Online consumer lender Upstart has reportedly set out to raise $100mn in their latest fundraising round; the round would put the valuation north of $500mn and upwards of $1bn; the company did not confirm the American Banker report but did say they anticipate completing a finals round in the next year; the company reach profitability last year and the value of loan transactions increased threefold according to a spokeswoman. Source.
The first ever J.D. Power survey on the personal loan market makes for some interesting reading; the survey was based...
Upstart reported slipping revenues and forecasts that fell short of analysts' expectations. Girouard remains positive about their position.
Making news this week is the bankruptcy of a crypto platform, Meta gives up on Novi, Upstart hits some headwinds, startup funding is down, the US Treasury develops a framework for crypto and more
Dave Girouard is the founder and CEO of Upstart; Girouard spent almost his entire career working for tech firms including Apple and Google and a lot of Upstart's team actually comes from Google; given that they lean heavier towards the 'tech' side of fintech, Girouard has a unique perspective; shares the general trend of software disrupting every business and that every business will become a tech business; discusses the history of marketplace lending, attributes of a marketplace and the evolution of the marketplaces; reports on how artificial intelligence and machine learning can help in a number of ways including creation of real time analysis, development of customized credit scoring, expanded access to credit through broader underwriting variables and faster processing; also discusses some of the challenges that currently keep machine learning solutions from the mainstream including adverse selection, loan stacking, fraud and regulatory concerns; ends with the benefits of alternative machine learning technology including more inclusion, lower rates, lower costs and greater financial support for consumers. Source
Today, Upstart released their first quarterly earnings since their IPO in December. And it was a very strong quarter indeed....
Upstart's Dave Girourad talks with TechCrunch about the company's new fundraising round which is adding new capital of $32.5 million; the new capital brings total funding to $85 million and this round's investors included Rakuten, Third Point Ventures, Khosla Ventures and First Round Capital; the fundraising will help the firm launch a new software as a service product called Powered by Upstart, an extension of its proprietary credit underwriting platform which utilizes machine learning and modern data science; Upstart will be releasing the new product at LendIt USA 2017. Source
This earnings season started strong but turned uneven this week. Even firms that showed outsized growth saw their stock prices...
Dave Girouard was first on the Lend Academy podcast back in 2014 which was their first year of operation; since...
The canary is now 10+ years old as prominent platforms like SoFi and Upstart launched in the early 2010s, and Freedom Financial (now Achieve) has been around for two decades.