Another one of the co-founders of online lending startup SoFi is leaving the company, the company has confirmed to TechCrunch. Dan Macklin, who served as VP of Community and Member Success at SoFi, announced internally that he’ll be stepping down from his position on June 6th.
“First of all, I would say it’s been a very difficult decision… To step away from SoFi — it’s a hard decision. I feel comfortable making that decision now given the shape we’re in,” Macklin told me by phone. “The company is in really great shape, so for me it feels like the right time to make the switch.”
Macklin will be staying on in an advisory role on the company’s “SoFi at Work” efforts. “We’re working with more than 700 employers to help their employees with all aspects of their financial health, but especially dealing with student debt,” he said. Other than that, we’ll be watching out to see where he lands next.
Along with SoFi CEO Mike Cagney, Macklin was one of four MBA students at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business who teamed up in 2011 to disrupt the way student loan refinancing was done at the time. Since then, the company has grown to offer a wider range of lending products, including mortgages and personal loans, and is expanding its financial services suite to include wealth management and traditional banking services.
It’s also grown pretty substantially as a business. After six years, SoFi now has more than 300,000 members and has underwritten more than $20 billion in loans, according to a person familiar with the business. It’s also raised nearly $2 billion in outside funding and has about 1,000 employees.
Most recently, Macklin was charged with managing the community and customer success at SoFi, which sees its member meetups and community events as a key differentiator against more traditional financial services businesses. Prior to that, he served as the company’s first VP of Business Development.
In a statement to TechCrunch, Cagney wrote: “I’m immensely grateful for everything Dan has contributed to SoFi since we founded the company together at Stanford, and he’ll continue to have a hand in helping us succeed in the future — including as a permanent ringer on the company soccer team.”
Of course, it’s not unusual for founders to leave after a period of several years, but Macklin’s departure leaves Cagney as the last remaining co-founder at the company. It also comes not long after SoFi lost Nino Fanlo, its longtime president and CFO. Fanlo left to take over the chief finance position at biotech firm Human Longevity, but Macklin is mostly just looking forward to some time off.
He told us that for the time being he would be taking the summer off. “It’s not coincidental that my kids are done with school a few days after I leave SoFi,” he said.
