Growing businesses with P2Binvestor

"This isn't just a personal loan where all that matters is your personal credit score," explains Krista Morgan, P2Binvestor's Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder. The Capitol Hill-based company recently began offering loans funded by a variety of accredited investors (kind of like a crowd-funding but from businesses rather than individuals -- P2B stands for peer-to-business) to help small to mid-sized companies grow their business while minding shop.

"We really look at your business. We underwrite the owner and then we underwrite the customers," Morgan says. As such, P2Binvestor can provide a kind of revolving line of credit to support smaller companies while waiting for larger companies to pay them for their services or products. "It's just a much more sophisticated product and we’re the first to do it -- the first and still the only platform in the U.S. who’s specializing in this."

Morgan, who has a background in alternative lending, and her father, Bruce Morgan, who has a background in receivables-based lending, co-founded the company to meet a critical need for growing companies -- access to lower-interest rate capital.

"It's really for companies who are in between series A and their bank funding," Morgan says. "They want to fund their growth, but they don't want to give up more equity and our investors are looking for those types of loans to invest in....It's debt-based funding rather than equity funding. We're just taking that Kickstarter model and applying it into lending."

The purpose of the offerings are to allow companies to be able to fund their growth, hire more people, make more product, get more product out to market, according to Morgan. "This type of financing is often very expensive and quite frankly can be a real hassle," she says. "We're using technology and crowd-funding to try to make things easier and a lot cheaper. You shouldn't have to pay out the nose for funding to help you grow."

P2Binvestor made its first loan this year to a Texas-based company, Morgan says. By the end of February, she anticipates they will have three more clients. "We're hoping by the fall to be up closer to be on-boarding six to 10 clients a month."

The company is looking to facilitate loans -- particularly for Colorado-based businesses -- with growing revenue. Candidates can be all sorts of businesses, from breweries to medical technology companies, to organic food distributors.

Contact Confluence Denver Innovation & Jobs News Editor Chris Meehan with tips and leads for future stories at chris@confluence-denver.com.