Industry | Revenue-based financing |
---|---|
Founded | 2010 |
Headquarters | Seattle |
Number of employees | 20 |
Website | lightercapital |
Lighter Capital is a revenue-based financing lender that specializes in providing financial capital to small technology companies.
Founded by Andy Sack, [1] a Seattle-area entrepreneur, Lighter Capital was one of the first lenders to use revenue-based financing to fund tech startups. Lighter Capital typically provides growth capital as royalty-based financing to early-stage tech companies based in the United States. [2] [3] It is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.
Unlike private equity, venture capital and angel investors, Lighter Capital's revenue-based financing process provides growth capital to tech companies in the form of debt. [4] The company tranches financing across an investment period and looks for general revenue growth.
In 2017, the lender partnered with Intuit to launch a $15 million fund for developers who design apps for QuickBooks. [5]
Since 2010, Lighter Capital has backed more than 270 startup companies with more than 450 rounds of financing, totaling more than $200 million. [6]
In June 2019 Lighter Capital announced it was offering two more forms of debt: term loans and lines of credit. In January 2020, the firm secured access to $100 million in additional capital for lending to startups. As of 2020, Lighter Capital has provided over $200 million of financing to more than 350 companies. [7]
Lighter Capital opened operations in Canada and entered into collaboration with the National Australia Bank in 2020. [8] [9]
In September 2020, Melissa Widner was appointed Chief Executive Officer. [10]
Venture capital is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. The start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
Intuit Inc. is an American business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application TurboTax, personal finance app Mint, the small business accounting program QuickBooks, the credit monitoring service Credit Karma, and email marketing platform Mailchimp. As of 2019, more than 95% of its revenues and earnings come from its activities within the United States.
Social venture capital is a form of investment funding that is usually funded by a group of social venture capitalists or an impact investor to provide seed-funding investment, usually in a for-profit social enterprise, in return to achieve an outsized gain in financial return while delivering social impact to the world. There are various organizations, such as Venture Philanthropy (VP) companies and nonprofit organizations, that deploy a simple venture capital strategy model to fund nonprofit events, social enterprises, or activities that deliver a high social impact or a strong social causes for their existence. There are also regionally focused organizations that target a specific region of the world, to help build and support the local community in a social cause.
An angel investor is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors usually provide support to startups at the earliest stage, once or in a consecutive manner, and when most investors are not prepared to back them. In a survey of 150 founders conducted by Wilbur Labs, about 70% of entrepreneurs will face potential business failure, and nearly 66% will face this potential failure within 25 months of launching their company. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital and to provide advice to their portfolio companies. The number of angel investors has greatly increased since the mid-20th century.
Venture debt or venture lending is a type of debt financing provided to venture-backed companies by specialized banks or non-bank lenders to fund working capital or capital expenses, such as purchasing equipment. Venture debt can complement venture capital and provide value to fast growing companies and their investors. Unlike traditional bank lending, venture debt is available to startups and growth companies that do not have positive cash flows or significant assets to give as collateral. Venture debt providers combine their loans with warrants, or rights to purchase equity, to compensate for the higher risk of default, although this is not always the case.
Credit Karma is an American multinational personal finance company founded in 2007, which has been a brand of Intuit since December 2020. It is best known as a free credit and financial management platform, but its features also include monitoring of unclaimed property databases and a tool to identify and dispute credit report errors. The company operates in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Acumatica provides cloud and browser based enterprise resource planning software for small and medium-sized businesses. The company is headquartered in Kirkland, Washington, in the Seattle metropolitan area.
Kabbage, Inc., is an online financial technology company based in Atlanta, Georgia. The company provides funding directly to small businesses and consumers through an automated lending platform. American Express acquired the company in 2020.
Twilio is an American company based in San Francisco, California, which provides programmable communication tools for making and receiving phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, and performing other communication functions using its web service APIs.
CircleUp is a financial technology company based in San Francisco that focuses on consumer goods startups. Since its official launch in April 2012, CircleUp has helped several consumer companies raise equity, including Back to the Roots, Halo Top Creamery, Little Duck Organics, Rhythm Superfoods and others. General Mills has an investment fund that is partnered with CircleUp to invest in companies listed on the platform.
PicMonkey is an online photo editing and design service that can be accessed from a web browser, or through a mobile app. The company behind the service is headquartered in downtown Seattle, Washington.
iwoca Ltd. is an online Fintech company based in London. It offers credit facilities to small businesses trading in the UK and Germany via an automated lending platform. CEO Christoph Rieche and CTO James Dear founded iwoca in October 2011 and the company started trading in March 2012. They aimed to offer custom-built loans to small businesses, who usually struggled with fair access to finance from big banks. To start with, these were exclusively e-commerce businesses, but in April 2014, iwoca began lending to all types of small businesses. By July 2015, it was reported to have seen 250% year-on-year growth in issuance.
SoFi Technologies, Inc. is an American online personal finance company and online bank. Based in San Francisco, SoFi provides financial products including student and auto loan refinancing, mortgages, personal loans, credit card, investing, and banking through both mobile app and desktop interfaces.
Vacasa is an international vacation rental management company based in Portland, Oregon. It provides property management services for over 35,000 vacation rentals in North America, Belize, and Costa Rica. Vacasa manages properties in 34 U.S. states.
Porch is a website that connects homeowners with local home improvement contractors. The site features advice articles, cost guides and online booking for over 160 common home improvement, maintenance, and repair projects.
Madrona Venture Group is an American venture capital firm, founded in 1995 and based in Seattle, Washington. Madrona specializes in seed, startup, Series A and early stage investments.
Financial technology is an industry composed of companies that use technology to offer financial services. These companies operate in insurance, asset management and payment, and numerous other industries. FinTech has emerged as a relatively new industry in India in past few years. The Indian market has witnessed massive investments in various sectors adopting FinTech, which has been driven partly by the robust and effective government reforms that are pushing the country towards a digital economy. It has also been aided by the growing internet and smartphone penetration, leading to the adoption of digital technologies and rise of FinTech in the country
Pioneer Square Labs (PSL) is an American startup studio and venture capital fund, founded in 2015 and is based in Seattle, Washington. PSL develops and tests new business ideas and creates new companies out of the successful ones. As of February 2021, Pioneer Square Labs was recognized as one of the top startup studios based on website traffic to its top 3 portfolio companies.
Idinvest Partners, founded under the name AGF Private Equity, S.A in 1997, is a European private equity and venture capital firm. Operating as part of Allianz until 2010, Idinvest Partners then became independent. Idinvest Partners is based in Paris, France and has further offices in Frankfurt (Germany), Dubai, Madrid, Spain and Shanghai, China.
Clipchamp is an online video editing tool developed by Australian company Clipchamp Pty Ltd. It is a non-linear editing software that allows users to import, edit, and export audiovisual material in an Internet browser window.