The longest running one-on-one interview show in all of fintech, since 2013
The longest running one-on-one interview show in all of fintech, since 2013
The longest running one-on-one interview show in all of fintech, since 2013
Last month I visited San Francisco and brought along my trusty audio recorder for a podcast interview in the Lending Club offices with Scott Sanborn. Sanborn joined Lending Club in 2010 as the Chief Marketing Officer and last year was promoted to Chief Operating Officer. He is responsible for Lending Club’s day to day operations and he has still maintained his marketing role.
On my recent trip to London I sat down with the founders of the three leading UK p2p lenders: Peter Behrens of Ratesetter, Samir Desai of Funding Circle and Giles Andrews of Zopa. This extended edition of the Lend Academy Podcast features my conversation with all three leaders.
While in London last week I sat down at the offices of Liberum Capital, a UK investment bank, to talk with Cormac Leech and his team. Liberum is somewhat unique in that they have a team devoted to researching the p2p lending market – they have probably more knowledge about this sector than any other investment bank in the UK or the US.
Earlier this week we launched Lend Academy Investments. So, in this edition of the Lend Academy Podcast I bring on my two co-founders for a discussion. But I want to emphasize this is not a promotional podcast for our new investment firm, it is more of a background interview where you can get to know my new partners, Bo Brustkern and Jason Jones.
Before February 2013 Prosper included screen names for investors and third party sites like Prosper-Stats and Lendstatsprovided information about those investors. Since 2009 the name Reflective-Rupee was always near the top of the list of largest investors. And when I started investing in Prosper in 2010 he was always the #1 largest investor.
As p2p investors we are funding loans all the time but we never know much about the people we are investing in. I want to try and change that a little. So, in this latest edition of the Lend Academy podcast we going over to the other side of the p2p lending equation as I talk with a borrower.
Simon Cunningham is the publisher at LendingMemo.com one of the few sites like Lend Academy that is 100% devoted to p2p lending education and analysis. Simon and I have complementary approaches to the industry and we both believe in collaboration rather than competition, so I am delighted he agreed to come on the podcast for the first show of 2014.
I first corresponded with Bryce Mason about two years ago; he reached out to me soon after he developed his credit model for investing in Lending Club. He was one of the first people to do a rigorous statistical analysis of completed Lending Club loans. He produced an interesting chart on default rates that I shared in early 2012. Bryce has also written a couple of guest posts on Lend Academy this year.
In the second episode of the Lend Academy podcast, I am excited to welcome Larry Ludwig of Investor Junkie to the show. I have been following Larry’s blog ever since I started blogging about p2p lending because he was one of the few people writing about p2p lending when I started.
In the first Lend Academy podcast I interview Michael Phillips, the founder of NickelSteamroller.com. If you are a serious p2p investor you will probably have spent some time on his site before – if you haven’t you should go there right now and do some research. It is the premier p2p lending statistics site for Lending Club investors and he has been slowly adding support for Prosper. But Nickel Steamroller has not had any major updates in a long time. Having said that, as Michael confirmed in this interview there are some big changes in the works. I