🎧Upgrade CEO Renaud Laplanche: 20 Years of Fintech Wisdom on Leadership, Managing Debt Financings, Building Winning Platforms, and M&A

Podcast Episode · This Week in Fintech’s Podcast · 01/15/2025 · 39m

Apple Podcasts

In today's episode, ⁠Ryan Zauk⁠ sits down with fintech pioneer ⁠Renaud Laplanche⁠, Upgradetranslates Founder & Former LendingClub CEO.

Some say LendingClub kicked off the modern fintech era with its digital lending solution, and Renaud has had a front seat to this industry every step of the way through their IPO in 2014. Renaud has been recognized on Bloomberg Markets’ Most Influential List, won the Economist Innovation Award, and was recognized by the Clinton Global Initiative for expanding access to affordable credit. 

After LendingClub, Renaud co-founded Upgrade. Upgrade  is a fintech platform providing affordable and responsible credit, mobile banking, and payments products to over 6 million customers in the US and Canada, and has issued over $35 billion in credit since its founding in 2017 - $8 billion just in the past year.

⁠⁠Upgrade raised⁠⁠ $280M Series F at a $6Bn valuation in 2021, led by Coatue and DST, and other investors including Ribbit, Dragoneer, and more.

In a challenging era for consumer fintech, Upgrade has found a way to break the mold and continue growing, expanding products, making acquisitions, and more.

Ryan and Renaud recorded the episode at Upgrade's beautiful SF HQ on a foggy day in San Francisco. They cover the acquisition of his first company by Oracle + how LendingClub came to be, a deep dive on Upgrade's funding model and how it translates into savings for their customers (they work with over 250 loan buyers), the Uplift acquisition and lessons learned, the importance of culture, how he structures his day, his love of sailing, and how Upgrade is utilizing AI.

Episode Highlights

1:30: LendingClub founding story and Renaud's entrepreneurial origins

4:08: Why he founded Upgrade

6:17: Upgrade's target market, products, and highly diverse customer base

7:48: A deep dive on Upgrade's funding model, use of credit unions, and how it translate into savings for their customers

11:37: The rise of private credit and using high cost of capital funding at the other end of the market

13:45: Tactical advice to founders raising their first ever credit facilities and warehouse lines

16:37: Acquiring Uplift, what drew Renaud to them, and key lessons/guiding principles for M&A he's learned over his career

26:15: His growth as a leader and the hardest part of his job

27:54: His lifelong love of sailing and how it has helped him as a leader

29:28: How Upgrade is deploying AI internally

31:36: Rapid fire round (managing VCs, sailing memories, fintechs he's watching, what retirement might look like)

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Upgrade is a leading consumer fintech platform, providing affordable and responsible credit, mobile banking, and payments products to over 5 million customers. Upgrade has numerous offerings including personal loans, checking and savings accounts, credit cards (secured and unsecured), BNPL (with Uplift), home improvement financing, and more. Upgrade has over 1,850 employees and ~250 financing partners on their back end to help finance their diverse customer set.

Renaud Laplanche is the co-founder and CEO of Upgrade. Prior to co-founding Upgrade, Renaud founded LendingClub, a Fintech pioneer that quickly became America’s largest provider of personal loans. In recent years Renaud received multiple awards and nominations. Among other distinctions, Renaud was recognized on Bloomberg Markets’ Most Influential List, an annual ranking of the World’s top 50 most influential leaders across technology, finance, and politics. Renaud also won the Economist Innovation Award, and was recognized by the Clinton Global Initiative for expanding access to affordable credit. Renaud holds the Newport-Bermuda sailing record, with the only crossing ever achieved under 24 hours. He received an MBA from HEC and London Business School and a law degree from Montpellier University in France.

Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor on the Ventures team at OMERS, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets.

You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.

Transcript