Steve Benson

But it's, that's, that's, that was their branding.

And so they come in like later, if you're like, you know, $10 million and above and

I think I think you have to have institutional investment to get their money.

Right.

So that's kind of the scene is like if you're an early stage startup, there was just nothing at those times.

And when lighter came on, we could like at least we could get expensive debt, which is better than no debt.

Right.

And because it turns out that's one of the major ways companies lever up.

And.

So over a five-year period, I had different experiences with different SaaS debt providers, all these early players.

And I was a very active shopper of debt.

everyone that could potentially loan a SaaS company money, I had like talked to and knew about because turns out I really needed money.

Cause it's like way easier to get debt than revenue.

But so over time I kind of gather experiences, gather data about this industry and,

And I forget exactly when this happened but Nate was in town in San Francisco where I used to live and we were shooting the shit about the debt industry and he was really interested in it and poking around at it and he figured out that I had made basically a hobby of learning about debt for years.

He was trying to pick my brain.

And I gave him all my stuff and he went after this market and has really changed it a lot.

What didn't exist, well, I mean, the products that exist were more expensive for starters, but they weren't willing to loan very much, right?

So I think Lighter would do like three, and I'll get into this in my slides.

I don't want to blow my slides, but Lighter would do like three or four X MRR, which is like, you know, I think I was doing like two million a year or something at the time.