Lending Club: Borrowing from Facebook

Lending Club is a spring chicken, having launched its online lending service in late May. To get momentum, the company has leveraged the Facebook platform (which has become increasingly popular). Last week, Lending Club snagged $10.26 million in a first round of venture capital. The investors include Canaan Partners and Norwest Venture Partners.

Think of Lending Club as an eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) for borrowers and lenders. That is, if you need some money, you can post a proposal on the site -- and then a variety of lenders will offer money (loans range from $500 to $25,000). Cool, huh? Although, borrowers need a credit score above 640.

Interesting enough, on the Lending Club's blog, there are interviews with the firm's VCs. For example, Canaan Partners' Dan Ciporin says: "The consumer credit market is an absolutely gigantic market and yet paradoxically one of the few sectors that has not yet been completely upended by the internet. I think the Lending Club approach to consumer lending is not only a great disintermediation approach in a large, established market sector, but also through the focus on affinity relationships takes what has been proven to work on the web and applies it uniquely to the lending marketplace."

Then there is Jeff Crowe, who is a general partner at Norwest Venture Partners. In fact, he is a lender on Lending Club. And, so far, his portfolio is yielding about 13%. But, I'm sure he wants to make a lot more from his venture investment in Lending Club.

If you want to check out more venture capital investments, click here.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.