Working Capital for Startups: What You Qualify For
If your business has no revenue yet, Byzfunder cannot fund it, and most of the ads telling you otherwise are not being straight with you. We fund on business performance — deposit history and revenue running through a business bank account — so a day-one startup with nothing in the account has nothing for us to underwrite.
That is the useful answer, and the rest of this page is about what actually does work at each stage: what funds a pre-revenue business, what underwriters look at once money starts moving, and the point at which a young business becomes fundable here. If you are early, there is a timetable, and the things you do in the next few months decide how short it is.
- Pre-revenue businesses cannot be funded on revenue - there are no receivables to purchase and no deposit record to read
- What underwriting needs to see is consistent deposits through a real business bank account, and the trend, not just the total
- Byzfunder funds MCA, ByzFlex and Term Loan on business performance; a 525 FICO floor applies to MCA and 550 to ByzFlex
- Separating the business bank account today is the single step that makes you fundable fastest
Why "working capital loan" is the wrong search for a day-one startup
Working capital funding is underwritten against the working capital cycle: money comes in, money goes out, and a funder reads the pattern to judge whether capital advanced today gets repaid. A business with no trading history has no pattern to read.
Two specific things are missing. First, there are no receivables. A merchant cash advance is a purchase of a portion of your future receivables at a fixed factor rate — it is not a loan and carries no APR, because it is a sale, not interest-bearing debt. If the business has never sold anything, there is no stream to purchase. Second, there is no deposit history. Business bank statements are the primary document in this kind of underwriting, and three to six months of them is the normal ask. A brand-new account with an opening balance tells an underwriter nothing.
So when a startup searches for a working capital loan, the honest answer is usually: a different category of capital for now, and revenue-based capital later.
Stage by stage: what realistically funds what
| Stage of business | What it looks like | What realistically funds it |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-revenue / day one | Entity formed, no sales, no deposit history | Personal savings; friends and family; a bank or credit-union relationship; a community development financial institution (CDFI); grant programmes; equipment vendor financing; SBA microloan programmes — all of these are other providers' products, not Byzfunder's |
| Trading, very young | Money is moving, a few months of statements, revenue still proving out | Keep building the deposit record. Same providers as above. Revenue-based funders will generally want to see more months than you have |
| Past the tenure and revenue floor | Consistent monthly deposits, clean statements, a real business account | Byzfunder: merchant cash advance, ByzFlex revenue-based revolving capital, or a term loan |
| Established and growing | Steady revenue, a repeat funding need, seasonality to smooth | Bank facilities if you qualify and can wait; ByzFlex for a gap that recurs; an MCA for a defined, time-boxed need |
The options listed in the first two rows are genuinely useful and genuinely not ours. Byzfunder offers three products — merchant cash advance, ByzFlex, and a term loan that we advertise and that is fulfilled through our affiliated Byzwash entity. We do not offer SBA loans, equipment financing, factoring, grants, business bank accounts or business credit cards. At the pre-revenue stage a CDFI, a local credit union or an SBA microloan intermediary is frequently the right call, and we would rather say so than take your time.
What underwriters actually look at in a young business
Once money is moving, the file starts to exist. If you are in the first several months of trading, these are the things being read — and the things you can influence.
Consistency of deposits, not the headline total. Six strong weeks and six empty ones underwrites worse than a steady, smaller flow. A funder is estimating whether a fixed obligation can be met in a slow week, and volatility is the risk.
The trend. Three months rising reads differently from three months falling, at the same average. Direction is signal.
Overdraft and negative-balance behaviour. Frequent overdrafts and returned items are the most common thing that holds up an otherwise reasonable young file. They suggest the account cannot absorb a bad week.
Whether the business bank account is real and separate. Revenue routed through a personal account, or through a processor that never settles into a business account, produces statements that cannot be underwritten even when the business is doing fine. Keep your business and personal accounts separate — it is the account hygiene that matters most here.
Time in business. It matters, and we will not quote you a month count as a promise, because tenure is read alongside everything above rather than as a pass mark. What we can tell you plainly is what underwriting needs to see: several consecutive months of statements from a business account, with consistent deposits and no pattern of overdrafts. If that is what your statements show, start an application and let the file be read rather than guessing.
Where Byzfunder fits, and what the options are then
Past that floor, there are three structures and they are not interchangeable.
A merchant cash advance is a purchase of a portion of your future receivables at a fixed factor rate. Repayment is a fixed weekly debit, taken automatically, and the amount is agreed before you sign. For a young business this cuts both ways: you know the exact figure and the exact day before you commit, and that figure does not shrink when you have a quiet week. Size it against a slow week, not a strong one. It is a real obligation with real consequences if the account cannot cover it, and anyone presenting it as consequence-free is selling, not explaining.
ByzFlex is revenue-based revolving capital. You request capital, use it, and reuse it as it is repaid. It fits a gap that recurs — a seasonal swing, slow-paying customers, a payroll cycle that lands before collections — rather than a single one-time cost. The FICO floor for ByzFlex is 550.
A term loan is the simplest: fixed amount, fixed schedule, for a project with a known cost.
Across all three, credit is one input among several. The FICO floor is 525 for an MCA and 550 for ByzFlex, and clearing it is not an approval — every file is underwritten on its own merits, no approval is ever promised, and we do not quote an amount or a rate before reading the statements. Paying off early earns a 2.99% discount on our paper; ask for the exact figure before you sign.
What to do in the meantime
If you are too early today, these five things shorten the wait and cost nothing.
- Open a dedicated business bank account, this week. In the business's legal name, with the EIN. Every month it exists is a month of history you will need.
- Run all revenue through it. Settle every processor, platform and payment app into that one account. Deposits that never touch the business account do not exist to an underwriter.
- Keep the statements clean. Avoid overdrafts and returned items, keep a small buffer, and stop moving money in and out in ways you cannot explain.
- Stop commingling. Pay yourself with a regular transfer rather than spending from the business account directly. It also makes bookkeeping and tax far easier.
- Build the rest of the file as you go. Entity documents, EIN letter, a voided business cheque. When you are ready, the application takes minutes if the documents are already to hand.
Do those consistently and you are not waiting on luck. You are waiting on a known number of months of statements, and you will see for yourself when the record is there.
What you will need
Three to six months of business bank statements, a completed application, and basic business details. A complete file can fund in as little as 24 hours. If your statements are not there yet, the list above is the work; come back when the months exist and apply then.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get funding with no revenue? Not from us, no. Revenue-based funding is underwritten on deposit history, and a pre-revenue business has none — there are also no future receivables to purchase. At that stage the realistic sources are personal savings, friends and family, a bank or credit-union relationship, a CDFI, grant programmes, equipment vendor financing or an SBA microloan programme, none of which are Byzfunder products.
How long does a new business have to trade before it can get funded? Long enough to produce several consecutive months of business bank statements showing consistent deposits. We will not quote you a fixed month count, because tenure is read alongside deposit consistency, trend and overdraft history rather than on its own. The practical answer: start the business account now, and the clock starts with it.
How is a merchant cash advance priced? At a fixed factor rate. An MCA is a purchase of future receivables, not a loan, so it is not interest-bearing. Several states require providers to give standardised commercial financing disclosures at the time of offer, including an APR-equivalent figure, so that offers can be compared on the same basis. Read that disclosure before you sign.
My personal credit is thin or damaged. Is that the end of it? Not necessarily. The FICO floor is 525 for an MCA and 550 for ByzFlex, and credit is one input among several rather than the decision. The business's deposit record carries real weight. What we will not do is promise an outcome before the statements are read.
What happens if revenue drops after I take an advance? The weekly debit on an MCA is fixed and agreed before funding; it does not fall because your week was slow. That is precisely why a young business should size the obligation against a bad week and keep a buffer in the account. If you cannot comfortably cover the debit in your worst recent week, the advance is too large.