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Comment by Meekro | Hacker News Reader

My company was auto-enrolled in the Stripe Capital beta some weeks/months ago (not sure when). I never accepted the money. Here's what they offered:

$12,500 advance; $1,250 fixed fee; 3.8% of sales towards repayment.

$18,500 advance; $1,850 fixed fee; 5.6% of sales towards repayment.

$25,000 advance; $2,500 fixed fee; 7.6% of sales towards repayment.

My company grossed $45,600 MRR this August. I love Stripe and swear by it, but I don't really understand why someone in my position would want this offer. The highest amount represents only about 17 days of revenue.

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> My company grossed $45,600 MRR this August. I love Stripe and swear by it, but I don't really understand why someone in my position would want this offer. The highest amount represents only about 17 days of revenue.

You offer a service I guess (the fact that you say MRR pretty much confirm this already)? This isn't for your kind of business, this is for the one that directly spends theses revenues once they are gained and could profit from economy of scale. Essentially this is for a shop that could save a bit by making bigger order and keeping an inventory.

Let say that you make in average 50k, but you spend 90% of that in operating cost... now making the same 25k would takes 5 months, not so good. Now let say that 50% of that cost is in buying the item you sell and that by buying a full month of that item instead of a few day at a time would give you a discount of 20%, that would means that after 2 months you would have paid back that fee and after 6.5 months your sales would all go back to you. A loan could do the same, but even in a bad month, you will still have the same amount to pay back... which can hurt quite a bit a company.

I think you might be on the "high side" of the businesses they're looking to support? 25k seems to be the highest they're offering at all.

I'm not really sure what their rates look like for smaller accounts, but I feel like the target audience is one person startups and such, who have some income from their hobby (let's say 1k a month) and want to grow to a full-time job.

I'm guessing it's because they are trying to maximize a 12 month window. In lending, the longer the money is out there, the less money you make on it. At 25K, even though they could qualify for more, Stripes assumption is that they are going to pay it back relatively quickly and be able to lend more after that period.

Typical business loans are usually capped at around 10% of annual revenue.

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