Prosper Raises $14.7 Million For Peer To Peer Lending Market; Eric Schmidt Invests

Prosper.com, a popular peer-to-peer lending marketplace in the U.S., has raised $14.7 million in Series D funding round from new investors TomorrowVentures and CompuCredit Holdings with existing investors Accel Partners; Benchmark Capital; DAG Ventures; Meritech Capital Partners; Omidyar Network; QED Investors; and Volition Capital participating in the round. This round of funding brings Prosper’s total funding to $57.7 million. TomorrowVentures happens to be the investment vehicle for Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Prosper pioneered the idea of concept of people-to-people lending in the U.S with its launch in 2006. Unfortunately, the startup hit a rough patch last year when the SEC stopped all lending on the platform because the company didn’t register as a seller of securities. With the new climate of heightened regulatory oversight in light of the financial meltdown, the SEC is being more judicious about overseeing financial institutions.

The startup was able to re-launch its site over the summer after the SEC gave Prosper the OK to facilitate peer-to-peer lending. Prosper became the first and thus only Internet auction-based P2P loans platform to have its registration statement declared effective by the SEC. Prosper is currently available for lenders in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

The company has nearly one million members and has coordinated over 32,000 funded loans totaling over $194 million. Prosper’s main competitor, Lending Club, also just raised a massive round totaling $$24.5 million.

Crunchbase

• PROSPER

Company: Prosper

Website: prosper.com

Launch Date: February 1, 2006

Funding: $94.9M

Prosper is a people-to-people lending marketplace that attempts to make consumer lending more financially and socially rewarding. Prosper allows people to invest in each other in a way that is financially and socially rewarding. On Prosper, borrowers list loan requests between $2,000 and $25,000 and individual lenders invest as little as $25 in each loan listing they select. In addition to criteria commonly used by institutional lenders, such as credit scores, people who lend can consider borrowers’ group affiliations. Groups...

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