Montreal Tech Watch

SmartHippo, which was under development for 1 year, is now in open beta. It was already announced in beta status 2 weeks ago, at the TC40 conference, but at that time, it was only open to a few invited users.

SmartHippo’s founder is George Favvas, and it will help users find the best rates in their state, with data coming from all other users. You may notice I have written state instead of province, because even though the startup is based in Montréal, it’s currently designed exclusively for the US.

The screenshot shows the search results for refinancing rates in California, and it gives users a concise and clear chart of different companies. SmartHippo also manages rates for home lines of credit, debt consolidation and rates for new home purchases. Users can then post their own rate, or give a rating to the different search results.

Even though the service isn’t as glamour in internet entrepreneurship as doing a videoblog like Galacticast or as fun like wikitravel, I believe SmartHippo has a promising future, mainly because there is a lot of business to be made in mortgages. Choosing “the power of the herd” is a smart way to reach this market and make the voice of the final consumer to be heard, finally. If they manage to be a reference in mortgages, then mortgage companies will have no option than partnering with SmartHippo. And this has already started, as they already have 2 banks in their partnership programs.