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Online lending platform Upstart secured $35 million in Series C funding and announced it will use the capital to grow its millennial-focused service. The latest funding round was led by Third Point Ventures, with participation from existing investors, including Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital and Collaborative Fund.
“People in the lending world were acting like there was none of this data,” Girouard says. “There a real difference from companies that decide to lend money but don’t have anything unique to their approach.” Girouard’s startup, called Upstart, makes three-year personal loans to millennial borrowers the company believes it can predict will grow into a healthy financial situation. Most of them are to refinance credit cards, helping young professionals adjust their interest rates down from an average of 22% to Upstart’s average of 11-12%. Many of those borrowers make more than $100,000 in annual salary and 90% have college degrees. So far Upstart has issued almost 9,000 loans and collected 36,000 repayments. “These are very high quality borrowers, just ones without a lot of credit history,” Girouard says.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2015/07/16/upstart-raises-35m-to-get-millennials-loans/
