I was in San Francisco last month and I sat down with Prosper president, Ron Suber to record this conversation for the next edition of the Lend Academy Podcast. Ron Suber was part of the executive team that took control of Prosper early last year and they have been on a roll since then.
As we sat down in a hotel foyer near the Prosper’s offices in San Francisco we chatted about the last year and what it has been like growing Prosper in such a dramatic fashion. One point to note when listening to this podcast is that it was recorded in late March before Prosper had crossed the $1 billion mark which it did last week.
In this podcast you will learn:
- What has been driving the growth at Prosper recently.
- Why Suber is completely focused on borrowers today.
- The big new initiative that Suber thinks is critical in 2015.
- How Prosper is going to improve the experience for retail investors.
- The two trends that Suber is seeing at Prosper today.
- The importance of avoiding cash drag for investors.
- Where the retail investor is focused as far as risk is concerned
- What the banks who come to Prosper to invest are looking for.
- The importance of the third party applications for investors.
- The movement away from “feeding time” to real time addition of loans to their platform.
- The limits they are putting on new institutional investors.
- The importance of educating borrowers and lenders on p2p lending.
- How Prosper is being proactive with government regulators.
- Why Suber is very supportive of a Lending Club IPO.
- When Prosper will become profitable.
- What the total loan volume will be for Prosper in 2014.
Right after our interview, Suber was off to take the train down to Palo Alto where he was giving a lunch time presentation. Probably more than any other person in our industry, Suber travels the country spreading the word and evangelizing p2p lending. I appreciated him taking the time out to record this interview.
You can subscribe to the Lend Academy Podcast via iTunes or Stitcher. There is an audio player directly below or you can download the MP3 file here.
