Alternative Funding Options (AFO)
Funding by stage of business.
The capital available to a pre-revenue business looks nothing like the capital available to a $25M-revenue operating business. The stages below trace the progression — non-dilutive first at pre-revenue, CSBFP + equipment + factoring at early-revenue, ABL + mezz at growth, private credit at established.
4 stages curated at launch
Pick the stage that matches the business today.
Each stage page surfaces the programs that genuinely fit the underwriting profile at that point — SR&ED + IRAP + angels for pre-revenue, CSBFP + factoring + RBF for early-revenue, ABL + mezz + SIF for growth, private credit + structured deals for established.
- 7 programs · 2 live
Pre-revenue / startup
Idea, pilot, or pre-product-market-fit
Pre-revenue businesses get told ‘no’ by every conventional lender — there’s no operating history, no coverage, often no hard collateral. What works at this stage is non-dilutive grants and refundable tax credits, advisory-plus-funding programs like IRAP, and equity (when the round is the right capital event). The non-dilutive layer goes first because every dollar of it is a dollar you don’t dilute the cap table to raise.
Explore the stage
- 11 programs · 8 live
Early-revenue
Under $5M revenue
Early-revenue businesses sit in the gap between “too young for the bank’s credit committee” and “past needing pure equity.” The right stack draws from instruments that underwrite on something other than five years of audited financials: CSBFP (because the government guarantees the risk), equipment finance (because the asset is the security), factoring (because the AR is the security), RBF (because the recurring revenue is the structure), and the same non-dilutive layer that funds pre-revenue technical work.
Explore the stage
- 15 programs · 8 live
Growth
$5M–$25M revenue
Growth-stage businesses face a structural mismatch: trailing cash flow doesn’t support the size of the next round of capital the business actually needs. The right stack is layered — senior debt sized on the pro forma post-expansion run rate, ABL for working-capital growth, mezzanine where the senior layer tops out, equipment finance for asset purchases, and the non-dilutive stack underneath the project.
Explore the stage
- 11 programs · 5 live
Established
$25M+ revenue, mature operations
Established businesses get bespoke capital, not catalog products. The senior facility is negotiated rather than priced off a grid; the ABL covers a real, sized AR + inventory base; mezzanine and private credit lend on covenants tailored to the situation, not a credit-box checklist. The CPA’s role at this stage is structuring the stack — total leverage, blended cost of capital, covenant headroom through the projection — before the term sheet is signed.
Explore the stage
The same business cycles through the stages.
Every business that survives long enough moves through these stages. The right financing posture changes at each crossing — the non-dilutive layer that funds pre-revenue R&D doesn’t disappear, but it stops being the headline once CSBFP and equipment finance are available; the ABL revolver that scales with AR at growth stage is wrong at pre-revenue and unnecessarily expensive at established. The CPA structures the stack against where the business sits today and where it’s heading.