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Renaud Laplanche had a terrible no good very bad 2016. But the founder and longtime CEO of Lending Club<\/a> is back with a new lending startup called Upgrade<\/a>, along with the support of investors who\u2019ve provided the company with $60 million in funding.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a comeback that\u2019s been roughly one year in the making.<\/p>\n It was in May of last year that Laplanche, who founded Lending Club in 2006 and took it public in late 2014, was forced to resign from the company. According to reports<\/a> at the time, the company\u2019s board lost faith in Laplanche after it was informed that $3 million in Lending Club\u2019s loans had been sold to the bank Jefferies with falsified dates, and that Laplanche himself had undisclosed conflicts of interest. Specifically, the board told reporters, Laplanche personally owned a stake in a fund called\u00a0Cirrix Capital in which and Lending Club later bought an interest at Laplanche\u2019s urging \u2014 unaware that he was already a shareholder<\/a>.<\/p>\n Laplanche\u2019s role in a stock buyback was also reportedly under investigation<\/a> by the SEC at one point last fall.<\/p>\n Laplanche declined to be interviewed for this story, but in conversation with Dealbook<\/a>, he said disagreed with the board\u2019s characterization of the problems at Lending Club last year and declined to discuss the issue further.<\/p>\n A source close to Laplanche says he doesn\u2019t think that Laplanche was ever \u201cpersonally being investigated\u201d by the SEC.<\/p>\n Whatever the case, Laplanche wasted little time in beginning work on a\u00a0rival to\u00a0Lending Club. By August of last year, Laplanche and several Lending Club veterans \u2013 including Jeff Bogan, who was among a group of senior managers who also stepped down or were dismissed when Laplanche resigned and who is now Upgrade\u2019s chief financial officer \u2013 rented offices in downtown San Francisco and began reaching out to financial institutions about their vision.<\/p>\n They also started phoning investors.<\/p>\n Those calls seem to have born fruit. Upgrade is announcing today that it has raised $60 million in equity and convertible notes from in Union Square Ventures, Credit Ease, FirstMark Capital, Noah Holdings, Ribbit Capital, Sands Capital Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, Uprising, Vy Capital and Apoletto, which is the low-flying, early-stage venture vehicle of billionaire investor Yuri Milner.<\/p>\n A source close to the company says the investors assigned Upgrade with a pre-money valuation of $120 million, suggesting they own a third of the company \u2013 more than is typical for a Series A round, even one as big as Upgrade\u2019s.<\/p>\n They aren\u2019t buying into a peer-to-peer lending company, as Lending Club was in its earliest days, before it began to rely heavily<\/a> on Wall Street investors to fund the loans on its platform. This time, the company is working exclusively with financial institutions, including, for now, \u00a0Jefferies and three other other unnamed financial institutions.<\/p>\n The issuing bank, WebBank, of Salt Lake City, Utah, will issue loans to borrowers once they\u2019re approved by Upgrade and these other investors have committed to fund the loans, which will range from $2,000 to $50,000 and are expected primarily to pay back credit card debt. (WebBank is the same issuing bank that works with Lending Club, according to a former Lending Club employee.)<\/p>\n Upgrade will also be aggressively marketing tools that help users understand and improve their credit score.<\/p>\n Says the source familiar with Upgrade\u2019s thinking: \u201cThink of it as Lending Club plus Credit Karma<\/a>,\u201d a credit monitoring company that\u2019s rumored<\/a> to be an IPO candidate this year or next.<\/p>\n Whether that\u2019s enough to convince borrowers to try the service remains a big question mark. They seemingly won\u2019t be saving more money on the platform than they would elsewhere.<\/p>\n According to the service Bankrate<\/a>, it\u2019s possible for a borrower with excellent credit to land a three-year-loan at a 4.29 percent APR.\u00a0\u00a0Meanwhile,\u00a0Upgrade\u2019s interest rates range from\u00a05.66\u00a0percent for a person with excellent credit, to an onerous 35.97 percent for a borrower with\u00a0a riskier profile. (In fairness,\u00a0lenders sometimes feature\u00a0a very aggressive headline rate like 4.29,\u00a0 but almost no\u00a0one qualifies for it.)<\/p>\n Plainly, too, the\u00a0market for online lending companies is far more crowded than when Laplanche started Lending Club.<\/p>\n Then again, the market opportunity remains enormous.\u00a0According to the Federal Reserve, the U.S. consumer lending market is a $3.5 trillion business, and only $36 billion in loans was made online in 2015.<\/p>\n Given how fast even a small slice of that market can add up, it\u2019s no wonder that\u00a0Laplanche is back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/04\/renaud-laplanche.png?w=680\")
Renaud Laplanche had a terrible no good very bad 2016. But the founder and longtime CEO of Lending Club is back with a new lending startup called Upgrade, along with the support of investors who’ve provided the company with $60 million in funding. It’s a comeback that’s been roughly one year in the making. It was in May of last year that Laplanche, who founded Lending Club… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/img><\/a>
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