Funding Circle

Founder
and Chief Executive Officer, Sam Hodges (Founder & Managing Director), Andrew Learoyd (Non Exec Director), James Meekings (James, Co-Founder & Director, Andrew Mullinger (Co-Founder & Director) and Ed Wray (Director)
the Employees : 251 – 500

Funding Circle is an online marketplace for business credit that would connect businesses borrowing with investors. It allows people and organizations to directly lend to small businesses in UK, US, Germany, Spain, and Netherlands.

Funding Circle enables investors to lend small amounts to multiple creditworthy businesses to spread their risk. In turn, it allows businesses to borrow from a multitude of people through an auction mechanism to get lower interest rates. Lenders are able to grant loans to specific businesses in Their communities or businesses that meet certain criteria such as already environmental friendly.

It was launched in 2010.

History

Funding Circle was launched in the UK in August 2010. It received £ 2.5 million in funding from Index Ventures in April 2011. In March 2012 Funding Circle closed a series B round of £ 10 million led by Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures By September 2013 Funding Circle had tripled in size and announced it had facilitated over £ 150 million of its since it launched. In October 2013 Funding Circle announced that it had raised a $ 37 million investment and would merge with Endurance Lending Network to serve the US market . Accel Partners led the round of funding along with Ribbit Capital, Union Square Ventures and Index Ventures bringing the company’s total funding to $ 58 million. Since launching more than 50,000 people have registered at Funding Circle. Investors now includ e local councils, universities and the British Government.

In April 2015 Funding Circle raised $ 150M in new venture funding led by DST Global, a fund managed by BlackRock, Sands Capital Ventures and Temasek Holdings. Valuing the company at over $ 1B, the round about the total amount raised to $ 272M to date . In October 2015 Funding Circle expanded operations to Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands by taken Zencap.