LendingHome Sets Its Sights on Consumers

March 9, 2017
Charles Moldow

It’s only been a few years since LendingHome launched, and it’s already the biggest, fastest growing marketplace lender of mortgages. When Foundation Capital led its Series A, we knew that there was huge potential for innovating on the Frankenstein patchwork of 7000 traditional mortgage lenders in the U.S., with their high transactions costs and low customer satisfaction. And we knew that LendingHome CEO Matt Humphrey and his team of technologists were the right crew to tackle this problem. To date, they’ve exceeded our expectations. They built out their tech infrastructure, corporate controls, level of automation, and lending platform with unmatched rigor. And in less time than it takes to construct some homes, they’ve conquered the mortgage marketplace for property investors, with over $1B in loan origination.

Now, LendingHome is turning its attention to the Mount Everest of mortgage lending: consumers. And I couldn’t be more excited.

I couldn’t be more excited because to build a next-generation mortgage lender for digital natives, who have vastly different expectations for financial services than first-time homebuyers of the past, requires a leader who’s close to the target market. Matt Humphrey is the target market. A serial entrepreneur who Forbes just named as one of its “30 under 30,” and whom I’ve been working with since he was 18, Matt is a wunderkind. He understands the pain points that young homebuyers face and how daunting the financing process can be. And, as he’s amply demonstrated, he knows how to leverage technology to do it better. I challenge anyone reading this to name an entrepreneur who’s more suited to solving this problem than Matt.

I’m also thrilled that LendingHome is moving into consumer mortgage lending because no other player offers the kind of total end-to-end solution that it does. By innovating on financial infrastructure, how to source customers, automating operations and underwriting, and building out its marketplace—LendingHome has designed the simplest, fastest, most transparent and reliable process for getting a mortgage. Using LendingHome, homebuyers can get step-by-step guidance throughout the process, keep track of their progress and loan status with the click of a button, and find the right mortgage for them without ever picking up the phone.

Setting their sights on consumers is the natural next step in realizing the LendingHome vision of becoming the best way for any person in the U.S. (and eventually the world) to get a mortgage. And my colleagues at Foundation Capital and I are stoked to accompany Matt and the team on this next leg of their journey.