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Renaud Laplanche

Co-founder & CEO, Upgrade, Inc. · 2 appearances on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveLinkedIn ↗renaudlaplanche.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Renaud Laplanche is the co-founder and former CEO of LendingClub, which he led to an IPO in 2014. In 2016, he co-founded Upgrade, Inc., a fintech neobank offering credit lines, personal loans, and mobile banking products.

15statements → 10claims → 4claims resolved → 50%fully supported → 4/5average certainty → 1.73/5average debate potential → 14said about them ↓

2 supported 2 partly supported 0 contradicted 6 not checkable as stated how the 10 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 9 assertions · 3 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 10 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 6 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Renaud argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Laplanche: Lending Club's expense ratio is under 2% vs banks' 5-7%
“That ratio for most banks is between five and seven percent, so it's really all operating costs divided by total loans outstanding, that's between five and seven percent. The same metric at Lending Club is less than two percent, and it's coming down quarter af…”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 1:22 Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
67% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

225 words/min while actually speaking · 104 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Renaud Laplanche: only 1 usable question→answer exchange on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,325 words across 2 episodes of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Renaud Laplanche said on the MAD Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Laplanche: Low fintech costs and cheap bank capital reduce credit costs
“It's really the best of both worlds where platforms like us, like ours, have a low cost of operation, and the banks have a low cost of capital, and when you put these two together, you can really drive down the cost of credit for consumers and businesses.”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 10:09 Panel Discussion // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Supported
Laplanche: Lending Club's expense ratio is under 2% vs banks' 5-7%
“That ratio for most banks is between five and seven percent, so it's really all operating costs divided by total loans outstanding, that's between five and seven percent. The same metric at Lending Club is less than two percent, and it's coming down quarter af…”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 1:22 Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Partly supported
Laplanche: Lending Club averages 12.5% borrower rates and 8% investor returns
“So LendingClub, in contrast, as an average interest rate just over 12 and a half percent and on, on the so that's the value to borrowers and as return on average close to eight percent net return after fees and after credit losses to investors.”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 4:29 Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Laplanche: Lending Club is not sensitive to rising interest rates
“So yeah, as far as we're concerned then, we don't think we're rate sensitive at all.”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 15:29 Panel Discussion // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Disclosure
Laplanche: Lending Club takes no balance sheet risk on loans
“We don't take a balance sheet risk. The, all the capital comes from the from the investors.”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 0:55 Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Partly supported
Laplanche: US credit cards average 17% while savings yields near 0%
“The cost of the average cost of a credit card in the US, so the credit, average credit card interest rate is just shy of 17%. So that's really the value delivered to borrowers. On the flip side if you sort of go and deposit money on high yield savings account …”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 3:40 Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Disclosure
Laplanche: Lending Club caps annual growth at 150% to manage risk
“So we've been controlling growth to a place where it's in between hundred and 150%. We could be growing faster based on supply and demand available to us but we've chosen to Sort of grow at the current pace as a matter of sort of controlling risk and especiall…”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 5:35 Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Laplanche: Lending Club sees higher loan fraud rates on mobile than PC
“We, we've seen a much higher fraud rate on mobile and tablet than on PC and laptop.”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 10:47 Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Insight
Laplanche: Fraud detection relies on correlation rather than causality
“In terms of fraud, we're really trying to correlate different data points without necessarily looking for a causality. What matters is, is correlation in this case.”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 11:03 Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Laplanche: Lending Club detects higher mobile loan fraud on Android than Apple
“We've seen a higher fraud rate in terms of mobile OS with Android than Apple.”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 11:13 Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Insight
Laplanche: Fraud deterrence requires being harder to target than competitors
“What really matters is not to be smarter than the fraudsters, it's to be smarter than the next guy”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 16:24 Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Supported
Laplanche: Lending Club consumer rates average around 12.5 percent
“Our rates start, ah, in the single digit, so it's six, six and a half percent for consumers, 5.9 for businesses, ah, and the average is in the low teens, so about 12, 12 and a half percent.”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 13:36 Panel Discussion // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Laplanche: Lending Club receives about 9,000 loan applications daily
“There's about nine, 9000 applications coming to us during that day.”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 7:31 Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Laplanche: Lending Club faces under 10 fraudulent applications daily, totaling $140,000
“It's less than 10 loans out of a population of 9000. That happens every day, and so it's, it is a needle in a haystack, ah, but it is really material because there's sort of 10 or so fraudulent loan applications represent a total of about 140,000 dollars.”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 8:03 Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Laplanche: Lending Club sees higher loan fraud rates at night
“We have a lot more fraudulent application at night.”
Renaud Laplanche May 29, 2014 ▶ 8:41 Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)

The other half of the tape: Renaud Laplanche's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 13 times in 3 episodes on the MAD Podcast. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Rebecca Lynn 9Fred Wilson 2Matt Turck 1James Gutierrez 1

Statements about Renaud Laplanche, by other people (1)

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lynn: LendingClub founder demanded she take board seat before signing term sheet
“And when we handed him the term sheet, he's like, I'll sign it, but only if Rebecca's the board member.”
Rebecca Lynn Jul 13, 2017 ▶ 17:09 VC Fireside Chat // Rebecca Lynn, Canvas Ventures (FirstMark's Data Driven)

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
005110120132014201520162017episodesmentions
01120132014201520162017episodes it came up in
0050.510120132014201520162017episodesmentions per episode
2017 10 mentions in 1 episode
2014 1 mention in 1 episode
2013 2 mentions in 1 episode

Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Panel Discussion // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital) May 29, 2014 5m
Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club // Data Driven #27 // May 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital May 29, 2014 17m
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