Wharton Fintech Podcast

In today's episode, Ryan Zauk sits down with Dave Girouard, Founder & CEO of the recently IPO’d Fintech, Upstart. Upstart is an online lending marketplace that provides personal loans using 1,600+ non-traditional variables, such as education and employment, to predict creditworthiness. If you listened to our episode the other week with Chi Chi Wu of the National Consumer Law Center, you know credit and lending is a huge issue in America (https://soundcloud.com/wft/credit-reporting-and-consumer-protection-chi-chi-wu-national-consumer-law-center) Upstart is using artificial intelligence and rigorous machine learning to attack this issue, making it not only a great company, but a wonderful mission. In today’s episode, Ryan and Dave discuss: 3:30 – What exactly is Upstart? 6:44 – The current state of credit scores and how Upstart is upending the traditional credit score 10:57 – What needed to be true for banks to trust Upstart? 13:19 - How he navigated the regulatory environment, who he hired, and what a no