Chris Larsen, CEO, Prosper.com
A general overview of the Prosper business, highlighting new features and functions expected to be introduced (or recently introduced) with a longer explanation of Prosper’s attempts to work within the Facebook community.
Prosper describes themselves as an “ebay for loans.” It’s peer-to-peer lending. They’ve identified their basic function as using the internet to synthesize social capital and diversification. I won’t go into what they do and how they do it: they’re website can do that. I’m only peripherally familiar with these services, so I was listening for a few key things:
The build credit histories within the Prosper community, not from common credit histories, but they do report loan defaults to credit histories.
He was a bit coy on overall default rates.
They’re excited about the group feature, to essentially build a reputation through participation in a group. It’s an interesting idea, and they’re fine tuning they’re metrics and processes to ensure that this can’t be used to distort the basic risk profiles.
They’ve also introduced the “friends” feature which allows friends to endorse and – better – bid on loans.
A new feature allows lenders to set up portfolios: rather than identifying specific loans lenders can choose a portfolio profile (high risk, low risk, etc.) and then identify loans within those profiles.
They’re attempted integration into Facebook was problematic. A “friend” in Facebook is different than a “friend” in Prosper (indeed!). Their new strategy is to have Prosper users identify themselves as such in Facebook through news and headlines, rather than as saying that they belong to the Prosper community. More later…
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