I guess that today has been two years since I joined Prosper. They sent me a nice note telling me so. What an interesting ride it’s been so far. Euphoric when the first loan I bid on became active and depressing when I followed it to Default. There have been lots of emotion between those too.

I have to say that I’ve learned a lot about credit in the past couple years. The variety of commitment to payments has been interesting too. As above the ranges are sometimes unpredictable. I’ve had good and bad borrowers in all credit brackets. Initially I felt like I could ignore some of the data and bid to help people. Boy did that hurt!

The platform has improved so much over the past couple years. The information we have now is so much better than before. I can’t believe I bid so blindly early on, but it was all we had. Quality of loans and collections seems to have gotten a lot better too. The 3rd party applications have benefited from improved information sharing and I’m amazed at how helpful they are.

I had a business trip to San Francisco in the fall and was granted the opportunity to visit the office. What a group of nice gracious people. It’s always fun to talk to someone else knowledgeable about Prosper (my wife just rolls her eyes at me.) I live in a large company in corporate America and it was fun to see this startup doing its thing.

What am I doing now? I’m bidding on loans and playing with portfolio plans. I’m far more conservative now and the results are keeping me happy – 100% current for the past 12 months, 96ish% current for the past 18 months (just don’t go back to those early loans!)

It’s been an interesting ride. I’m looking forward to the next couple years of P2P lending.

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Mike (printans)
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