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Prior to Norwest, Jeff served as President, COO and board member of DoveBid, Inc., a privately held business auction firm, which expanded during his tenure via internal growth and acquisition from a $10M revenue run rate to a $120M revenue run rate with 400 employees. From 1990 to 1999, Jeff was co-founder, President, CEO and Board member of Edify Corporation, a venture backed enterprise software company focused on voice and internet e-commerce platforms and applications. Edify held its IPO in 1996 and was sold to S1 Corporation in 1999.

1. Jeff, how do you think p2p lending will change the face of consumer lending?

Person-to-person (p2p) lending will be an important driver of change in the world of consumer lending, because the economic model of p2p lending is significantly more efficient than the traditional business models of banks, credit card companies and other institutional lenders. That improved efficiency enables better interest rates for both individual borrowers and individual lenders when they participate in a p2p lending transaction. So as awareness grows among consumers that they can both borrow and lend at more attractive rates, we believe that demand to participate in a p2p lending platform such as Lending Club will explode. Today, the overall markets for consumer lending in the U.S. are enormous, so p2p lending has tremendous room to grow from its current small base before it will seriously impact the operations of large consumer lenders. But you can be sure that banks, credit card companies and other consumer finance companies will be paying very close attention to the growth of the p2p lending category -- they know that they will have to deal with p2p lending more and more as time goes by.

2. Are you a lender or a borrower in Lending Club?

I am a lender on Lending Club. It was a very straightforward and easy experience over the internet. I registered as a lender on Lending Club via Facebook, entered a total amount that I wanted to lend, and decided on an overall risk profile for my loans. Then Lending Club's software automatically generated a potential portfolio of roughly 20 loans and suggested amounts for me to fund for each loan. I had the opportunity to look at each borrower's profile, including their job, income, debt level, credit history and reason for borrowing. From the suggested loan portfolio, I picked out the loans that I wanted to fund, adjusted the amounts that I wanted to fund or stayed with the suggested funding levels, and hit the submit button. It was as simple as that. Lending Club then automatically deducted the funds from my account and set up my account to automatically receive the loan repayments from the borrowers. My current portfolio is yielding over 13% -- a lot better than money market funds.

3. Did the Lending Club deal ruin your summer vacation?

Norwest Venture Partners was very excited to invest in Lending Club, and we wanted to make sure that we kept the investment decision making and due diligence process moving forward in a timely fashion over the course of the summer. I had a long scheduled summer vacation that landed right in the middle of our investment process, but we had to keep going on closing the investment, vacation or not. This meant daily phone calls and emails from our vacation spot. I would not say that it quite ruined the vacation, but I can say that everyone in my extended family now knows Renaud!

Prior to joining Canaan Partners, Dan Ciporin was CEO of Shopping.com, where he oversaw the company's growth from zero to over $100 million in revenues in just 5 years, culminating in the company's initial public offering in October 2004. Shopping.com was the third largest ecommerce site on the web before it was acquired by eBay in August of 2005.

1. Dan, what prompted you to invest in Lending Club?

The consumer credit market is an absolutely gigantic market and yet paradoxically one of the few sectors that has not yet been completely upended by the internet. I think the Lending Club approach to consumer lending is not only a great disintermediation approach in a large, established market sector but also through the focus on affinity relationships takes what has been proven to work on the web and applies it uniquely to the lending marketplace.

2. What makes the person-to-person lending space attractive from your point of view?

P2P services and functionality in general has been at the heart of web market disruption, from Ebay to MySpace to Facebook, using only a few of the most prominent examples. I think the opportunity is ripe now to apply P2P functionality in the consumer lending space, especially with the particular focus on pre-existing affiliations that Lending Club has.

3. Tell us more about your background and how it is relevant to Lending Club.

Prior to my experience as CEO of Shopping.com, which we viewed not only as a price comparison service but more importantly a complete facilitation mechanism for the entire purchasing process, I was a senior vice president at MasterCard International. Working in the "traditional" consumer credit market was a first-hand opportunity to view the enormity of influence this market has throughout the economy, and how important even relatively simple product innovations can be in building and maintaining a customer base.

More directly relevant to Lending Club, one of the innovations we worked on at MasterCard was in helping to develop the affinity/co-branded market for credit cards, an effort that ultimately proved to be a huge success for us. I have seen how effective affinity relationships can be in 'traditional' consumer lending, and I think that Lending Club can take this same kind of innovative approach in the massive consumer credit market with even more compelling results.

As reported earlier yesterday afternoon, we are thrilled to announce that Norwest Venture Partners and Canaan Partners invested in the Company as part of a total $10.26MM investment round. Jeff Crowe from NVP and Dan Ciporin from Canaan Partners are joining the Company’s board of directors.

We launched the company as part of the Facebook F8 platform on May 24 and since then have issued $750,000 in loans among Facebook users. Launching on Facebook made sense: we believe that person-to-person lending will grow faster in an environment where people feel connected to each other, and Facebook offers the perfect environment for this with friends, groups and networks. Facebook Lenders can build a “portfolio” of loans based not only on credit profiles but also based on their connections to the borrowers (attended the same school, worked for the same company, etc.).

Facebook now has over 6 million active user groups which are prime targets for financial services. However, Facebook users are younger than the average online population, and our strict screening criteria (640 minimum credit score, less than 20% DTI) led us to decline about 75% of all applications, as younger borrowers tend to have a lower FICO score. We are coming up with new tools to help the “declined” borrowers understand the importance of good credit and take specific actions to improve their credit score.

We will be using the funds to expand beyond our current Facebook application. Stay tuned for interviews with Jeff Crowe and Dan Ciporin on this blog later this morning.

Lending Club Video Awards attract over 100,000 viewers on YouTube in contest to find the best user-generated video ads for its new person-to-person lending service. Winners include Chris Barrett, professional filmmaker, and Share Ross, former bassist for platinum-selling recording artists, Vixen.

SUNNYVALE, CA – August 17, 2007 - Lending Club, the rapidly growing person-to-person lending service, today announced the winners of its Lending Club Video Awards contest. The contest took place simultaneously on Facebook and YouTube from July 18 through August 10, 2007. Users were invited to create and submit Lending Club video ads for a cash prize. The submissions were viewed more than 100,000 times in just five weeks, and due to the overwhelming popularity, Lending Club has decided to raise the cash prize to $8,000 (from $5,000) to be shared among four winners.

"Lending Club represents a new way for people to lend and borrow money among each other, so we decided that the best way to promote our P2P lending service was to challenge our users to create videos to explain our benefits," said Renaud Laplanche, CEO and founder of Lending Club.

"However, nothing could have prepared us for the incredible popularity of our video contest and the quality of our top submissions. So, our team got together and agreed to increase our prize amount to reward four directors instead of just one."

The winners of the Lending Club Video Awards are:

Best Video Award ($3,000 Cash Prize): Chris Barrett (17,825 views). Chris Barrett is a professional filmmaker and co-founder of Powerhouse Pictures Entertainment, LLC along with actor Efren Ramirez. He can also be seen in the award winning documentaries "The Corporation" and "Maxed Out". His professionally filmed short takes a humorous look at one of the many real life situations in which regular people can benefit from using Lending Club.

YouTube® Viewers Award ($3,000 Cash Prize): Steve Dinelli (19,011 views). Eighteen-year-old Steve Dinelli's stop-motion video demonstrates Steve's extraordinarily promising talent, while giving examples of what Lending Club loans can be used for. Steve's video was acclaimed by YouTube's viewers and has surpassed the 20,000-view mark.

Storyboard Award ($1,500 Cash Prize): Jonathan Reed (6,480 views). Jonathan Reed entered the contest in its last week with an astonishing video that showcases Lending Club's social lending features and Facebook® presence in a well animated and engaging storyboard. Congratulations, Jonathan!

Jury Prize ($500 Cash Prize): Share Ross (1,018 views). Share Ross is the former bassist for the platinum-selling EMI recording artists Vixen and guitarist and singer for Bubble. Share calls P2P lending a "wonderful form of anarchy". Her video gives a personal perspective on the advantages of borrowing on Lending Club.

About Lending Club™

LendingClub.com is an online social lending network where people can borrow and lend money among themselves based upon their affinities and/or social connections. Across all 50 states, members can borrow money at a better interest rate than they would get from a bank or credit card and invest in a diversified portfolio of loans with higher rates of return than those served by savings accounts, CDs or other online lending services. LendingMatch™ technology helps match lenders and borrowers by using connections established through social networks, associations and online communities, and build diversified portfolios based on lender preferences. Lending Club is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA. More information is available at www.lendingclub.com.

Press Contact:
Paula Cavagnaro
Antenna Group
415-977-1915
paula@antennagroup.com

18 competitors, 4 winners, $8,000 in prizes, 100,000+ views

We have just announced on Facebook® the names of the 4 winners in the first Lending Club Video Contest. The Contest took place simultaneously on Facebook® and YouTube® from July 18th through August 10th and the Lending Club videos have been watched a combined 100,000 times on YouTube® in this past 5 weeks.

Our original plan was to give away a single $5,000-prize to the most-watched video. However, after reaching out to the top competitors, we have all agreed to split the main prize, create additional prizes and incorporate other criteria than just YouTube® views including overall quality of original content, clarity of the message, and entertainment value of the video.

And the winners are…(drum roll):

$3,000 Best Video Award - Chris Barrett

Chris Barrett: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G43bLni8Or4 (17,825 views). Chris Barrett is a professional filmmaker and co-founder of Powerhouse Pictures Entertainment, LLC along with actor Efren Ramirez. Chris is currently directing the documentary "After School" studying the phenomenon of illicit teacher-student relationships. He can also be seen in the award winning documentaries "The Corporation" and "Maxed Out," both currently on DVD. Read Chris’ interview by Tom Tolman.

$3,000 YouTube® Viewers Award - Steve Dinelli

Steve Dinelli: http://youtube.com/watch?v=S6RtyX47r_M (19,011 views). Eighteen-year-old Steve Dinelli’s « stop motion » video shows Steve’s talent as well as his ability to convey the right messages about Lending Club. Steve’s video was acclaimed by YouTube’s viewers and has passed the 20,000-view mark. Read Steve’s interview by Tom Tolman.

$1,500 Storyboard Award - Jonthan Reed

Jonathan Reed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSn9nlZC8kM (6,480 views). Jonathan Reed entered the contest in its last week, with an astonishing video that blends Lending Club’s branding and Facebook® presence with a well thought-through and very convincing storyboard. Congratulations Jonathan!

$500 Jury Prize - Share Ross

Share Ross: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOyl4Vh-ZhE (1,018 views). Share feels p2p lending is a wonderful form of anarchy and her video is compelling in its direct exchange of information. Share is the former bassist for the platinum-selling EMI recording artists Vixen and guitarist and singer for Bubble. Read Share’s interview by Tom Tolman.

We are delighted at the outcome of this first contest, have gathered great videos that we will be posting on our Web site to explain the benefits of person-to-person lending, and have learned a lot more about the YouTube ecosystem and the best ways to reach out to the filmmaker community.

By watching videos made by people not previously familiar with p2p lending, we also understood better how our company is being perceived, and how we can best benefit from, or when inaccurate, positively influence, that perception.

A big “thank you” to all 18 participants; we certainly hope to see you around soon for our next video contest!