LendUp in San Francisco, CA at 225 Bush St. Fl 11th

A better alternative to payday loans. Millions of Americans find themselves in need of short-term credit every year, but with few places to turn. That's where LendUp comes in. We offer a secure, convenient and more-affordable alternative to payday loans – saving our customers time and money now, and providing an opportunity to build credit for the future (where available). Successful borrowers see their rates go down over time.

Established in 2012.

The book Banker To The Poor had inspired Sasha to work distributing loans in the developing world before spending years in different departments of CitiGroup, a giant bank. He'd complain about Citi's backwards methods, and Jacob, who'd worked at Yahoo since he was 16, would always chime in that they were software problems. On an impulse, Sasha recorded a video application for YC with a blunt pitch: "Let's build better software for banks."A few days later, "Oh shit", Sasha exclaimed. They'd gotten in. "We had to come up with this whole story for our nervous Jewish parents to break them in on the idea that we were going to join YC and quit our jobs" Sasha tells me. "They freaked out be we did it anyway".Originally, the brothers were trying to build software for the big banks rather than create their own way to distribute loans. But banks weren't buying. "You're just a startup. Software has never been a competitive advantage" is all they heard. One did show interest in acquiring them,