Student loans on your terms.
PARTNER
Earnest
CATEGORY
Lending
CURRENT STATUS
Acquired by Navient
Gallery
01
Where we started
Earnest founders Louis Beryl and Ben Hutchinson approached West in June 2014, a few months after they launched their first personal loan product and just as they were gearing up to raise their $20 million Series A round. Steeped in their conviction that software and data science would eat the world of traditional banking, Louis and Ben set out on a mission to create the bank for a generation that witnessed the global financial crisis and developed a healthy disdain for traditional financial institutions.
02
What we did
West’s first assignment was to find a way to address the $1.3T student debt market, this generation’s albatross, in a fundamentally new way. Through conversations with recent college grads, West learned that the inflexible terms of existing student loan products were hampering important life decisions, and a loan product that offered flexibility over the life of the loan could empower people to make life choices that better lined up with their values and ambitions. In other words, you could leave the job at Goldman Sachs to join a non-profit at a lower salary because Earnest gave you the flexibility to lengthen the term of your loan and lower your monthly payments — no problem. Using performance marketing tools, we launched the first-ever flexible student loan product in early 2015 with the goal of hitting $50M in loan origination volume by the end of the year.
03
Where are they now
The product struck a chord with millennials and Earnest’s student loan volume grew at such a pace that the company achieved a billion dollar loan volume run rate a year ahead of schedule — with the highest Credit Karma scores of its peers. Our marketing engine drove 74% month over month growth. Earnest raised its series $75M Series B along with a $150M lending facility led by Goldman Sachs. In 2017, Earnest was acquired by Navient.
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