Upstart CEO Dave Girouard - Revolutionizing Lending and Taking a Fintech Public on the Nasdaq!

Wharton FinTech Podcast

In today's episode, Ryan Zauk sits down with Dave Girouard, Founder & CEO of the recently IPO’d Fintech, Upstart. Upstart is an online lending marketplace that provides personal loans using 1,600+ non-traditional variables, such as education and employment, to predict creditworthiness. If you listened to our episode the other week with Chi Chi Wu of the National Consumer Law Center, you know credit and lending is a huge issue in America (https://soundcloud.com/wft/credit-reporting-and-consumer-protection-chi-chi-wu-national-consumer-law-center) Upstart is using artificial intelligence and rigorous machine learning to attack this issue, making it not only a great company, but a wonderful mission. In today’s episode, Ryan and Dave discuss: 3:30 – What exactly is Upstart? 6:44 – The current state of credit scores and how Upstart is upending the traditional credit score 10:57 – What needed to be true for banks to trust Upstart? 13:19 - How he navigated the regulatory environment, who he hired, and what a no-action letter is 15:39 – How COVID affected his business 18:40 – Why it was time to IPO, why he questions SPACs, and why raising private money was really, really hard 21:50 – How the IPO was different from private rounds and the importance of momentum 23:00 – The toughest challenges he faced as a founder 25:15 – His decision-making framework for leaving an amazing role at Google and founding Upstart...including the long conversations he had with his wife that made him take the plunge 26:24 – A rapid-fire round including his thoughts on bitcoin, where he was when the IPO bell rang, his favorite dinner meal before a long work night, first covid vacation and more! For more Fintech insights, follow us below: Medium: medium.com/wharton-fintech WFT Twitter: twitter.com/whartonfintech Ryan's Twitter: twitter.com/RyanZauk LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/wharton-fintech-club/