13: PeerStreet vs. Lending Club

Interview with PeerStreet's co founder and COO, Brett Crosby which is the Peer-2-Peer lending platform that secures the loans against the borrower’s real estate. PeerStreet is unique in that to date they have never experienced a default, and have loan terms of under 12 months compared to other platforms that have minimums of 3 years. Brett and his Co-Founder Brew Johnson have the perfect background of experience between law, tech, and real-estate. In fact, Brett was the brains behind Google Urchin, which was acquired and became Google Analytics. In this episode we discuss how the P-2-P lending space is changing, and how technology can enable more efficient deal flow and better lender-borrower matching. Enabled by sophisticated technology, PeerStreet uses Big Data to cross reference over 20 years of submarket data in order to vet and stress test each loan. We also do a deep dive into our 16 loan positions we currently have invested through the platform and what we can expect as an investor. The episode represents a great learning opportunity on the types of modern investing opportunities that we are passionately looking to discover and share. *since we recorded the podcast, PeerStreet did have to finally file a notice of default on a loan, but still has zero losses to date. Relevant links for guest: Twitter LinkedIn About the PeerStreet team  Where are we: Brett – Manhattan Beach, California Sam – Singapore  Recommended:  Get a 1% yield bump on your first loan with this invite  Discussed (relevant links): PeerSteet Explainer Video PeerStreet website AlphaFlow Time Stamp – Topic: 02:45 – Initial investment into Lending Club 08:00 – Pausing automated investing in Lending Club 12:30 – Available investment PeerStreet dashboard 17:00 – Sam’s PeerStreet investment strategy 22:30 – What PeerStreet is 23:45 – About the turmoil in the lending P-2-P lending industry 24:30 – Why PeerStreet is a better asset class than Lending Club 27:20 – PeerStreet advantages over other platforms 28:40 – First lien definition 31:45 – What happens in the case of a default 34:30 – What attracted Sam to PeerStreet 35:15 – Brett’s background at Google 36:15 – Technology enabled advantage 36:30 – How PeerStreet was co-founded 37:15 – What is under the hood of PeerStreet? 39:15 – Vetting loans through technology 40:00 – Using Big Data to stress test loans 41:45 – Peer-2-Peer lending bubbles? 42:00 – Loan to Value ratios 43:00 – Valuing the properties through 3rd parties 44:00 – What markets are hot on PeerStreet? 45:45 – Details on Sam’s account on PeerStreet 48:00 – The beauty of robo-investing 49:30 – How and when yields are paid out 51:10 – Loans through the platform 52:30 – Strategy to utilize on PeerStreet 54:00 – Brett’s recommendation for getting started 59:20 – Ways to find out more about PeerStreet 59:59 – Get in contact with PeerStreet support If you enjoyed this episode, do us a favor and share it! Also if you haven’t already, please take a minute to leave us a 5 star review on iTunes and claim your bonus here! Copyright 2016. All rights reserved. Read our disclaimer here.