Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

When we launched our podcast 10 years ago, one of our first guests was a French entrepreneur living in San Francisco. He had a small but upwardly aspirational startup. Renaud Laplanche’s Lending Club ended up becoming a major player in fintech as a public company and a force in the marketplace lending arena.

Now, Laplanche is back for more. He’s the CEO of Upgrade, a new challenger bank that was built with lending at its heart. He joins me on the podcast to talk about the genesis story of Upgrade and how so much of his experience launching and growing LendingClub informs Upgrade’s products and positioning. We discuss how the current COVID-19 crisis is impacting the industry for both incumbents and upstarts and how Upgrade’s new products — a contactless credit card that has built in pay-over-time features — play into today’s market dynamics.

Renaud Laplanche is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.