Banks generally don't give out loans to any kind of small business that doesn't have > $100,000 in assets and/or some indication of past profitability. Note that this represents pretty much all internet businesses. So it's not surprising that little funding is available for startups.
What if angels simply got into the co-signing business? Like, why give a VC $1 million when you could co-sign $100,000 loans for 10 startups? Then write it up as 10% ownership in the company or something like on Shark Tank. Sorry I'm probably conflating terms, but we have kickstarter.com so I don't understand why we don't have something like a readily available angle fund website yet.
I'm also curious about government-sponsored programs (does anyone know any?). I imaging they work somewhat like the FHA down payment grants for first-time homebuyers:
Ya you're probably right. I got the idea watching an episode of Shark Tank where Kevin O'Leary offered to give someone some money with similar terms but at 15% interest because he felt that the contestant needed the money to survive (so it was riskier than usual like a credit card). Luckily they turned down the offer, and the others congratulated them that they made the right choice.
But to me it seems like there are A) a lot of startups that want loans and can't get them (almost all of them) and B) a lot of wealthy people that can't find easy investments that return over 10% interest.
So I wish there was a standard way that angels could co-sign loans (possibly even with some leverage, so maybe they could put down as little as 20% like a down payment) and then those startups could actually build something rather than spending all of their time bootstrapping and consulting to make rent.
I guess I just thought that there might be a hack here that would let banks get into the startup business through existing channels and also let angels get some leverage by potentially putting down less than the total amount they would have given before. Angels would still have the liability of potentially having to pay the whole loan back, but could take on some interest to free up the money for other things in the meantime.
So ya, it's a potentially bad deal for the company, but it's better than the current situation of not being able to get a loan anywhere.
Banks generally don't give out loans to any kind of small business that doesn't have > $100,000 in assets and/or some indication of past profitability. Note that this represents pretty much all internet businesses. So it's not surprising that little funding is available for startups.
What if angels simply got into the co-signing business? Like, why give a VC $1 million when you could co-sign $100,000 loans for 10 startups? Then write it up as 10% ownership in the company or something like on Shark Tank. Sorry I'm probably conflating terms, but we have kickstarter.com so I don't understand why we don't have something like a readily available angle fund website yet.
I'm also curious about government-sponsored programs (does anyone know any?). I imaging they work somewhat like the FHA down payment grants for first-time homebuyers:
https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/first-time-homebuyer-loan...
https://www.fha.com/program_genesis
If someone really wanted to stimulate the economy, I think internet startup down payment grants would go a long way towards that goal.