Devise a New Way to Access Growth Capital
The traditional venture capital model has been around for years. Unproven startups raise rounds of financing in exchange for equity in their company. Eventually, they grow to a size and stability that allows them to access debt from lenders, but in the meantime, if they want growth capital, they have to give away a stake in the company.
This model means that many founders retain only a sliver of equity in the company they started.?Billy Libby, CEO of?Upper90, wants to change that.
Billy worked for years at Goldman Sachs, eventually becoming head of quantitative execution and market making sales. In his time there, he came to appreciate the value of data.
Data doesn’t just help business owners make decisions, it can inform investors, too. As an investor, you can look at a company’s earnings, pipeline, inventory and more to make fairly solid inferences about the future health of the organization.
So Billy thought, why not use the information in a company’s data as collateral? If you can predict that a company will be successful in the future, you can extend debt capital earlier in the company’s life.
That’s what Upper90 seeks to do. They offer non-dilutive growth capital to companies that can prove reliable growth. Their unofficial motto is encouraging startups to “delay the A.”