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.
