I stay at home and look after the children quality meds delivery Lending Club wasn’t the first peer-to-peer lender—that honor goes to its main competitor, Prosper, which was launched by entrepreneur Chris Larsen in 2005. Larsen’s dream was a utopian one: He wanted to effectively disintermediate the banking system and its fat cats. “Disintermediate”: Prosper hoped to do for lending what other sites are doing for … everything else: Airbnb, for instance, which puts travelers in empty rooms; Etsy, which matches artisans with people who want to buy their work; Lyft, which allows car owners to make money giving rides to their peers. All of them are disintermediation plays: They cut out hotels, or craft shops, or fleets of taxis.