Back Bay brownstone makes break from past

When you think of a 19th century brownstone located in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, the last thing that comes to mind is a contemporary-style home.

But Boston firm Ruhl Walker Architects did just that for a triplex penthouse, where combined upper-floor units were designed and rebuilt into 3,100 square feet of living space. The condo has three bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms as well as one deeded parking space.

What makes the property special is a palette of whites and grays, complemented by the white oak plank floors with a gray stain and custom Tabu Caleidolegno wood cabinetry.

The condo is now on the market for just over $3 million.

The first level is completely open and airy, with the living area on one side of the 9-foot entry and dining area and kitchen on the other side. The ceiling height is close to 12 feet that is further enhanced by the internal atrium that soars to the top floor where a large skylight brightens the entire space even on a cloudy day.

The dining area features a three-story panel of silver quartzite cladding by Island Stone behind a long, custom-designed white lacquered banquette with uplighting.

The kitchen has the same color scheme. A long center island is wrapped in white Carrara marble. Appliances include a Miele dishwasher and a U-Line wine cooler, as well as a professional Wolf six-burner gas range.

The living room faces north, and its two large windows look out to the Esplanade and the Charles River. Dominating one wall is a nearly 12-foot-wide mantelpiece of Blue Savoy marble with an Absolute black granite surround for a raised fireplace. Above it is a 6-inch recess that holds a 60-inch flat screen TV. On the other side of the range counters are glossy white cabinets with a large Sub-Zero refrigerator, paneled to match the cabinetry. Hidden behind a paneled wall of Tabu Caleidolegno is a sleek powder room with a contemporary one-piece, custom-designed Corian sink with a waterfall faucet and a dual-flush toilet.

Within the internal atrium, you will find a cable and steel staircase that rises to the top floor against ledge stone that includes tiny step lights. On this level you will find two more rooms and another bath. There's a home office featuring a desk fabricated from Tabu Caleidolegno and black oxide steel with French doors behind the desk leading onto a copper-clad balcony.

Finally, stairs lead to the roof deck, which has a copper head house that holds the six-panel skylight. The tiered deck is equipped with an outdoor stainless- steel Viking gas grill and water and electric service. Two long built-in slat benches are fixed on the deck, and in the middle of this outdoor space is a small fire pit.

Charlie Abrahams is a licensed real estate agent in Boston who works with buyers and sellers and can be reached at: Bostonrealestate@charlieabrahams.com

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NASA launches sun-watching satellite from Calif.

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. — NASA launched a satellite late Thursday on a mission to explore a little-studied region of the sun and to better forecast space weather that can disrupt communications systems on Earth.

Unlike a traditional liftoff, the Iris satellite rode into Earth orbit on a Pegasus rocket dropped from an airplane that took off around sunset from the Vandenberg Air Force Base on California's central coast. About 100 miles off the coast and at an altitude of 39,000 feet, the airplane released the rocket, which ignited its engine for the 13-minute climb to space.

Mission controllers clapped after receiving word that Iris separated from the rocket as planned, ready to begin its two-year mission.

"We're thrilled," NASA launch director Tim Dunn said in a NASA TV interview.

The launch went smoothly, but there were some tense moments when communications signals were temporarily lost. Ground controllers were able to track Iris by relying on other satellites orbiting Earth. It also took longer-than-expected for Iris to unfurl its solar panels.

In a statement, NASA said it received confirmation that the satellite deployed its solar panels and was generating power.

Previous sun-observing spacecraft have yielded a wealth of information about our nearest star and beamed back brilliant pictures of solar flares.

The 7-foot-long Iris, weighing 400 pounds, carries an ultraviolet telescope that can take high-resolution images every few seconds.

Unlike NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which observes the entire sun, Iris will focus on a little-explored region that lies between the surface and the corona, the glowing white ring that's visible during eclipses.

The goal is to learn more about how this mysterious region drives solar wind — a stream of charged particles spewing from the sun — and to better predict space weather that can disrupt communications signals on Earth.

"This is a very difficult region to understand and observe. We haven't had the technical capabilities before now to really zoom in" and peer at it up close, NASA program scientist Jeffrey Newmark said before the launch.

The mission is cheap by NASA standards, costing $182 million, and is managed by the space agency's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Engineers will spend a month making sure Iris is in perfect health before powering on the telescope to begin observations.

The launch was delayed by a day so that technicians at the Air Force base could restore power to launch range equipment after a weekend outage cut electricity to a swath of the central coast.

The Pegasus, from Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., is a winged rocket designed for launching small satellites. First flown in 1990, Pegasus rockets have also been used to accelerate vehicles in hypersonic flight programs.

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Feds tout Innovation District

Boston's growing Innovation District is an example for other cities that want to develop a cutting-edge startup culture, a federal official said yesterday.

Winslow Sargeant, chief counsel for the Small Business Administration's office of advocacy, said Boston is "a Mecca for people from all over the world to launch out and build the next big company." He credited the city's Innovation District initiative, which he said has created a community of entrepreneurship and creativity.

"This ecosystem of innovation brings together entrepreneurs to share ideas and bring their vision to the marketplace. It presents a successful model and an ideal avenue for the public and private sectors to partner together for economic success," he said.

The Innovation District initiative, announced in 2010, has brought more than 4,000 jobs to the waterfront area, according to Nicole Fichera, the Innovation District manager for the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

She said the Hub has been approached by many cities that are working on similar initiatives for guidance, including some as far away as China and the Netherlands.

Sargeant, who grew up in Dorchester and graduated from Northeastern University, said Boston has become a great place to start a business: "If someone wants to start a company or if someone wants to explore what it takes to, there are people that they can talk to and places they can go to network with others."

Among the biggest benefits of Boston are the startup incubators and accelerators that offer shared work spaces. Sargeant met with many of them yesterday, including representatives from the Cambridge Innovation Center, MassChallenge and Bolt.

"These magic things happen that you can't really quantify" when entrepreneurs share work spaces, said Ben Einstein, founder of Bolt.

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‘One Greenway’ to break ground

A pair of apartment and condo buildings on the border between Chinatown and the Rose Kennedy Greenway — a project expected to break ground next month — will be called "One Greenway," developers said yesterday.

The 362-unit residential project at Kneeland and Hudson streets includes a 312-apartment North Building and 50-unit affordable condo South Building with green space in the middle.

"It's helping to reconnect Chinatown with the Leather District," said Sean Sacks of New Boston Fund.

The project also will include a 137-space garage and 10,000 square feet of retail and community space.

"I don't think demand for housing in the downtown has ever been greater," said Sacks.

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President Obama climate plan could generate jobs

President Obama's plan to tackle pollution and global warming could mean tougher standards for power plants in Massachusetts but it also could be a boon to local clean-energy businesses, officials said.

Noting power plants produce nearly 40 percent of the nation's carbon dioxide emissions, the heat-trapping gas blamed for global warming, Obama directed the head of the Environmental Protection Agency yesterday to propose rules limiting emissions for existing power plants by June 1, 2014, and finalize them by June 1, 2015.

Obama's plan also would boost renewable energy production on federal land, increase efficiency standards and prepare communities to deal with higher temperatures — a series of steps that don't require congressional approval.

"As a president, as a father and as an American, I'm here to say we need to act," Obama said. "I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that's beyond fixing."

While Republican critics in Congress lambasted the president's plan as a job-killer that would threaten the economic recovery, Gov. Deval Patrick applauded Obama's "bold leadership" on climate change, saying the president "recognizes our generational responsibility to act now and proposes a proven way to do so."

"In Massachusetts, through similar means, we have achieved significant emissions reductions, alongside significant job growth in a new sector," Patrick said in a statement.

Massachusetts' greenhouse gas emissions are down 11 percent from 1990 levels, said Mary-Leah Assad, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. And from 2011 to 2012, the state saw an 11.2 percent growth in "clean" jobs, with more expected this year, said Catherine Williams, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.

"Supporting clean energy businesses through proactive policies that cut carbon emissions and support clean energy projects creates local jobs," Williams said. "That's a staggering number, especially in the context of a down economy, proving government support of clean energy projects pays off."

But the Bay State shouldn't stop there, environmentalists said. The Sierra Club of Massachusetts called on natural gas utilities to repair their aging infrastructure, which it said leaks as much as 10 billion cubic feet of methane into the atmosphere every year.

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Microsoft to unveil latest Windows adjustments

SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft is giving people a peek into Windows 8.1, a free update that promises to address some of the gripes people have with the latest version of the company's flagship operating system.

Although the preview version of Windows 8.1 is meant for Microsoft's partners and other technology developers, anyone will be able to download it for free starting Wednesday, exactly eight months since desktops, laptops and tablets with Windows 8 went on sale. The version of the Windows 8.1 update meant for the general public will come out later in the year, though a specific date hasn't been announced.

Many of the new features have been shown off already. A three-day Build conference, which starts Wednesday in San Francisco, will give Microsoft developers a chance to learn more about the new system and try it out. It also will give the company a chance to explain some of the reasoning behind the update and sell developers on Microsoft's ambitions to regain relevance lost to Apple's iPad and various devices running Google's Android software.

There's also speculation that Microsoft could show off a new, smaller version of its Surface tablet computers. One of the new features in Windows 8.1 is the ability to work well on smaller-screen devices.

Windows 8, which was released Oct. 26, was meant to be Microsoft's answer to changing customer behaviors and the rise of tablet computers. The operating system emphasizes touch controls over the mouse and the keyboard, which had been the main way people have interacted with their personal computers since the 1980s.

But some people have been put off by the radical makeover.

Although Microsoft has said it has sold more than 100 million Windows 8 licenses so far, some analysts have blamed the lackluster response to the operating system for a steep drop in PC sales in the first three months of the year, the worst drop since tracking by outside research firms began in 1994.

Among the complaints: the lack of a Start button on the lower left corner of the screen. In previous versions of Windows, that button gave people quick access to programs, settings and other tasks. Microsoft replaced that with a tablet-style, full-screen start page, but that covered up whatever programs people were working on, and it had only favorite programs. Extra steps were needed to access less-used programs. Settings, a search box and other functions were hidden away in a menu that had to be pulled out from the right. How to do that changed depending on whether a mouse or touch was used.

And while Microsoft has encouraged people to use the new tablet-style layout, many programs — including Microsoft's latest Office software package — are designed for the older, desktop mode. People were forced into the tablet layout when they start up the machine and had to manually switch the desktop mode each time.

Windows 8.1 will allow people to start in the desktop mode automatically. In that mode, it is restoring a button that resembles the old Start button. Although the Start button will now take people back to the new tablet-style start screen, rather than the old Start menu, the re-introduction of the familiar button may make it easier for longtime Windows users to get accustomed to the changes.

Other new features of Windows 8.1 include more options to use multiple apps. People will get more options to determine how much of the screen each app takes while showing up to four different programs, rather than just two. The update will also offer more integrated search results, showing users previews of websites, apps and documents that are on the device, all at once.

Although Microsoft is addressing much of the criticisms with Windows, it is positioning the update as more than just a fix-up job. From its perspective, the tuneup underscores Microsoft's evolution into a more nimble company capable of moving quickly to respond to customer feedback while also rolling out more innovations for a myriad of Windows devices — smartphones, tablets or PCs.

It's crucial that Microsoft sets things right with Windows 8.1 because the outlook for the PC market keeps getting gloomier. IDC now expects PC shipments to fall by nearly 8 percent this year, worse than its previous forecast of a 1 percent dip. IDC also anticipates tablets will outsell laptop computers for the first time this year.

The growing popularity of tablets is now being driven largely by less expensive devices with display screens measuring 7 inches to 8 inches diagonally. Microsoft built Windows 8 primarily to run on tablets with 10-inch to 12-inch screens, an oversight that Microsoft is also trying to fix with Windows 8.1.

Microsoft has said the company was working with other manufacturers to make smaller tablets, but it has yet to confirm reports that it is making its own. A smaller Surface with an 8-inch screen would be significantly smaller than its current, 10.6-inch models and would put the Surface in closer competition with Apple's iPad Mini, Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire HD.

Such a device would coincide with Intel Corp.'s recent release of a new chip line called Haswell. The company says Haswell chips offer a 50 percent improvement in battery life over the previous generation when playing back high-definition video.

In an indication that Microsoft Corp. is clearing out inventory of a Surface tablet running the lightweight Windows RT operating system, the company is effectively cutting the price of that by including a keyboard cover for free. The cover sells for $120 or $130 on its own.

Microsoft also said this month that it would give buyers of the RT version of Surface the Outlook email and calendar program at no extra charge — joining other Office freebies Excel, Word and Power Point — and sweetening the offer for the device that is priced starting at $499. That will come as part of the Windows 8.1 update.

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Downtown may bag grocer

Roche Bros. is in lease negotiations to open its first Boston grocery store in Downtown Crossing, sources told the Herald.

The Wellesley-based, family-owned chain of suburban supermarkets is hammering out plans for its first urban market at Millennium Partners' $630 million Millennium Tower project, which includes redevelopment of the adjacent Filene's building, according to sources familiar with the talks.

Roche Bros. spokeswoman Lisa Lazarczyk, meanwhile, said the company was considering a number of locations within its market area. "However, at this time, we can't discuss any other locations than the Medfield one," she said.

Millennium principal Anthony Pangaro yesterday said he'd neither confirm nor deny the negotiations.

"It's fantastic news," Rosemarie Sansone, president of the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District, a property owner-funded group that's been working to revitalize Downtown Crossing, said of the reported talks.

"It's absolutely the right brand," Sansone said. "Roche Bros. has a fabulous reputation, and people in this neighborhood and people in this district will be pleased. It is the first question in every conversation with residents, with people interested in what's going on in the district and other businesses that are moving into the district: What about a grocery store?"

Roche Bros., which has 18 Massachusetts stores, announced last week that it would open a new smaller, neighborhood store format in Medfield next February, with approximately 9,000 square feet.

Millennium's Downtown Crossing project includes 240,000 square feet of retail space. Both the developer and the city have wanted to bring in a grocery store to cater to the growing number of condo residents in the area — including those who will move into Millennium Tower's 450 luxury units — in addition to workers.

The 61-year-old Roche Bros. chain is small, but very well-respected, according to Mike Berger, senior editor of the Griffin Report of Food Marketing in Duxbury. "(They're) very big on fresh and perishables, quality stuff," he said. "They really do a lot of customer services. They've (also) really grown in catering and prepared foods."

A Downtown Crossing location would be a unique opportunity for the company, according to Norwell retail consultant Michael Tesler. "It gives them the opportunity to be very innovative, very creative," he said. "It upgrades their brand and the opportunities for their brand."

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Asian stocks mostly lower on China worries

SEOUL, South Korea — Asian stock markets were mostly lower Tuesday as investors continued their flight from risky assets on the prospect of slower Chinese growth and the winding down of the U.S. Federal Reserve's monetary stimulus.

Markets in China extended declines from the previous day as investors worried that measures to curb underground lending would hurt growth in the world's second-largest economy.

The Shanghai Composite Index plunged 3.8 percent to 1,888.69 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 1.4 percent to 19,533.05.

Japan's Nikkei 225 shed 1.6 percent to 12,848.96. South Korea's Kospi fell 1 percent to 1,780.81 and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was down 0.5 percent to 4,645. Stocks in Taiwan and the Philippines also declined.

Shanghai's stock index endured its biggest loss in four years Monday after the country's central bank allowed commercial lending rates to spike higher. Analysts say the move was part of an effort to curb off-balance-sheet lending in China that could threaten the country's financial stability.

But the higher lending rates could also hurt economic growth. The impact for stock markets would be all the greater if the U.S. Federal Reserve tightens its own ultra-loose monetary policy over the coming months, as it has signaled it would do so long as the U.S. economy improves according to its forecasts.

On Monday, Wall Street closed lower. The Dow Jones industrial finished down 139.84 points, or 0.9 percent, at 14,659.56. The S&P 500 index fell 19.34 points, or 1.2 percent, to 1,573.09.

Analysts at Moody's Investors Service said they saw the Chinese central bank's action to allow lending rates to rise as "a conscious decision" to curb credit growth.

Moody's said a prolonged credit crunch could threaten Chinese companies, "especially those in the private sector with weak credit quality, because it heightens the risk that banks will scale back lending to those companies." The credit ratings agency said that China's central government finances remain strong, but that rapid credit growth and liabilities at the local level pose a threat to growth.

The concerns over China's credit market were magnified by existing worries that access to money will tighten in the world's largest economy, the U.S.

Investors are concerned what will happen as the U.S. Federal Reserve slows down its monetary stimulus program, which has been pumping $85 billion into the financial system every month and helped many stock indexes reach multiyear or record highs. Markets tumbled last week when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the program would likely slow down this year and end in 2014.

Benchmark oil for August delivery was down 53 cents to $94.65 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $1.49 to close at $95.18 in New York on Monday.

In currencies, the euro fell to $1.3113 from $1.3125 late Monday. The dollar fell to 97.49 yen from 97.55 yen.

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Springfield mom sells personal-protection devices

Fear can be a powerful motivator — powerful enough, Deborah Halpin found, to make you brave the treacherous waters of entrepreneurship.

About four years ago, the Springfield mother had what she calls a "triple flat" — her home was broken into, her daughter was going away to college in New York City, and her father died, leaving her elderly mother living alone in Milwaukee.

"The combination of events made me feel uncomfortable and insecure," she said. "I started to look for personal security products for us."

Halpin went to a gun store looking for pepper spray, but felt uncomfortable because she was the only woman there. So she looked online, but most of what she found was for the military or for hunters.

"There wasn't any place where women could go to comfortably buy safety and security products without feeling intimidated," she said.

After stints in marketing and product development at two Fortune 500 companies, Halpin decided to start ArmHer to sell a carefully curated selection of what she considered the most effective and affordable personal protection devices on the market for women.

They range from $2.50 security decals for your home or car window to $20 cameras with motion detectors that can be mounted on your home. They also come in different "survival kits" for students, mothers, seniors and active women. Those kits sell for between $29 and $75 and, depending on whom they're for, can include safes disguised as soda cans, alarms as loud as 120 decibels or cards that detect date-rape drugs in drinks.

You won't find guns, knives or even pepper spray on ArmHer.net, though, because those weapons can be taken away by an assailant and used against a woman, said Halpin, who's now a finalist in the $1 million MassChallenge startup accelerator and competition.

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New Galaxy S4 Active has features that work when submerged

It's the next frontier for mobile devices, and it's just in time for beach season: underwater smartphones.

The just-released Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is the first high-end smartphone available in the U.S. that works underwater. Priced at $200 with a two-year contract from AT&T, the Active may just spawn a legion of sea-faring technology if it's marketed well.

Think of it as the Galaxy S4's underwater twin. The only physical differences between the Active and the regular S4 is that the Active is thicker, and the three main buttons that navigate to the menu, homescreen and backward are raised rather than part of the touchscreen.

The Active will soon have competition from Sony, which is due to release its own water-friendly smartphone, the Xperia Z, sometime this summer.

Since we're all used to treating our smartphones like china plates and arming them with rugged covers, I found there's a psychological barrier to actually dipping a $200 piece of technology into a bowl of water. But don't worry, you're not gonna kill it.

To work the camera in water, simply open the camera and select "aqua mode." That turns your volume rocker into a shutter button. The 8-megapixel camera takes clear underwater photos. And if watching HD videos and listening to music in the shower is your thing, you'll be pleasantly surprised by those features as well.

Samsung says the phone can withstand 30 minutes in three feet of water. Though you can't make calls while submerged, phone calls don't interrupt while under water. So, you could conceivably begin a conversation, jump into a pool with the phone in your hand and then keep talking to that person when you come up for air.

The speakerphone works surprisingly well while submerged. But because the touchscreen becomes disabled, the phone has to be mostly dry to actually make the call.

My only regret with Samsung's latest offering is that I conducted this little experiment in front of my 21-month-old son. He's now got an unfortunate desire to replicate what he saw with my iPhone 5. It's probably just a matter of time before I find it at the bottom of the toilet bowl. I may have no choice but to invest in the Active after all … and maybe that was Samsung's plan all along.

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Crowdfunders push SEC for investor OK

The startup community is anxiously awaiting SEC regulations that would allow crowdfunders to invest in a company instead of receiving a reward like a sticker, but some, including one state official, want to make sure the rules are clear and prevent fraud.

"If they're going to have this, the rules need to be laid out," Secretary of State William F. Galvin said.

The regulations, part of the JOBS act, originally were due by Jan. 1, but have been delayed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Title III of the JOBS act, called the Crowdfund Act, will provide an exemption to the current requirement that companies offering stock or other investment opportunities register with the SEC, which can be resource and time intensive. The SEC has not yet written the specific rules to regulate the exemption, although it has said the rule-making process is a top priority.

In the public comments section on the SEC's website, Galvin has submitted several letters outlining potential concerns.

"We want to make sure the potential for misrepresentation is not there," Galvin said. "There has to be some protections there to make sure it wouldn't be abused."

Instead of individual companies registering with the SEC, the funding portal, likely to take the form of a website, would register. The portal would be required to take anti-fraud measures, among other responsibilities.

Once the rules are in place, the potential for new companies will be huge, according to Tanya Prive, founder of RockThePost, an online funding site for startups.

"It democratizes the process of funding for startups," she said. "The power of fundraising is going to be substantially increased."

Still, not everyone is convinced that crowdfunded investments are smart. "I think it's bad for everybody," said Daniel Isenberg, the executive director of the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project. "This will lead people to unexpectedly lose more money than they think. It will be lots and lots of people losing small amounts of money."

"Equity crowd-funding can't work," he said.

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Upstarts raise money for startups

Some recent graduates — hoping to escape from student debt, start a business or learn new skills — are using an innovative crowdfunding site to promise a percentage of their future earnings in exchange for cash in the short term.

Rachel Honeth Kim, a Harvard Business School graduate living in San Francisco, is raising $100,000 so she can pay off her loans and jump-start her business. To get the cash, she signed on with the crowdfunding site Upstart.com. She committed to paying back the money over 10 years, through a percentage of her income that will depend on the final amount of money she raises.

"The biggest thing for me was the financial implications of going out on my own," she said. "The only thing that's kind of been holding me back is the debt I have."

Kim quit her job four weeks ago, and started Nailed Kit, a custom nail art kit for parties. "It's so liberating to finally be able to take the plunge," she said.

What makes Upstart different than many other crowdfunding services is the investment in people's future earnings.

"It's actual investment in a person as opposed to stock or companies," said founder and CEO Dave Girouard, a former Google executive.

Unlike Kickstarter, where backers support a specific product, Upstart backers invest in the people behind the business or product. If the first business fails, as many startups do, the relationship between backer and the young entrepreneur, or "Upstart," remains the same, but so does the financial obligation.

This is why, Girouard said, many Upstarts use the money to pay off debt or learn a new skill, such as coding, instead of funding a specific project or product.

"They might be pursuing something where they might not be making money" but it will pay off in the future, he said.

Trina Spear, a Harvard Business grad who successfully raised $20,000 through Upstart, used the money to pay for her move from New York City to Los Angeles, where she started a business.

Her company, Figs Scrubs, a fashionable and tailored line of medical scrubs that donates a set of scrubs to doctors in need for every set sold, was invested in further by some of the backers that supported Spear initially, she said.

"The money wasn't the primary reason I was doing it," she said, adding the partnerships she has made with backers has been invaluable. Girouard calls Upstart one part bank, three parts social network.

Backers must be accredited investors in the eyes of the Securities and Exchange Commission, with a minimum net worth or annual income, but Girouard hopes to open up investments to more people. So far, about 200 backers have invested about $1.4 million in 100 people, Girouard said.

Upstart provides a fundraising goal based on a proprietary income prediction model where higher potential earners can raise more money through the site. A Harvard Business School graduate who finished their MBA in 2012 can raise $43,400 in exchange for 3 percent of their income over the next 10 years, but an art history major who graduated from Boston College can raise $14,700 for the same income percentage, for example.

"Computer science majors from great schools earn a lot of money, it's relatively predictable," Girouard said, in response to concerns about putting a monetary value on people. "We don't try to position things as a judgment on a person. We're sensitive to that."

Spear likened the practice to an advance on a book deal, or a record contract.

"Why is it that companies can finance their growth through both equity and debt, but people can only finance their growth through debt?" she said.

Kim said she's optimistic about the payoff from Upstart.

"The worst case scenario is I pay my student debt," she said. "Anybody who has an idea should have an opportunity."

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