Venture Debt & Revenue Based Investing

If you have a small but growing business selling on Amazon or even direct-to-consumer (D2C) you’re bound to hit a point where you require money to scale. For as much as the media talks about venture capital, the reality is that less than 1% of startups here in the US are able to raise money from VC’s. The challenge, however, is that consumer brands often have working capital needs associated with carrying inventory or affording increasingly expensive paid media.  So where do these types of businesses get the cash to grow? Traditional lenders, such as banks, often have strict covenants in their terms and have not historically catered their products to this cohort, but a growing number of new, innovative solutions are disrupting the model. I should note that pre-revenue/pre-product startups are likely not going to be a candidate for institutional debt – but a convertible note, SAFE or crowdfunding remain a viable alternative at this early stage. As a side note on crowdfunding, the SEC recently increased the cap for fundraising via this channel to $5m (from $1m) which I suspect will open up more activity in this space. 

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Vote

I’ve been reading recently how an increasing number of companies (and startups) are giving their employees off today in order to vote. I applaud this move. It should be a national holiday so everyone has a chance to go out and make a difference. We are very fortunate that we even have a say in our democracy, while around the world this is not always the case. 

Nearly 100 million people have already voted either through in person early voting or by mail – this is nearly three-quarters of the number of votes cast in the entire 2016 election. I expect, in the end, we’ll see significantly more voter turnout for this election then we did in 2016 and that’s a good thing. 

I voted by mail, but for those who haven’t, I urge you to go out today and exercise your right to vote.    

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