Today we are delighted to announce that we have made an investment in Auxmoney, an online credit marketplace in Germany. The CEO, Raffael Johnen was in London last week and appeared on a LeWeb panel with the CEOs of two other USV companies, Renaud Laplanche from Lending Club and Samir Desai from Funding Circle.
Like Lending Club, Auxmoney is a marketplace for consumer credit that matches consumers seeking loans with investors seeking better risk-adjusted returns than those offered by banks and other fixed income options. We have strong conviction in this business model and the power of the internet to restructure our analog financial systems.
Auxmoney was founded in 2008 by Raffael, Philipp Kriependorf and Philip Kamp and is based in Dusseldorf, Germany. Initially, the site operated much like a classified site where borrowers paid to post loan requests and investors contacted borrowers directly. Today, it is an online marketplace where qualified borrowers can post loan requests for free, and investors can invest in a broad number of loans to spread risk across borrowers.
The co-founders are serial entrepreneurs. Until USV and our friends at Index Ventures invested at the end of last year, the founders had only taken small amounts of outside capital from individual investors. The company is now well capitalized and the founders are engaged in building a scaleable marketplace, initially for the German market. We are excited to have them as partners and look forward to helping them build a large business.