LeverEdge aggregates students and bands them together to negotiate reduced interest rates on private student loans by running competitive auctions among lenders. The company was officially founded in May 2018 by Chris Abkarians and Nikhil Agarwal while they were at Harvard Business School. LeverEdge spends most of the year aggregating students and then runs an approximately two-month auction process between different lenders to secure competitive offers. Its business model charges a pre-set, upfront referral fee to lenders for each tranche of loans (the fee varies by loan type) and no student is obligated to accept the final loan. As of the article, LeverEdge has more than 15,000 students on its platform, has financed $100 million in student loans, and employs nine people. The startup is systematizing its initial, one-off deals to scale to more students and is monitoring how COVID-19 and economic pressures may affect demand for cheaper financing.

Total raised

$3M

Funding rounds

1

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

May 2020