Bond Street

Bond Street was founded in New York in late 2013 by chief executive David Haber and chief technology officer Peyton Sherwood to make one- to three-year term loans to small businesses through an online process.⁠[1]

Its early seed investors included Homebrew, Founder Collective, Collaborative Fund and Red Swan.⁠[2]

Bond Street announced $110 million in financing: a $10 million equity round led by Spark CapitalSpark CapitalSpark Capital is a U.S. venture capital firm founded in Boston in 2005, with offices in San Francisco, New York and Boston. Its early-stage and growth funds back technology businesses across fintech, enterprise software, AI and consumer products. Investments have included Twitter, Tumblr, Oculus, Plaid and Anthropic.Open the full entry, joined by Slow Ventures, Eagle Cliff and individuals including Airbnb co-founder Nathan BlecharczykNathan BlecharczykNathan Blecharczyk (Nate Blecharczyk) is an American entrepreneur and software engineer who is a co-founder, chief strategy officer, and director of Airbnb. A computer science graduate of Harvard University, he joined Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia’s venture as its engineer in 2008, served as Airbnb’s chief technology officer and built its engineering, data science, and payments teams, and in 2017 was named chairman of Airbnb China.Open the full entry, chef David Chang and the co-founders of sweetgreen, plus a $100 million debt arrangement led by Jefferies, which committed to buy $100 million of loans over 12 to 18 months.⁠[2][3]

Loans ranged from $50,000 to $500,000 at interest rates of 6% to 18% over one to three years, applications took under ten minutes and the average loan was about $100,000; credit applications were growing 35% a month. The company was about a year old at the time.⁠[2][3]

Haber said that the small-business borrowing process was “broken” and that the company wanted to be every small business owner’s financial advocate.⁠[3][2]

Bond Street’s first employee was Jerry Weiss, a former Citibank risk executive; the company partnered with WeWorkWeWorkWeWork is a flexible workspace company founded in New York in 2010 by Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey. It provides private offices, coworking space, meeting rooms and enterprise workplace services. After withdrawing its IPO plan in 2019, it went public through a BowX merger in 2021, entered Chapter 11 in 2023 and emerged from restructuring in June 2024, continuing as a private company.Open the full entry to offer discounted loans to members, and by its own account it had not yet had a borrower default.⁠[4]

In 2016, Haber’s contributor biography at StartupNation described him as co-founder and chief executive of Bond Street, a company working to transform small business lending through technology, data and design.⁠[5]

Jefferies committed to buy up to $300 million of Bond Street’s loans, and Bond Street was widening its loan range to $10,000 to $1 million at annual percentage rates of 8% to 25%; Jefferies was its only loan buyer at the time.⁠[1]

Haber said that the company wanted to price as close to the banks as possible.⁠[1]

By September 14, 2017, Bond Street had stopped making new loans, and its engineering, product, risk and marketing staff would join Goldman Sachs’s new consumer bank.⁠[6]

Investor Homebrew wrote on September 28 that the Bond Street team was now working inside Goldman Sachs’s new digital business, calling it a talented and hard-working group.⁠[7]

Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry’s official biography of Haber says Bond Street was acquired by Goldman Sachs in October 2017 as part of the firm’s digital finance business. No price was disclosed.⁠[8]

The deal has been described as a talent acquisition: Goldman hired the employees of Bond Street Marketplace in 2017, and Bond Street has been grouped with Clarity Money and Final as Goldman’s talent acquisitions for Marcus.⁠[9][10]

In its year-end review American Banker listed Bond Street among the fintechs that flamed out or faded in 2017, saying the four-year-old company had run into trouble raising its next equity round and stopped making loans, after which several employees, including chief executive Haber, were hired by Goldman Sachs to work on Marcus.⁠[11]

Bond Street: Former official website (defunct): https://onbondstreet.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[2]

David Haber: Co-founder and chief executive, now a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz: https://a16z.com/author/david-haber/ (opens in a new window)⁠[8]