风险基金和银行贷款不再是新兴科技公司的唯一资本来源。
基于收入的融资，允许公司借入反复收入并返回对投资者的持续利润的固定百分比，已成为对不想稀释当前投资者的企业家的新资金来源。经常性收入的支持者希望他们将成为一个new asset class。对于所谓的SaaS公司 - 技术公司定期为其软件服务收取客户 - 和类似的企业，新的融资选项重塑了早期筹款的景观。
基于收入的融资“是十年前发明的，但它在过去几年里真正获得了势头，”彭宁顿替代收入管理的合作伙伴，Ed Goldstein说。他解释说，他解释的增长是在大流行期间的萨斯公司的崛起，因为偏远工人需要可靠的云基础设施。
Pipe, a trading marketplace that allows companies to raise capital with reliable proof of recurring revenues, has signed up over 10,000 firms for the platform since it was established in June 2020. In May 2021, the startup reached a $2 billion valuation, with $250 million in equity from investors like Greenspring Associates, SBI Investment, and Counterpoint Global. Michal Cieplinski, Pipe’s chief business officer, said the founding members realized that “companies with recurring revenues, [especially] SaaS companies, should be funded differently,” since they showed that they could generate reliable income streams during the pandemic.
Cieplinski解释说，与传统融资计划相比，例如股权或债务，从经常性收入提高资金有其自身的优势。选择股权融资的创始人可以对其业务提供一定程度的控制，并风险稀释当前股东。虽然贷款可以提供非稀释和直接访问资本，但他们通常有“限制性契约和认股权证，可以像球和链条一样”的业务。公司可以在距离管道24小时内获得资金，该管道已开发出一种评估借款人的订阅的收入质量的算法。
Goldstein said revenue financing is democratizing the capital markets. While the goal for Pipe is to become a marketplace, the “Nasdaq for recurring revenues,” other financing startups in the market, such as Capchase, Bigfoot Capital, and Lighter Capital, are providing “balance sheet loans” directly to these businesses. Capchase and others, Goldstein said, give founders access to “a much more adaptive capital structure than traditional debt financing.”
Miguel费尔南德斯Capc的联合创始人兼首席执行官hase, said his business targets entrepreneurs with urgent financing needs. Early-stage startups often have limited access to bank loans because most of them have negative earnings, he explained, and regulations prevent banks from lending to companies that are burning through their funds. In addition, Fernández stressed, the underwriting process for bank loans can be much more expensive than getting up-front cash backed by deferred revenues.
通过一个数据科学家团队，也在2020年建立的Capchase制定了一个框架，该框架是该公司用来决定它在SaaS空间中的特定借款人提供多少钱。“我们看出超过200个指标，”Fernández表示，公司日益迅速，他们的客户与他们留下多长时间，以及管理团队如何使用借来的资本。
Fernández added that investors in Capchase view the lending as the third wave of innovation — after venture capital and venture debt — in the SaaS financing world. These investors, according to Przemek Gotfryd, a co-founder and the chief operating officer at Capchase, include both large and small asset managers who are backed by insurance money, sovereign wealth funds, credit funds with a low cost of capital, and investment banks. One of the biggest challenges for Capchase, Gotfryd said, is to convince these investors that smaller startups with reliable recurring revenues can also be “durable companies on the path of rapid growth.”
Cieplinski said the buy-side of the Pipe marketplace is made up of institutional investors such as family offices, pension plans, and sovereign funds that are seeking to diversify their portfolios as persistent inflation and a low-rate environment threaten the return profile of the traditional stock and bond portfolio. William Davis, the president and managing director of KSD Capital, a Pipe investor, said the rise of interest rates is a key theme that the firm is following in 2022. “The short average life of Pipe’s revenue receivables enables us to continue buying yield without exposing ourselves to duration risk,” Davis said.
“我们喜欢Pipe的市场模式[因为]我们可以轻松投资许多不同公司的收入流，”戴维斯补充道。“收入应收款项难以历史上投资，[但]我们认为它们是一个主要的机会。”
据德克萨斯大学奥斯汀德克萨斯大学财务教授John Griffin称，根据德克萨斯大学的财务教授的说法，证券化的经常性收入的未来尚不清楚。他解释说，证券化是为“信息不敏感的和[为此]评估过程可以标准化的资产。在现金流量的未来价值或关于潜在资产的性质的含糊不清的情况下，证券化是风险的。
Ed Goldstein同意融资选项有很长的路要走，然后进入证券化产品。例如，证券化要求资产具有一些性能历史，使市场可以承保信用绩效。但是主要的市场参与者，如管道和帽子酶，仅在过去几年中成立。“对于市场有效地价格的资产，需要[需要]足够的时间来看看如何损失[危险]基于收入的贷款组合，”他说。