P2P lending company Prosper Marketplace raises $70 million in funding

Prosper Marketplace, the fastest growing peer-to-peer lending company in the US, announced that it has raised $70 million in additional funding to fuel the company’s growth and expansion. The round was led by Francisco Partners, a leading global private equity firm focused exclusively on investments in technology and technology-enabled services businesses. David Golob from Francisco Partners will join the Prosper Marketplace Board of Directors. 

Prosper.com, a peer-to-peer lending marketplace in the U.S., has raised $70 million led by Francisco Partners, a private equity firm with Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) and Phenomen Ventures participating. This brings the companies funding to $145 million. Previous backers include Sequoia Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Crosslink Capital, Accel Partners, CompuCredit, Omidyar Network, Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures and Volition Capital. Prosper has riden the roller coaster of the peer-to-peer lending, an area which is now leading the disruption in the financial services. Prosper pioneered the concept of people-to-people lending in the U.S with its launch in 2006. The startup hit a rough patch in 2008 when the SEC stopped all lending on the platform because the company didn’t register as a seller of securities.