One
of the more innovative web apps around has just gotten another
big injection of funds, and a new CEO to boot. Zopa
describes itself as a "marketplace for Social Lending", where people
lend and borrow money with each other - sidestepping the middleman, i.e. banks.
They recently advertised
for jobs in their new America operation (in San Francisco) and celebrated
their second birthday.
Zopa's new CEO is the former CEO of San Francisco-based Chela Education Financing, Douglas H. Dolton. He is understandably bullish on Zopa's prospects:
"Zopa is the most innovative concept I've seen in my 13 years of being involved in loan businesses [...] I expect it to be the fastest-growing company I've ever led, because of its outstanding consumer proposition: amazing rates on financial products, and a strong, safe person-to-person connection that promises to change the way U.S. consumers think about money."
Well he would say that.... but there's something about Zopa as a web company that is very attractive. It is very web-native, definitely innovative, and it routes around institutions that have enjoyed too much power over ordinary people for too long - banks! Phillip Riese, Chairman of Zopa, says about the US expansion:
"Our UK peer-to-peer business is now well-established and growing rapidly and we are poised to launch in the US, an even larger opportunity for the company."
R/WW normally doesn't cover VC news, but the fact that Zopa is heading into the US market with an innovative financial web app - is something that caught our interest. It already has over 135,000 members in the UK (whose average age is 37 apparently), so it looks poised to make a splash in the US.
Thanks Emre for the pointer. Any of our UK readers used Zopa? If so, we'd love to hear your opinions of the service.
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Wow what an innovative concept. Nothing less can be said about their website. I especially like the way they visualized people lending/borrowing which gives a strong sense of active community. I hope they do expand beyond UK and US as well. Lots of potential here.
Posted by: AL | March 20, 2007 5:29 AM
I'm a Zopa user, but I've only ever lent the free money they gave me for signing up. It's an interesting take on the betting exchange concept (eg betfair.com) but for lending. The UI has always been a bit difficult to use. And you may as well pay a bit more off your mortgage than lend money this way. But it's still a nice idea.
Posted by: RichB | March 20, 2007 6:20 AM
what about prosper? they have been around for quite long time, in US.
Posted by: web 2.0 innovations | March 20, 2007 6:28 AM
Hi Richard,
Dave from Zopa here - thanks for giving us a mention (I'm a long time Read/Write Web reader via RSS, so great to see us pop up on the feed!)
RichB - would love to hear your feedback on the UI, we're about to start work on improving the screens for lenders, so any suggestions welcomes.
web 2.0 - Prosper launched about a year after we did, so we like to think of them as our younger sibling :) Actually, the 2 models are quite complimentary - with Prosper lenders having to take a far more active role than Zopa lenders...and I have to say, seeing far more defaults and lower returns as a result. We're looking forward to taking them on in their home territory.
We're also looking to expand into other countries, and are looking into other opportunities at the moment - so if you're not in the UK or US, you might be able to use us in the (relatively) near future.
Any questions - please fire away here, or drop me an email to dave@zopa.com
Cheers
Dave
Posted by: Dave Nicholson | March 20, 2007 9:57 AM
Well, er, Zopa isn't so innovative -- kind of looks like it's a copy of prosper.com, which came first. Also SF-based.
Posted by: sabat | March 20, 2007 3:04 PM
Congratulations David and I hope Zopa starts to fulfill its potential.
It's good to see another ex-LEKer doing well. Seems a long time since we were doing powerpoint slides at 4am in the morning.
I'm continuing my one-man campaign to promote Zopa: http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2007/03/21/p2p-lender-zopa-raises-13m-to-fund-us-expansion/
Posted by: Everton Blair | March 20, 2007 5:29 PM
Hi Sabat,
Sorry - nope.
We launched on March 7th 2005, Prosper launched in Feb 06. We've agreed to differ about who had the idea first - but we were first to market :-)
Hi Everton - thanks for your sterling work! I'm still doing Powerpoint - but not at 4am anymore....it's a vast improvement.
Cheers
Dave
Posted by: Dave Nicholson | March 21, 2007 2:58 AM
hi there,
I'm a zopa lender in the uk. it isn a good community and a great idea. initially the interface was very poor but it's getting better all the time. the only issue with it is that people are basically lending at lower rates than you can get if you put your money in the bank at the moment! ridiculous. until they can stop idiots lending their money out too cheap then they aren't going to grow at a vast rate. Great for borrowers, not so great for lenders.
The other thing you have to get used to is not having access to your money once it's been lent. It would be great if you could sell your loans on to other users or to zopa if you needed your money in a hurry...
hope it goes well in the US.
Posted by: fatherb | March 22, 2007 12:02 PM