Lendit Rewind

Residential Real Estate Platforms at LendIt USA 2015 with Nav Athwal of RealtyShares; Brett Crosby, of PeerStreet; Christian Faes, of LendInvest; Jason Fritton, of Patch of Land; Matt Humphrey, of LendingHome; and moderator Jorge Newbery, of American Homeowner Preservation.

Presentation: The Future of Real Estate Investing by Jilliene Helman, Founder & CEO of Realty Mogul. Jilliene Helman was categorical about how technology will massively disrupt everything we know about real estate investing. She is frustrated that many other CEO's do not share her predictions. She sees collaborative consumption as a major issue for real estate and used Uber as an example relating to the falling cost of parking. In addition, online retail could decimate the retail real estate market, but will also lead to very exciting opportunities in industrial real estate, especially in large warehouse spaces required to service delivery. In addition, bank branches are likely to close as more Millennials now trust Google Wallet over Bank of America.

Transforming Mortgage Markets with Jason van den Brand, Co-Founder & CEO of Lenda; Paul Fielding, Head of Capital Markets at SoFi; Michael Slavin, Founder & CEO of Privlo; Nikul Patel, Chief Product Officer & Chief Technology Officer of LendingTree; Scott Sambucci, VP, Sales & Customer Success of Blend Labs; and moderator John Elias, an Independent Executive Consultant.

Platforms Shifting from Retail to Institutional Investors with Chris Ganan, Co-Founder & President of AssetAvenue; William Skelley, Founder, Chairman & CEO of iFunding; James Herbert, Co-Founder & President of LendingHome; Dan Miller, Co-Founder & President of Fundrise; Jilliene Helman, Founder & CEO of RealtyMogul; and moderator Ethan Penner, Professor at USC Marshall School of Business.

Presentation: The Inevitable Rise of Crowdfunding by Richard Swart, Alternative Finance Scholar at UC Berkeley. This presentation was given by Dr. Richard Swart from UC Berkeley, who is an expert in crowdfunding regulation. The crowdfunding market opportunity is $4 Trillion in revenue and $410 Billion in profits. In terms of initiatives, Berkeley recently signed a partnership with Tsinghua University to get more insight into the China market, and they believe the key to continued growth in China over the next generation will be financial innovation. Berkeley will also be creating a forum where the top schools can interact on real estate crowdfunding. Furthermore, the Journal of Disruptive Finance will be launched, and Berkeley will be contributing to that journal.

Institutional Investors View of Real Estate Crowdfunding panel with Tom Capasse, Principal & Co-Founder of Waterfall Asset Management; Thomas D. Christopoul, Senior Partner and Head of Real Estate Investment at Cain Hoy Enterprises; Mark Mascia, President & CEO of Mascia Development; Eric Rosenthal, Real Estate Situations at Garrison; and moderator Charles Moldow, General Partner at Foundation Capital.

State of the Real Estate Online Lending Market by Dan Ciporin, General Partner at Canaan Partners. The real estate lending market is a $15 Trillion market, compared to $2.2 Trillion for consumer loans and $300 Billion for small business loans. Despite this, real estate currently only comprises of 5% of total marketplace lending. The steps necessary to increase real estate marketplace lending include: coming up with standardized risk metrics, enabling infrastructure and technology to manage data, and creating a real-time marketplace. It is interesting to see the business model parallels between marketplace lenders now and the successful internet giants, who made their money by being an advertising platform. Marketplace lenders are being the platform between investors and borrowers or sponsors.

The Regulatory and Compliance Q&A panel at LendIt USA 2015 with Gilles Gade, of Cross River Bank; Patricia Kao, of the U.S. Dept. of Treasury; Brian Korn, of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips; Peter Manbeck, of Chapman and Cutler; Michael Soza, of BDO; and moderator Fiona Grandi, of KPMG.

PitchIt @ LendIt featured eight pitches from exciting startups and a panel of five judges who are respected angel investors and venture capitalists. The eight startup finalists include: Crediyo, LoanHero, Able Lending, Sharestates, Ascend Consumer Finance, REAMERGE, CashForce, and Kickfurther.

Financing Near-Prime Borrowers panel with Mike Armstrong, of ZestFinance; Al Goldstein, of Avant; David Mandel, of Citi; Daniel Tilipman, of National Debt Relief; Joseph L. Toms, of Freedom Financial Asset Management; and moderator James Gutierrez, Insikt & Opportun.

Borrower Acquisition at Scale panel with Brock Blake, Founder & CEO of Lendio; Cheryl Law, Chief Marketing Officer of Prosper Marketplace; Rich Walker, Chief Marketing Officer of Datamyx; Ryan Gilbert, CEO & Co-Founder of BetterFinance; and moderator Scott Sanborn, COO of Lending Club.

Intersection of Lending Innovation and Regulation presentation by Raj Date, Managing Partner at Fenway Summer. Date outlined three current trends in marketplace lending. Firstly, there are still many untapped opportunities despite the fast growing competition. For example, payday lending is a $40B market and default rates are still incredibly high. Secondly, a risk asymmetry dynamic exists today, since people at traditional banks are not willing to take on regulatory risk in the same way that a startup lender may be able to. Thirdly, currently it is a great time to start a consumer finance company due to the low interest rate environment, room for technology innovation, and opportunity for startup lenders to establish trust with borrowers.

Student Lending Begins to Scale panel with Mike Cagney, of SoFi; David Klein, of CommonBond; Vince Passione, of LendKey; Zander Rafael, of Climb Credit; Cameron Stevens, of Prodigy Finance; and moderator Stephen Dash, of Credible.

Big Data and The Future of Financing panel at LendIt USA 2015 with Glenn Goldman, of RetailCapital; Noah Breslow, of OnDeck; Jared Hecht, of Fundera; Paul Gu, of Upstart; John Sun, of Avant; and David Snitkof, of Orchard.

Trends In Credit Underwriting panel at LendIt USA 2015 with Jeff Knott, of Equifax; Angela Ceresnie, of Orchard; Sasha Orloff, of LendUp; Tim Van Tassel, of FICO; Louis Beryl, of Earnest; and moderator John Hecht, of Jefferies.

The Financial Advisor's Approach to Marketplace Lending panel with Bo Brustkern, of NSR Invest; James A. Jones, of IRA Exchange; Emmanuel Marot, of LendingRobot; and moderator Timothy D. Welsh, of Nexus Strategy.

Small Business Lending Innovators panel at LendIt USA 2015 with David Haber, of Bond Street; BJ Lackland, of Lighter Capital; Mark L. Rockefeller, of StreetShares; Jeffrey Rogers, of LiftForward; Denise Thomas, of ApplePie Capital; and moderator Peter Sterling, of Overland Advisors.

Global Online Lending leaders panel with Alejandro Cosentino, Afluenta; Viola Llewellyn, of Ovamba; Neil Roberts, of Harmoney; Greg Symons, of SocietyOne; Meg Zwick, of Millennium Trust Company; and moderator Rodolfo Gonzalez, of Foundation Capital. The discussion centered around the different challenges each country brings to p2p lending.

Emerging Online Lending Leaders panel at LendIt USA 2015 with Dave Girouard, of Upstart; Michael Solomon, of CircleBack Lending; Al Goldstein, of Avant; Stuart Law, of Assetz Capital; and moderator Matt Burton, of Orchard.

Innovation in Purchase Finance panel with Rob Pfeifer, Head of FP&A at Affirm; Russell Cummer, CEO of Paidy; Matthew Risley, Chief Credit Officer & CFO of Klarna; Michael Garrity, CEO & Co-Founder of Financeit; Shaun Sorenson, General Manager & Vice President of Prosper Healthcare Lending; and moderator Frank Rotman, Partner at QED.