SMBStartup pairs small, medium and enterprise businesses as mentors and apprentices, gets each company ready for institutional capital, and connects project companies with funding.
Answer two questions. Takes under a minute.
A company can join as an apprentice, a mentor, or both. Mentors share what worked; apprentices get a clear path to being fundable.
Build what lenders look for first: clean books, good entity standing, business credit and a first fundable project.
Walk founders one step behind you through what it took to open the doors and keep them open.
Learn to package projects for institutional capital: underwriting files, project companies, and the reporting funders expect.
Coach small businesses through readiness and bring the ones that are ready into your supply chain.
Learn community and project-based models: workforce pathways, place-based projects and impact reporting.
Open procurement, apprenticeships and capital commitments to growing companies, with reporting your CSR and ESG teams can use.
Tell us about your business, its size, and whether you want to learn, mentor or fund a project.
We review eight areas of your business and give you an Institutional Readiness Score™.
Apprentices are paired with a mentor company. Mentors are paired with businesses they can help most.
Work through a correction package with your mentor until your project file is ready for funders.
Your project company is presented to our funding partners for review and underwriting.
A project company is a business, often a special purpose vehicle (SPV), set up to carry out one defined project. Keeping the project in its own company keeps its money, assets and risk separate, which is what funders want to see.
SMBStartup prepares your project company and presents it to funding partners. Funding decisions are made by those partners after their own review.
Funding for a defined project held in its own project company or SPV.
Short-term funding through partners to keep operations moving while a project gets underway.
Building the business credit profile and CDFI capital readiness that open better terms.
Preparing renewable-energy and other tax-credit-backed projects for review by specialist funders.
The Institutional Readiness Score™ rates your business in eight areas, each from 1 to 5. Your total, from 8 to 40, places you in one of five readiness levels and points to the correction package (A through E) that closes your gaps.
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Tell us who you are and what you want to do. A member of our team will follow up to schedule your readiness review.
Prefer to talk first? Email [EMAIL ADDRESS] or call [PHONE NUMBER].