Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by derefr 1468 days ago
Yes, and? We're talking specifically about companies that have "solid growth, unit economics, and cashflow" — i.e. which have a stable business model + revenue engine. Businesses that have been de-risked. Businesses where the only reason they're not bigger already, is that they need money to throw into the coal furnace to power the train up the hockey-stick hill.

At that stage of a business, you wouldn't be taking seed-stage or series-A funding; it'd be series-B or series-C — where the type of investors who do those investments are just as risk-averse as banks, and are looking at essentially the same things banks look at.

At that stage of a business, you know there isn't anything on the horizon that'll kill your share price. Your market cap is stable (save for the growth you're trying to enable.) So you should be extremely wary to let go of any more equity. You should highly prefer debt-backed investment (i.e. loans) over equity-backed investment, because your equity value increase from the growth should be predictably paying off that debt, and then some, likely the same fiscal year you take on the loan. Selling any equity at that period in a company's growth is throwing earnings down the drain.