In today's episode, Ryan Zauk sits down with fintech pioneer Renaud Laplanche, Upgrade Founder & Former LendingClub CEO.

Some say LendingClub kicked off the modern fintech era with its digital lending solution, and Renaud has had a front seat to this industry every step of the way through their IPO in 2014. Renaud has been recognized on Bloomberg Markets’ Most Influential List, won the Economist Innovation Award, and was recognized by the Clinton Global Initiative for expanding access to affordable credit. 

After LendingClub, Renaud co-founded Upgrade. Upgrade  is a fintech platform providing affordable and responsible credit, mobile banking, and payments products to over 6 million customers in the US and Canada, and has issued over $35 billion in credit since its founding in 2017 - $8 billion just in the past year.

⁠Upgrade raised⁠ $280M Series F at a $6Bn valuation in 2021, led by Coatue and DST, and other investors including Ribbit, Dragoneer, and more.

In a challenging era for consumer fintech, Upgrade has found a way to break the mold and continue growing, expanding products, making acquisitions, and more.

Ryan and Renaud recorded the episode at Upgrade's beautiful SF HQ on a foggy day in San Francisco. They cover the acquisition of his first company by Oracle + how LendingClub came to be, a deep dive on Upgrade's funding model and how it translates into savings for their customers

Episode Highlights

1:30: LendingClub founding story and Renaud's entrepreneurial origins

4:08: Why he founded Upgrade

6:17: Upgrade's target market, products, and diverse customer base

7:48: A deep dive on Upgrade's funding model and how it translate into savings for their customers

11:37: The rise of private credit and using high cost of capital funding at the other end of the market

13:45: Tactical advice to founders raising their first-ever credit facilities and warehouse lines

16:37: Acquiring Uplift, what drew Renaud to them, and key lessons/guiding principles for M&A he's learned over his career

26:15: His growth as a leader and the hardest part of his job

27:54: His lifelong love of sailing and how it has helped him as a leader

29:28: How Upgrade is deploying AI internally

31:36: Rapid fire round (managing VCs, sailing memories, fintechs he's watching, what retirement might look like)

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Renaud Laplanche is the co-founder and CEO of Upgrade. Prior to co-founding Upgrade, Renaud founded LendingClub, a Fintech pioneer that quickly became America’s largest provider of personal loans. In recent years Renaud received multiple awards and nominations. Among other distinctions, Renaud was recognized on Bloomberg Markets’ Most Influential List, an annual ranking of the World’s top 50 most influential leaders across technology, finance, and politics. Renaud also won the Economist Innovation Award, and was recognized by the Clinton Global Initiative for expanding access to affordable credit. Renaud holds the Newport-Bermuda sailing record, with the only crossing ever achieved under 24 hours. He received an MBA from HEC and London Business School and a law degree from Montpellier University in France.

Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor on the Ventures team at OMERS, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets.

You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.

Hey everyone! Julie Verhage Greenberg here with the final episode of Season Two of the Fintech OGs series. We’re closing things out with Emmalyn Shaw, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Flourish Ventures, and Satya Patel, Co-Founder and Partner at Homebrew. 

Together, they’ve helped shape the future of financial technology, investing in companies like Chime, Gusto, and Alloy.

In this episode, we dive into their origin stories,  explore the highs and lows of their careers, the challenges of investing in emerging technologies like AI, and their perspectives on the evolution of embedded finance and real-time payments. 

Whether you’re a founder seeking inspiration, an investor curious about what’s next in FinTech, or simply a fan of good conversation, this episode has something for you. 

Let’s dive in!

Hey everyone! Julie Verhage Greenberg here with your final episode of the FinTech OGs of 2024. 

Today, we have a conversation that dives deep into the origins and evolution of FinTech through the lens of two people that were shaping the space long before FinTech was even a thing. I'm joined René Lacerte, the founder of BILL, and Frank Mastrangelo, co-founder of Bancorp and PayAmigo.

We explore their fascinating journeys with how they first met at a dinner, to the highs and lows of taking their companies public, and their shared passion for solving the complex challenges of SMBs and financial services in general. René and Frank brought such a wealth of knowledge and a lot of great stories to the table, so I'm really excited for us to dive into this. 

Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or just someone who loves hearing about how technology transforms industries, you're in for a treat. Don't forget to like subscribe and share on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Let's dive in!

Breaking down the biggest headlines from the last year in fintech.

In this episode, I talked with Tomer London, Co-Founder and CPO of Gusto, and Anu Hariharan, Co-Founder of Avra and former partner at Y Combinator. 

Together, we talked about the intersection of their personal passions and their professional innovations, sharing insights from their journeys into fintech and their ongoing efforts to solve complex problems in payments, payroll, and beyond.

From Tomer’s mission to support underserved small businesses to Anu’s work shaping the future of fintech through investments in companies like Brex and Monzo, this conversation unpacks the challenges and opportunities in the space. We also discuss the transformative role of AI, lessons learned from setbacks, and the unyielding resilience required to drive growth and innovation in an ever-evolving industry.

Let's dive in!

Dwolla is a fintech company that provides businesses with a connection to the ACH Network or RTP Network (The Clearing House’s privately-owned real-time payments network).

The company was founded in 2008 and launched in the United States in December 2010 to a few small banks and retailers. By June 2011, Dwolla had grown to 15 employees, 20,000 users, and $1 million in weekly processing volume.

Today, Dwolla has about 650 clients and about 30 million users. It processed $45 billion in payments in 2022, up from $30 billion in 2021 and $20 billion in 2019. About 80% of its clients are small businesses.

Dwolla provides a white label service consisting of APIs to use the ACH system[9] and white label services expanded from payouts to include instant bank authorization for debiting bank accounts.

Dave Glaser has a long history in fintech: Starting at the turn of the century, he led payment protection and anti-fraud company CyberSource through its 2014 acquisition by Visa, before going on to join Worldpay in the UK as its Chief Product and Marketing Officer for Global eCommerce. Coming back to the US, Dave was brought on by Mastercard as a Senior Vice President for Acceptance Solutions, before being offered the President and COO role at Dwolla and stepping up as CEO in 2023.

💡This is a Sponsored Episode.

Welcome to December's episode of the this Month in Fintech Podcast, recorded live at SF Tech Week with Ramp.

TWIF + Ramp hosted a large group of tech builders, founders, and investors for a happy hour at 620 Jones, headlined by a live interview with Nik Koblov, VP of Engineering at Ramp.

We had one of the highest insight-to-minute conversations I've had, with Nik taking all of us through:

Enjoy the show!

This week's newsletter discusses the emerging trend of AI-powered payment agents, exploring the potential benefits and risks associated with delegating financial decisions to artificial intelligence. Security concerns, such as fraud and liability for disputed transactions, are highlighted alongside authorization challenges. The text also examines how the increasing use of cryptocurrencies could further impact AI-driven payments and briefly mentions recent developments in the fintech industry, including product launches, company news, and regulatory changes. Finally, it promotes a fintech awards ceremony and sponsorship opportunities.

Hey everyone, Julie here. Welcome back to another episode of the FinTech OG Season 2. Today I had the pleasure of sitting down with Tom Brown of NYCA and Ed Woodford of ZeroHash. In this episode, we get a front row seat to the evolution of fintech from Tom's early days at Visa, where he played a key role in its IPO, and Ed shares his entrepreneurial journey and how it led to him founding Zerohash.

We talk about how financial services are evolving into what Tom calls next gen financial services, and the challenges like regulatory roadblocks and identity security and celebrate wins like how Tap to Pay has transformed payments and earned wage access has cut down on overdraft fees.

They also share some personal stories about career highs and lows, favorite books, and even some fun quirks that they each have. Let's dive in.

Huge thanks to ⁠⁠CapitalOS and ⁠⁠Prism Data⁠⁠ for sponsoring this week's episode! 

With CapitalOS, platforms can launch best-in-class spend management within days without the headache of managing compliance, risk, or bank relationships. Visit their website at CapitalOS.com to learn more. 

If you're looking for a way to say ‘yes’ to more customers without taking on additional risk and lend more profitably without sacrificing growth, be sure to check out Prism Data. Cash flow underwriting is a game changer in consumer lending, and Prism Data is the modern analytics provider that makes it possible. 

Welcome to November's episode of This Month in Fintech, recorded live from the Honey Pot at Money2020.

I'm joined today by Nik Milanovic, Founder of TWIF, as we sit down with Michael Sindicich, CEO of Navan Expense.

Michael, Nik and I launched this episode around Navan's landmark new partnership with (former) rival Brex - BrexPay for Navan. BrexPay for Navan is a seamless integration that directly embeds Brex cards into Navan’s travel management software. Customers can now leverage Brex and Navan to achieve 100% automated travel payment reconciliation on bookings made through Navan. This means receiving a perfect report at the end of the month, where every booking is linked to a traveler and a trip with zero manual effort, thanks to a per-booking virtual card number. Through the direct integration, customers can also instantly activate local currency cards for all their global subsidiaries within one card program, saving countless hours in onboarding and underwriting, besides avoiding all FX fees.

We had a lot of fun in this live conversation talking through Michael's journey to Navan (taking him through insurance brokerages and wild valley hacker houses), the art of mastering a partnership with a rival, the business travel whipsaw from Navan's State of Corporate Travel and Expense Report, and a great rapid fire round.

Navan is the all-in-one travel, corporate card, and expense management solution. Navan makes business travel and expense management easy, giving users visibility, savings, and control with their all-in-one super app.

Their corporate travel and expense solution allows users to easily book, view, and manage business travel and expenses. Navan is reinventing the legacy category of travel and expense with one of the first enterprise technologies utilizing the cloud, mobile, and AI to balance business needs with today's modern standards. 

Michael Sindicich is the CEO of Navan Expense. Michael joined Navan as one of its earliest employees in 2016 as an Account Executive and has risen through the ranks to CEO of Navan's Expense business. Michael holds a Bachelor of Science from UCLA.

You can find him on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor on the Ventures team at OMERS, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area.

You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.