Dave Girouard, Founder & CEO, Upstart

It’s a story we hear every day. Student debt is rising out of control. At graduation — and with jobs so hard to find — our best young minds, the ones with the newest and shiniest ideas, immediately move back home with their parents and then take the first job they can in order to start paying down their loans. It might not be the best job — but they take what they can get. Many of us hear these stories and think nothing beyond how lucky the new grad is to have a job. Dave Girouard heard these stories and thought: Market Opportunity. Dave is the founder of Upstart, an online marketplace that lets financial backers invest in individuals. The backers give recent graduates immediate funding in exchange for a predetermined percentage of the grad’s future earnings. Can an online marketplace for human talent really work — and what might it mean for the way our future grads think about their first jobs? Upstart founder Dave Girouard joins me now. (Originally broadcast 1-27-13 on The John Batchelor Show)

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