P2P Lending Company Prosper.com has High Q3 Loss

Prosper Marketplace, Inc. the company running the p2p lending site Prosper.com had a net loss of 2,238,138 US$ in the third quarter of 2009. Furthermore Prosper’s cash reserve is low. As of September 30th, 2009 Prosper had 2,079,624 US$ cash and cash equivalents left from an initial VC funding of 40 million US$. Even accounting for the recent 1 million US$ investment of a banker, at the current burn rate Prosper will need new funding soon.

However the timing and circumstances make chances for a new VC round look less than ideal.
Prosper reopened the site for new loans after completing the SEC registration process in July 2009, but still struggles to reach growth rates the marketplace had in 2007 and 2008.

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Banker Invests 1 Million US$ VC Money into Prosper

Nigel Morris, co-founder of Capital One, has invested 1 million US$ into Prosper.com via his venture capital company QED Investors.

The investment comes in form of a convertible promissory note for the amount of 1 million US$, which is due in one year and carries an interest rate of 15%. QED Investors may elect to convert the note into shares of Prosper’s preferred stock.

VC funding for Prosper now totals 41 million US$. Nigel Morris joins Prosper’s board of directors.

(via TechCrunch.com, sources press release & other)

A venture capitalist’s view on investing in peer to peer lending

When a VC talks about peer to peer lending he is not talking about achieving a good ROI by lending to borrowers. He is talking about the chances he sees in investing in the p2p lending company.

Paul Jozefak, Managing Partner at Neuhaus Partners, did just that as a side note in an interview he gave ReadWriteWeb. Neuhaus Partner invested in the second VC funding round of German Smava.de six month ago.

In the interview Jozefak says, that:

  1. Smava is at the right time in the right place (current economic situation)
  2. he sees an upswing in lender and borrower interest; assesses that the model has proven itself
  3. Their competitors in the US are doing quite well and he expects that Prosper will resolve it’s issues with the SEC.

I agree with the first point, but in my view it is too early to judge whether the Smava model really has proven itself (even the oldest loans are only through two thirds of their loan term). And the last point, I find an optimistic assessment of the situation. One could say that Lending Club is doing well, but Prosper and Loanio are in a situation that could at least be described as challenging.

Lending Club receives 12 million US$ VC funding

Lending Club announced today that they have closed another funding round. Excerpt from the press release:

… closed a $12 million Series B round of funding. Morgenthaler Ventures led the round and is joined by existing investors, Norwest Venture Partners and Canaan Partners. Rebecca Lynn, a Morgenthaler Principal, is joining Lending Club’s board of directors.

Lending Club also announced today that it has added Pamela Kramer as Chief Marketing Officer. Ms. Kramer is an established marketing veteran … . She was most recently Chief Marketing Officer of MarketTools, Inc and, before that, spent 9 years in leadership roles with E*TRADE Financial … .

Nexx – P2P lending for Kiwis – gets 600,000 NZ$ in funding

No, not talking about fruits or birds here. Nexx.co.nz develops a p2p lending service in New Zealand. Nexx now succeeded in raising 600,000 NZ$ (approx 330.000 US$). Quite an achievement in the surrounding conditions of the credit crunch.

Nexx, an on-line social lending business being developed by four young entrepreneurs at business growth centre The ICEHOUSE, has raised $600,000 in funding from a group of angel investors including the ICE Angels, Venture Accelerator from Nelson and Sparkbox.

Nexx co-founder Ben Milsom says the funding will pay for development and promotion of the business which is currently awaiting regulatory approval. Milsom and his partners Glenn Riddell, James Wallace and Mark Catley expect to be able to launch their operation in early 2009.

The Nexx team started in 2007 and won the University of Auckland Business School’s Spark Entrepreneurship Challenge in September 2007. The prize was 20,000 NZ$ in seed funding and a nine-month tenancy in the Icehouse business incubator.
Ben Milsom, writes about the pre-launch process of Nexx at the Startup-Blog.

Nexx is developed based on an open-source ERP and accounting package Adempiere.

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