Lending Club, the leading platform for investing in and obtaining personal loans, announced today a $15 million equity investment from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and the appointment of Mary Meeker, general partner at KPCB, to the company's board of directors.
John Mack, who recently joined Lending Club's board and currently serves as chairman emeritus of Morgan Stanley, also made a $2.5 million equity investment in the company. The investments bring the total funding raised by Lending Club to date to $100 million, bringing the company's total in unrestricted cash to more than $45 million.
"Lending Club is helping reinvent the consumer lending industry," said Mary Meeker. "It's the kind of opportunity that Kleiner Perkins is interested in and I knew I wanted to be involved."
Meeker, who joined KPCB as a partner in 2010, is also on the board of directors of Square and leads KPCB's US $1 billion Digital Growth Fund (DGF). Previously, Meeker worked at Morgan Stanley where she served as managing director and research analyst from 1991 to 2010, focusing on discovering and understanding emerging technologies, building relationships with entrepreneurs and supporting category-defining companies during their critical phases of market adoption and growth.
"Kleiner Perkins is virtually synonymous with breakthrough brands we love like Amazon.com, Google, and Twitter. Mary's unique depth of experience across both the financial industry and with the Internet's category leaders will be instrumental in Lending Club's continued growth and mainstream adoption," said Laplanche. "We are thrilled to welcome both Kleiner Perkins and Mary as our new partners."
Lending Club continues its significant growth, with more than $650 million in cumulative loan originated through the platform and adding more than $135 million each quarter in new loans. By focusing on high-credit-quality borrowers, the Lending Club platform has generated 19 consecutive quarters of positive returns for investors. The company's wholly-owned subsidiary LC Advisors, an SEC Registered Investment Advisor, has launched two funds in the last year and has more than $100 million in assets under management.
Meeker joins Lending Club CEO Renaud Laplanche, former Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, Jeff Crowe of Norwest Venture Partners, Daniel Ciporin of Canaan Partners and Rebecca Lynn of Morgenthaler Ventures on Lending Club's board of directors.