Thursday, July 16, 2015

Upstart, Led By Ex-Googlers, Snags $35M For Personal Loans

Palo Alto-based Upstart, an online personal loan service founded by ex-Googlers, disclosed today that it has raised $35M in a SEries C funding round. The funding was led by Third Point Ventures, and also included Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Collaborative Fund, plus angels Marc Benioff and Eric Schmidt. The startup--which is aiming its service at young, employed, technology industry employees--lets users submit information about their school, education, current job, and more to borrow up to $35,000 via a personal loan. The startup says the APR on its loans start at 5.7%. Upstart was founded by Dave Girouard (former President of Google Enterprise), Paul Gu (D.E. Shaw), and Anna M. Counselman (Google). A fair number of Upstart's executives come from Google.