Karen Mills is someone who has a unique perspective on small business. She was a venture capitalist for 25 years before moving to Washington in late 2008 when she was appointed by President Obama to head the Small Business Administration, right in the thick of the financial crisis. For five years, until late 2013, she spent all of her time trying to help American small businesses and a big part of that was improving access to capital. Today, she is a senior fellow at Harvard Business School and is still very much focused on helping small business.

LendingTree is a company that is familiar to most of us. But it has only been recently that they have become an important part of the marketplace lending ecosystem. With a huge and growing appetite for borrowers LendingTree is one of the few companies that can provide just what the platforms want: borrowers at scale.

Al Goldstein is the CEO and co-founder of Avant. He has quietly led the establishment and growth of what is now one of the leading players in this industry. Their singular focus on what they call middle class borrowers has served them well and provides them with true differentiation from other platforms in this industry. Avant has taken an innovative approach to this industry and there are many things we can learn from studying their playbook. They are clearly a company to watch closely.

When it comes to small business lending Funding Circle is the largest online marketplace, at least when it comes to traditional term loans. They are the largest small business lending platform in the UK and the first multi-national online lending platform, operating in both the UK and the US. Our guest for episode 38 is Sam Hodges, the co-founder of Funding Circle USA, who is shepherding his company through a period of rapid growth.

There is a lot of speculation in this industry about the role of banks – how they view this industry and where they will fit in the future. In the latest edition of the Lend Academy Podcast my guest is someone who has a unique perspective on these questions. Frank Rotman is a partner at QED Investors, the leading venture capital firm in this space, but he also spent over a decade at Capital One. Frank is also the author of the new blog, Confessions of a Fintech Junkie, where he writes regularly about the broader fintech industry.

I first chatted with Michael Solomon back in 2011 when he was winding down his previous p2p lending business called Loanio. He was out of the industry for a couple of years but he never gave up on his desire to run a successful business in this industry and his second business, Circleback Lending, is starting to see some real success. So, I wanted to get him on the show to talk about the early days, his failure and what lessons he has taken from it that has helped with CircleBack.

There are many different loan choices out there today for small business owners. There are short term loans, merchant cash advances, asset-backed loans, equipment finance loans, SBA loans and many others. To help entrepreneurs sort through this myriad of loan choices and make the right financing decision is Lendio’s mission.

Cross River Bank is methodically building an integral place for themselves in the online lending ecosystem. They have become the goto bank for all new marketplace lending platforms. In this episode I talk with Cross River Bank founder and CEO Gilles Gade along with the their VP of Lending Adam Goller. We explore exactly how a bank like Cross River partners with the platforms and the services they provide. A lot of this is focused on compliance which is such an important topic for a young industry like ours.