Lighter Capital Increases Its Tech-Enabled Small Business Funding by 400% Year-Over-Year

SEATTLE – Lighter Capital today announced the completion of its 50th RevenueLoan®, capping off a watershed year that saw its funding volume increase by 400% over the previous twelve months. As an innovator in lending technology and the Revenue-Based Financing model, Lighter Capital is experiencing strong demand from small technology businesses seeking a more efficient path to securing growth capital of up to $1 million. Lighter Capital recently increased its total capital base to $17 million, which will help fuel its increasing investment volume. The company is currently funding 3-4 companies a month and expects to double that pace in the near future.

“We are changing how small technology businesses are funded,” said BJ Lackland, CEO of Lighter Capital. “Historically, the process has been extremely painful and distracting for entrepreneurs. Between the networking, presentations, due diligence and negotiations, it’s like an entrepreneur takes on a new full time-job for 3-6 months. It’s a highly manual and relationship-driven process.

Our vision is to use technology and smarter funding structures to streamline access to capital. An entrepreneur should be able to secure funding quickly by providing access to their company’s data through the web.”

Lighter Capital calls this ‘Capital-as-a-Service,’ since entrepreneurs can access funding the same way other companies consume Software-as-a-Service. Lighter Capital’s technology can rapidly structure and fund a loan based on information gathered in an automated fashion from the entrepreneur and third party sources, such as banking, accounting, CRM, and LinkedIn data. Funding is often completed in a month.

Lighter Capital has provided Cloudbilt, a provider of Software-as-a-Service based in Charlotte, NC, with $1 million through multiple rounds of financing.

“I’d looked into many financing sources, but never found one I liked,” said John Stewart, Cloudbilt CEO. “Except for our own money, Lighter Capital has been our only source of funding.”

With growth of nearly 2,000% from 2010 to 2013, Inc Magazine recently ranked Cloudbilt number 227 on its list of the 500 fastest growing private companies in the U.S.

“The initial funding and follow-on rounds have allowed us to bring in the capital we need very efficiently,” Stewart said. “It’s great to be able to focus on growing my business rather than looking for funding.”

Because of its tech-enabled model, Lighter Capital can easily fund companies anywhere, and has invested in companies in 15 states. The company is seeing strong demand from software and services companies focused on developing on the Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft platforms. This year alone Salesforce Partners have accounted for a third of Lighter Capital’s investments. To accommodate its rapid growth, the company expects to double headcount in 2014 and has recently moved into larger offices in the Century Square Building in the heart of downtown Seattle.

“Financial services are primed for disruption,” Lackland said. “In this era of big data and machine learning, in which corporate data resides in the cloud and flows from application to application, it’s absurd that raising capital is still stuck in the days of pedigree and PowerPoint. By marrying access to data with access to capital, Lighter Capital is providing a better way for companies to secure financing. And given our recent growth, it seems entrepreneurs are ready for a better way, too.”