Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 11:33AM 
By Robert Schmidt and Jesse Westbrook
In 2006, Chris Larsen started Prosper Marketplace, an online service where borrowers apply for loans of up to $25,000 and individual investors bid to lend as little as $25. Soon he was at war with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which insists that Prosper is an investment firm offering bonds, and not a lender.
Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 10:39AM 
By Robert Schmidt and Jesse Westbrook
Silicon Valley entrepreneur Chris Larsen started Prosper Marketplace Inc. as an alternative lender for small loans -- an online community where borrowers seeking up to $25,000 are matched with lenders who bid for their business.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010 at 11:10AM 
By Silla Brush
Prosper Marketplace, an online company that arranges loans directly between borrowers and lenders, is lobbying hard for Congress to put a new consumer financial protection regulator in charge of its industry.
Friday, April 23, 2010 at 10:31AM 
By Mark Calvey
San Francisco-based Prosper Marketplace raised $14.7 million in its fourth round of venture financing this month, with Google CEO Eric Schmidt and CompuCredit Holdings Corp. joining existing investors as participants in the round. The existing investors include Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, Omidyar Network, QED Investors and Volition Capital, formerly known as Fidelity Ventures.
Monday, April 19, 2010 at 12:17PM 
By Andrew Johnson
Prosper Marketplace Inc. said Friday that it raised $14.7 million in venture capital funding from two new investors and several previous financial backers...
Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 4:19PM Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 10:40AM 
By Harry Terris
A handful of financial start-ups have formed a lobbying group to press for legislation to ease regulation of their activities and provide federal support for lending outside the traditional banking system.
Executives at members of the Coalition for New Credit Models called their businesses the "wind and solar" of the financial services industry, with the potential to revolutionize the transmission of funds from savers to borrowers and open the flow of credit to consumers who have few dealings with banks and to small and midsize businesses.
Because of the upheaval created by the banking crisis, "something different is coming and we want to have a seat of the table," Chris Larsen, the chief executive and co-founder of Prosper Marketplace Inc., a San Francisco peer-to-peer lending service and a member of the trade group, said in an interview Tuesday.
Other members include Progreso Financial, a Mountain View, Calif. lender to "underbanked" Hispanics, and New York's SecondMarket Inc., which runs an online trading platform for illiquid assets like auction-rate securities and whole loans. The trade group represents both for profit and nonprofit ventures.
