Bespoke structures sized to the actual situation.

How the capital stack works at this stage

Established businesses, in practice.

Common stacks at this stage

The combinations a CPA usually assembles for established businesses.

A stack combines two or more of the programs above into a single capital-structuring answer. Each card names the programs AND the role each one plays inside the combination.

• 3 layers

  MBO leverage stack

  Management buyouts are leverage transactions first and equity transactions second. The senior tranche carries the cheapest dollar but the tightest covenants; the mezzanine layer unlocks the upper-leverage band at higher coupon; the vendor note bridges the equity-injection gap; the management team injects the equity that closes the deal. Each layer has distinct economics that compound over the five-to-seven years it usually takes to retire the debt — and the wrong ratio at close costs the management team materially at exit.

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• 5 layers

  Exporter stack

  Exporters face two distinct capital gaps simultaneously: 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 layers two or three of them together rather than picking one. The CPA designs the financing plan and the FX hedge against the same set of assumptions so the export plan and the capital plan don’t drift apart.

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Other stages

Different stage, different stack.

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 — and the programs that move from “not yet” to “cheapest dollar” as the business matures.

• 7 programs

  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.

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• 11 programs

  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.

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• 15 programs

  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.

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