Harrington: Founders without finance backgrounds often lack crucial capital market knowledge
Keith Harrington · Funding SaaS Growth: Keith Harrington on Novel Capital’s Entrepreneur-Friendly Approach · May 19, 2025 · at 9:06
Keith Harrington, co-founder of Novel Capital, explains why early-stage SaaS founders need underwriting guidance and performance metrics.
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“Like, you have to know really weird stuff, and unless you come out of early stage early stage finance, like a VC, you don't know the questions to ask.”
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Founders should begin lender discussions a year before hitting four months runway
“Like, oh, I need to be planning my capital, you know, 12 to 18 months in advance. So if I'm gonna have four months of runway in January, I probably need to be talking to a lenders a year before.”
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“Taking capital is a very personal thing. So it's rare that a company will be contacted via outbound. They're going to sign up on the platform and then money's going to be deployed. They want to see who's lending them money.”
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“Basically what we do is we will take a company's fundamental data, accounting data, banking data, use that to ascertain whether we can provide capital. If we can, we will give them terms in 24 to 48 hours, and then hopefully be able to provide them a loan, Of …”