,000 shares will be required. That is probably the best approach, although I do hope as many VST shareholders as possible vote on every IPO proposal. It is part of building community that VSTEX is so committed to.

Related to that, I’m told that the one of their items on there to do list is to add an RSS feed of VSTEX news. Today, I was told that the developers are working on that right now, so I hope we will see this soon. It is another important part of building community.