Arik Hesseldahl

Recent Posts by Arik Hesseldahl

Small-Business Finance Platform On Deck Raises $100 Million


It’s an election year, which means that as the political campaigns get under way in earnest after Labor Day and the party conventions begin, we’ll be hearing a lot about small business and Main Street and the relative state of their economic health.

Intuition and the general state of the economy would tell you that small businesses are still challenged, some would say by over-active government policy; others would say by a lack of access to capital. Small businesses have, in recent years, had a hard time getting banks to finance loans, mainly because banks look at small business loans as more akin to personal loans, and thus consider the owner’s personal credit information rather than the state of the business itself.

Last year, I wrote bit about a start-up intending to change that. On Deck Capital created a technology platform aimed at making it easier for lending banks to gather the data they need to properly vet a loan candidate, and for helping that business make payments.

On Deck today announced that it has raised nearly $100 million in new funding. The funding is being led by Goldman Sachs and Fortress Credit Corp., which have committed an $80 million debt facility. Meanwhile, SF Capital and Lighthouse Capital Partners have put in $17 million in venture debt loans. The capital is giving On Deck more capacity to make loans, and demand has been healthy. The company delivered more than $100 million in loan volume over the last 10 months.

Prior investors include SAP Capital, Contour Venture Partners in New York, First Round Capital, Khosla Ventures, RRE Ventures and Village Ventures.

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Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”