[pclmulqdq]

Also, HELOCs have very high interest rates due to the illiquidity of the underlying asset. If you have a large private company that has some interest from private equity investors, you can get a much lower rate. ELOCs on huge blocks of the S&P 500 (essentially large margin loans) can have rates that are almost at the fed funds rate.

[rexreed]

I would imagine with the very high failure rate of startups, loans based on company equity, especially for small, non-public non-liquid companies must have sky-high rates.

[pclmulqdq]

You probably can't get an ELOC against common stock in a series A startup. You can definitely get an ELOC at a pretty decent rate against preferred stock in a startup that is at series D and has 100 employees.

The question isn't what the company is worth or how likely it is to fail, the question is what demand there is for the shares. If an asset is in high demand, and is relatively easy to sell (like company shares), you can get an ELOC against it at a great rate.

They won't give you 100% of the valuation of the company in the form of an ELOC (you may only be able to pull out 10-20c/$1 of startup equity you have), but they will give you a good rate.