Just a few weeks ago, Funding Circle raised $150m from a group of investment giants including DST Global and BlackRock, making the London-headquartered startup the best capitalised small business marketplace in the world. Now the team want to build on their success in the UK – where they are already the 5th largest net lender to businesses - and the US, by expanding internationally and becoming, in the words of co-founder Samir Desai, “part of the financial infrastructure”.
Since launching in August 2010, Funding Circle’s 38,000 investors, who encompass individuals, financial institutions and even the UK government, have lent over $1bn to small businesses globally – and are on target to loan another $1bn in this calendar year alone. But how did the team get started? How did they pull off expansion into the US, where many European-born startups struggle? And what have they learned about company culture along the way? In this Index Ventures podcast, Rohan Silva talks to Funding Circle’s co-founders Andrew Mullinger, James Meekings, Samir Desai, and Sam Hodges, as well as Index co-founder and new Funding Circle chairman Neil Rimer.
