Fintech One•On•One Nelson Chu, CEO of Percent, on riding the private credit wave
In an article last year, the International Monetary Fund said that the global private credit market topped $2.1 trillion globally in 2023, with 75% of that in the U.S. That number has been rising rapidly for many years as more companies look beyond banks and the public debt markets to raise capital. Along with this rise in private credit, some fintech companies have taken advantage of this growth, bringing new opportunities to investors.
My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Nelson Chu, the CEO and Co-Founder of Percent. They have created a marketplace where private credit deals get underwritten and presented to a wide range of investors, including individual accredited investors. They have provided access to this fast-growing asset class to many investors for the first time. Full disclosure, I have been an active investor on the Percent platform since 2019.
In this podcast you will learn:
- What Nelson saw in the market that led to the founding of Percent.
- Why they decided to focus on retail accredited investors.
- Why private credit has boomed the last two to three years.
- How investor interest has changed over time.
- How they can graduate their borrowers to much larger amounts.
- How their platform works.
- The geographies where they have borrowers.
- How they decide what deals make it onto their platform.
- How they work with credit funds that bring asset-based deals.
- The different revenue streams they have.
- The huge range of deal sizes that come on their platform.
- The performance they have provided to investors.
- How their technology stack has improved over time.
- How they manage balancing their multi-sided marketplace.
- The blend of retail and institutional money on their platform.
- The scale they are at today.
- Nelson's vision for the future of Percent.
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