A leading national online mortgage broker announced today it has raised $25.4 million from four venture capital and high-tech firms to ramp up its technology development while diversifying its product line.

Yahoo!, SOFTBANK Technology Ventures, SOFTBANK Holdings Inc. and Sequoia Capital are the four investors providing a second round of capital for E-LOAN's. Those four join initial investors Benchmark Capital and Technology Partners, both of which also contributed to the second round of financing.

"E-LOAN has enjoyed exponential growth since its June, 1997 launch," said Chris Larsen, chief executive officer and co-founder of E-LOAN. "This second round of funding will enable us to be much more aggressive without compromising our customer service focus and capacity to respond to rapidly growing demand."

Janina Pawlowski, president and co-founder of E-LOAN, agreed. E-LOAN is the exclusive mortgage services provider to loan centers on many leading web sites, including E-TRADE and Yahoo!. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., with loan processing offices in Dublin, Calif.

"This funding will help speed the development of innovative, service-oriented technology, like E-LOAN's E-Track, which makes the loan process easier, cheaper and faster for our customers," Pawlowski said. "We will also be substantially expanding our customer service and operations center, making E-LOAN's ability to handle burgeoning demand seamless."

With E-LOAN borrowers can compare, apply for and obtain home loans from the nation's leading lenders. E-LOAN's edge is that it saves borrowers as much as 75% on brokerage fees through the elimination of unnecessary transaction costs, while providing personalized customer service.

"We recognized early on that E-LOAN was at the forefront of its class," said Jeff Mallett, chief operating officer at Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), a global Internet media company that offers a network of globally-branded Web programming serving millions of users daily. "As Yahoo! Finance's primary mortgage vendor, E-LOAN provides a core service to our users, providing them the most integrated and comprehensive mortgage services available on the Web."

Charley Lax, general partner, SOFTBANK Technology Ventures, said, "Bringing the economies and efficiencies of the Internet to the mortgage process is another powerful dimension of the growing digital economy. Our investment in E-LOAN further underlines SOFTBANK's focus on being the leading provider of infrastructure to the digital information industry."

Softbank is all over cyberspace. SOFTBANK Holdings Inc. is the holding company for all of SOFTBANK Corp.'s US-based activities. Its major operating companies include Ziff Davis (NYSE: ZD), Kingston Technology Co., SOFTBANK Services Group, SOFTBANK Content Services and UT Starcom. SOFTBANK is the largest shareholder in Yahoo! Corp. and E*Trade (NASDAQ: EGRP), and a minority investor in The Rights Exchange, GeoCities (NASDAQ: GCTY), CyberCash Corp. (NASDAQ: CYCH) and First Virtual Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: FVHI).

SOFTBANK Technology Ventures is the venture capital arm of SOFTBANK Holdings Inc.

"E-LOAN's growth and success has not gone unnoticed," said Don Valentine, Sequoia Capital general partner and vice chairman of Cisco Systems, Inc. "It's no secret that Sequoia is selective in its investment decisions, but the market potential for online mortgages couldn't be ignored. In this category, E-LOAN has demonstrated a superior business model and a technological edge that catapults it ahead of the competition - making them an easy investment choice."

Sequoia Capital is a Menlo Park, Calif.,-based venture capital partnership that invests in early stage technology companies. Since its formation in 1972, Sequoia Capital has invested in more than 300 companies. Almost 100 of these companies have had initial public offerings.

Published: September 14, 1998

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