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[nonattender]

http://blog.prosper.com/2010/04/16/prosper-marketplace-closes-147-million-series-d-round/

Prosper Marketplace Closes $14.7 Million Series D Round - 04/16/10     

Fund raise includes new investors TomorrowVentures and CompuCredit along with all existing Prosper investors.
 
Prosper.com, the world’s largest peer-to-peer lending marketplace with nearly one million members and over 32,000 funded loans totaling over $194 million, today announced that it has raised $14.7 million in a Series D round from new investors TomorrowVentures, LLC and CompuCredit Holdings Corporation and all of Prosper’s existing investors: Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, Omidyar Network, QED Investors, and Volition Capital (formerly Fidelity Ventures). Including this latest round of financing, Prosper has raised a total of $57.7 million to date.

Prosper also announced that Court Coursey, Managing Partner at TomorrowVentures, will join the company’s Board of Directors. Prosper’s other Board members include, Jim Breyer of Accel Partners; Larry Cheng of Volition Capital; Bob Kagle of Benchmark Capital; and Capital One Co-founder Nigel Morris of QED Investors.

“We were attracted to Prosper because it offers a game-changing solution and is poised to capitalize on the consumer lending market in a substantial manner,” said Court Coursey, Managing Partner at TomorrowVentures. “Prosper is the leader in the space and positioned to be at the forefront of revolutionizing fundamental aspects of the financial services industry for many years to come.”

Prosper, America’s first peer-to-peer lending marketplace, maintains approximately two-thirds of the U.S. peer-to-peer lending market and, according to Deutsche Bank Research, Prosper is the largest peer-to-peer lending marketplace worldwide. Gartner Research has forecasted that the peer-to-peer lending industry will “soar at least 66 percent to $5 billion of outstanding loans by 2013.” Prosper crossed the $1 billion milestone in consumer loan demand in March 2008 and has now surpassed $1.8 billion in demand.

“We are greatly appreciative of the tremendous support and commitment shown by our early backers, and honored by the caliber and strategic depth of our new investors,” said Chris Larsen, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Prosper. “This latest round of financing strengthens our leadership position and our charge toward continuing to pave the way for bringing the benefits of a third way of banking – peer-to-peer lending – into the mainstream.”

Larsen continued, “The reset button has been hit for consumers who are frustrated with credit companies and a dearth of financing options, and for investors who want to play an active role in reshaping the financial services industry as we’ve known it. Prosper is committed to giving people more power and freedom over the status quo and we’re motivated by what this change-up means for the future of financial services in America and around the globe.”

Nominate for Lobby.

-t

[112233]

I already reported it in the other lobby thread


ETA

"TomorrowVentures, which is personally financed by Google CEO Eric Schmidt"

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2010/04/12/daily60.html

[Xenon481]

I agree with NA (that was really hard to type) that this should be a separate thread in the Lobby. The current Lobby thread discusses whether or not these deals would actually go through. This is sufficiently different news that it actually did go through.

[112233]

doesnt matter to me. just pointing out that it was reported.

[ira01]

Typical Prosper misleading press release:

http://blog.prosper.com/2010/04/16/prosper-marketplace-closes-147-million-series-d-round/

Prosper Marketplace Closes $14.7 Million Series D Round - 04/16/10     

Prosper.com, the world’s largest peer-to-peer lending marketplace with nearly one million members and over 32,000 funded loans totaling over $194 million,

Prosper is only the largest in terms of originations -- the majority of which have already been repaid or defaulted.  Of that $194 million in originations, a mind-blowing $44 million has already been charged of (NET of any recoveries) -- almost 1 dollar out of every 4.  Prosper has only a paltry $33M in active loans. 

And the vast majority of those "million members" are people who registered, looked around, and haven't been seen in years, or were "friends" (or sock puppets) of long-ago borrowers.  How many of those "million members" actually lent or borrowed a penny -- around one in twenty? 

“We were attracted to Prosper because it offers a game-changing solution and is poised to capitalize on the consumer lending market in a substantial manner,” said Court Coursey, Managing Partner at TomorrowVentures. “Prosper is the leader in the space and positioned to be at the forefront of revolutionizing fundamental aspects of the financial services industry for many years to come.”

Bwahahah -- Prosper is only "the leader in the space" based on its now repaid or defaulted ancient originations.  LendingClub is now originating close to 400% of Prosper's current originations.  The only thing Prosper is "positioned to be" is the same old mismanaged and unethical company we are all familiar with.

Prosper, America’s first peer-to-peer lending marketplace, maintains approximately two-thirds of the U.S. peer-to-peer lending market

By current actual originations?  Um, no.  That would be LendingClucb.

Prosper crossed the $1 billion milestone in consumer loan demand in March 2008 and has now surpassed $1.8 billion in demand.

What a completely worthless metric -- How much of that "$1.8 billion in demand" is repeated loan listings from crap borrowers that had 0.000% chance of ever funding? 

“This latest round of financing strengthens our leadership position and our charge toward continuing to pave the way for bringing the benefits of a third way of banking – peer-to-peer lending – into the mainstream.”

Um no -- you ceded that "leadership position" to LendingClub.

Larsen continued, “The reset button has been hit for consumers who are frustrated with credit companies and a dearth of financing options,

How about "hitting the reset button" on Prosper?  Starting with firing Larsen and the rest of top management, and replacing them with people who care about lenders' interests (and who know what they are doing).

[Cushie]

As far as I can tell that's two lobby nominations.  Off we go.

[GLeaderAccountantsChoice]

I personally respect Google a lot, as I believe it to be a great company.  The same goes for Capital One, though I probably know less about them than Google.  If PMI's board members are able to do some good things, well, we'll see.  The most important thing is to put some solid equity into PMI, as the company will never become successful without it.  Now, am I ready to believe that will happen, or that PMI's got what it takes to keep it up for another three years even?    

ETA: My state isn't allowed on PMI for now anyways.  

[Senator]

Congrats Prosper!

[Staneslav]

a

[Mtnchick]

Cool! I just have a few more loans before I'm out. As long as they can stay around until then, I'm a happy camper

[Investar]

 So they have some more cash, what's their current burn rate...

      about $685,000/month     

[Staneslav]

a

[Xenon481]

 So they have some more cash, what's their current burn rate...

      about $685,000/month     

That buys them about 21 months of operation. Though wasn't Larsen's 1 million loan going to be repaid by this funding?

Approximately $3.3million of this 14.7 is being utilized to repay the various bridge loans, so really they only got $11.4 in usable funding.

That means at the current burn rate, only 16-17 months of life.

[NewHorizon]

Prosper crossed the $1 billion milestone in consumer loan demand in March 2008 and has now surpassed $1.8 billion in demand.

What a completely worthless metric -- How much of that "$1.8 billion in demand" is repeated loan listings from crap borrowers that had 0.000% chance of ever funding?

Prosper would tell you - as they've told me (cuz ONE of us took the time to ask ) - that the metric is indeed not so meaningful, but LendingClub recently touted surpassing the $1b demand mark and then questions about this figure was asked of Prosper.  So Prosper put it out there.

Caustic remarks about who's the leader in the marketplace and who's the follower
in 3...2...1...

[Xenon481]

Prosper crossed the $1 billion milestone in consumer loan demand in March 2008 and has now surpassed $1.8 billion in demand.

What a completely worthless metric -- How much of that "$1.8 billion in demand" is repeated loan listings from crap borrowers that had 0.000% chance of ever funding?

Prosper would tell you - as they've told me (cuz ONE of us took the time to ask ) - that the metric is indeed not so meaningful, but LendingClub recently touted surpassing the $1b demand mark and then questions about this figure was asked of Prosper.  So Prosper put it out there.

Caustic remarks about who's the leader in the marketplace and who's the follower
in 3...2...1...

Instead of purposefully perpetuating misleading meaningless metrics that happen to be in their favor and pointing fingers at the other guy say "they started it", it would be much more ethical to publish a rebuttal.