Alternative Funding Options (AFO)
Funding by industry vertical.
A manufacturer's balance sheet drives a different capital stack than a SaaS company's payroll-heavy R&D, or an exporter's cross-border working-capital cycle. Each industry hub below surfaces the programs that genuinely fit that vertical's underwriting profile and grant / credit surface.
6 verticals curated at launch
Pick the vertical that matches the business.
Each industry page surfaces the programs that genuinely fit — CSBFP + equipment finance + SR&ED for manufacturers, SR&ED + IRAP + RBF for SaaS, CanExport + EDC + ABL for exporters, and so on. Curated by underwriting profile, not by tagging.
- 12 programs · 6 live
Manufacturing
Manufacturers carry hard assets, long working-capital cycles, and a programmatic R&D spend — three traits that open distinct funding pools in the Canadian system. The hard assets unlock equipment finance and asset-based revolvers; the working-capital cycle drives the ABL or factoring conversation; the R&D spend pulls SR&ED, IRAP, SIF, and Clean Tech ITC into the stack.
Explore the vertical
- 9 programs · 4 live
Technology & SaaS
Tech and SaaS businesses have an inverted balance sheet: little hard collateral, lots of payroll-heavy R&D, recurring revenue that scales faster than the company can self-fund. Most conventional debt structures don't fit. What does fit is the Canadian non-dilutive stack — SR&ED, IRAP, SDTC, digital media credits — followed by revenue-based financing on the working-capital side and equity only when the round is the right use of capital.
Explore the vertical
- 8 programs · 5 live
Exporters
Exporters face two distinct capital gaps at once: the up-front cost of entering a new market (research, travel, trade shows, IP protection, translation) and the working-capital cycle of fulfilling export orders (longer DSO, currency exposure, foreign-buyer credit risk). Different instruments cover each gap; the right structure usually layers two or three rather than picking one.
Explore the vertical
- 9 programs · 3 live
Clean tech & sustainability
Canada has built one of the deepest federal funding stacks in the world for clean technology — SDTC, the Strategic Innovation Fund, the Clean Tech Investment Tax Credit, IRAP, SR&ED, and the regional development agencies all touch clean-tech projects in different ways. The skill is layering them coherently so the project carries the lowest blended cost of capital without disqualifying itself from any individual program by stacking-rule conflict.
Explore the vertical
- 6 programs · 4 live
Construction & trades
Construction and trades businesses share a tough working-capital profile: equipment-heavy balance sheets, long holdbacks on completed projects, and lumpy payment cycles tied to the general contractor's release schedule. The right capital stack matches the structure of those cash flows — equipment finance on the asset side, factoring or ABL on the receivables side, and CSBFP underneath both when the business qualifies.
Explore the vertical
- 6 programs · 5 live
Professional services
Professional-services firms — accounting, law, engineering, consulting, design, healthcare practices, agencies — share a hard underwriting profile from a conventional lender's perspective: low hard-asset coverage, payroll-heavy fixed cost, lumpy project economics. The right capital stack works around that profile rather than against it: leasehold financing where the asset is the office build-out, equipment finance for tech and infrastructure, and structures that underwrite on cash flow rather than collateral.
Explore the vertical
Different vertical, different stack.
The verticals above are the ones we’ve curated first because they map cleanly onto programs already in the catalog. If your business doesn’t sit inside one of them — agri-food, energy, hospitality, retail e-commerce, healthcare practice — a consultation walks through the same structuring conversation without needing a landing page to anchor it.